The present rainbow soup
Kathleen Stock has a dazzling piece on queeritude. It’s a must-read; I’ll just dangle a few amuse-bouches to tempt you.
In recent years, queerness has also become a fascinatingly multifunctional symbolic object in the psyche of the nation, simultaneously representing both sexily avant-garde transgression and fully paid-up membership of the British establishment.
Both a salad dressing and a drain cleaner!
A project on the history of the gerrymandered categories of “LGBTQ+” and “queer” is, of course, a fantastic idea; were it done properly, it would be genuinely exciting. Ideally such a museum would interrogate the sociological and historical conditions of its own movement. It might ask, for instance: what economic forces have shaped its transition from the gay rights movement of 20th Century to the present rainbow soup, in which many lesbians and gays feel they are not waving but drowning?
Speaking as a layman on the issue of gender studies I’d just like to initiate some small discussion that I know will reflect my ignorance and prejudices.
There used to be an impression that the majority of lesbians shared “masculine” interests with men, as well as the sexual attraction to the female body of heterosexual (the vast majority) men.
Likewise, it was felt that gay men were felt to share the “feminine” interests of females along with the sexual attraction to the male body of heterosexual (the vast majority) women.
So there were stereotypes of effiminate homosexuals and butch lesbians. And it was the homosexual men who at one time were the most likely to pursue transitions such as surgeries.
But first of all; what percentage of gay men and lesbian women conform to these depictions? I honestly don’t know.
Secondly; “Gender Critical” seems to me to be saying that our male or female bodies don’t constrain us to rigid “gender” roles. That gender is a social construct. There is no such thing as the male or female brain.
Of course, … it does seem that men and women do behave differently. A Venn Diagram of males and females and how both of them engage in violent behaviour would definitely show men being the most active participants.
Third: These AGP males who are performing a highly stereotypical caricature of “female” are clearly heterosexual. So, we have what are in effect “effiminate heterosexuals.” Also, there are the scores of young women who are now becoming “transmen” who say they are “homosexual” because they are sexually attracted to the male body, and who seem to be acting in a highly “masculine” fashion.
I just wonder about these things.
Me, while you are correct that there appear to be differences in how women and men act, it is difficult at this time to say how much of that is innate and how much is cultural. The problem is, the gendered behaviors often show up around the age of three; it is difficult to study children younger than that, and most of the studies I’ve seen that do have to make a lot of assumptions – such as looking at a face longer than a mobile means you are nurturing and caring instead of mechanical. We don’t actually know that’s what it means. We don’t actually know how many behaviors of very young children are responding to subtle cues given by parents or the researchers. So, yeah, there are definitely different behaviors, and they are so widespread it becomes easy to assume that is part of the natural state of being male/female. This has enabled the AGP and other TRAs to couch stereotypes as evidence of your gender, even when it is opposite. That puts us in a strange loop; if we take on face value that TWAW, then the behaviors they have adopted will be written down on the female side of the ledger in studies – frilly pink clothes, head tilt, all that stuff.
And if these are really what define men/women, we must conclude that Margaret Thatcher was really a man (and that I am half man, half woman, since my preferences include things that are stereotypical to both).