They’re normal, you’re weird
More on the “what is a woman?” non-question:
The Tate Modern has become engulfed in a transgender rights row after promoting a short film about the definition of “woman”.
Isn’t it interesting that it’s about the definition of woman? Not man? Not woman and man? Just woman? I think it’s very interesting. I think it’s fascinating that it’s only women who are up for debate in this intrusive, patronizing way. I just can’t take my eyes off the fact that men are allowed to go right on being men, but women are constantly interrogated and rebuked and hounded for continuing to know what women are and refusing to be told that we’re suddenly something else.
Some women protested, as well they might.
A spokesman for the group said: “We are here to say loudly and proudly to Tate Modern that women are adult human females. Many of us work with galleries and in the arts, and we know that stating this simple fact can lead to loss of work and harassment.
…
The Tate rejected the activists’ criticisms, telling The Telegraph: “We have chosen to screen a work that does not propose one perspective on the question of womanhood, but instead considers multiple perspectives.”
We don’t want multiple perspectives on “the question of womanhood,” we want womanhood to stop being a question. Never mind multiple perspectives on what we are, what about asking what men are? If you’re not asking about men, then why are you asking about women? Why is it only women who are suddenly so puzzling and question-worthy? Why do men get to skate past all of this whistling a cheerful tune?
Women are the exotic, alluring, eternal Other, whose story must be told be Men. Women are to be discovered, conquered, a mystery to be elucidated. Not allowed to tell their own stories and spoil the ending. Men are supposed to have the monopoly on reason and intelligibility. It’s up to Men to define and characterize the entire universe, as we are the arbiters of truth, and determiner of what is and is not important. Can’t leave this sort of thing to women can we? To quote John Cleese’s doctor in “the Miracle of Birth” segment of The Meaning of Life, in answer to the mother in labour’s question about what she should do in giving birth to her child, he says “Nothing dear. You’re not qualified.”
The asymmetry when it comes to not feeling the need to redefine men, the failure to rename us “ejaculators” or “prostate havers” is telling. The Tate is just falling in with all the other captured institutions.
Great comment, not Bruce.
YNnB:
Some questions: 1. Who does the supposing? And 2. What universe are we talking about.? Because it is increasingly not this one. Never really has been, if the truth be known. Counter-examples abound.
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysistrata
The etymology of the word “woman” is interesting to consider. Folk etymologies have it coming from something like “wombed man”; i.e., a man, but the non-standard model. This is a back-construction that is not quite born out by the reality of the English language’s early development.
Instead, in early English as in modern German, “man” meant “person; human being”. Specifically, adult male people were called “wer”, or “werman”; i.e., male person. (Note the relation to the modern “werewolf”.) Adult female people were “wif” or “wifman”. In the course of time, “werman” was simplified to “man” and “wifman” evolved to “weoman” to “woman”, while “wif” developed into “wife”, with its specific marital connotation. (Compare this to modern German, where “Mann” means both man and husband, while “Frau” means both woman and wife, depending on the context. And yes, German has “Mann” and “man”. Yes, they are pronounced nearly identically, and have different meanings. Because…German.)
So, in obvious contradiction to the batshit-crazy claims that men and women only developed their sex-related meanings out of Enlightenment-backed white-supremacist European colonialism, we have solid linguistic evidence that the Germanic forebears of England had eyes to see and ears to hear the difference between men and women in their own less-enlightened time.