Gender identity: woman
This is making the rounds:
Whether trans or cisgender, intersex or not, many people identify as
women. However, what this means varies a great deal depending on their other intersecting attributes. It is important not to assume, for example, that being a woman necessarily involves being able to bear children, or having XX sex chromosomes, or breasts. Being a woman in a British cultural context often means adhering to social norms of femininity, such as being nurturing, caring, social, emotional, vulnerable, and concerned with appearance.However, of course, not all women adhere to all these things. For example some neurodiverse women (on the autistic/aspergic/ADHD spectrums) may struggle to express emotions, or with social situations. In some northern working-class contexts femininity is associated with strength and aggression. As always an intersectional understanding is vital and we need to be mindful that what is culturally regarded as the epitome of femininity is white, middle class, youthful, non-disabled, heterosexual, cisgender, and thin. This strongly shapes all women’s experiences of womanhood.
It’s from the Good Practice Guide of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. You may notice a certain incoherence, along with a certain wildness of assertion. For instance, in the wild assertion category, there is “many people identify as women.” Wut? One, really? Two, never mind “identify as”, what happened to “are”? Many people, in fact a little over half of all people, are women. “Identify as” is, frankly, irrelevant. One “identifies as” something that is chosen; one doesn’t “identify as” a given.
Then the “what this means” bit is incoherent (as well as laced with wild assertions). Then all the rest of it is both too. And people are doing counselling and psychotherapy on the basis of this confused heap of shite? That’s tragic if so. According to Wikipedia, “BACP is now the largest and broadest professional association for members of the counselling professions in the UK with over 44,000 members.”
The full guide, written by Meg-John Barker (is that an enby name?), is here. You’ll be relieved to learn that the explanation of “man” is the mirror-image of the one of “woman”: only the choice of stereotypes is altered.
Pause to Google M-J B.
Yes.
Meg–John Barker (born 23 June 1974) is an author, speaker, consultant, and activist-academic. They have written a number of anti self-help books on the topics …
They is on Twitter, but I find I am blocked from following they. Of course I is.
This makes it sound like I might be allowed to be regarded as a woman as long as I submit to accepting being placed along the autistic/aspergic/ADHD spectra. Or am I required, since I am not diagnosed with any of those (and never likely to be, since I have none of the symptoms), to be considered man? I adhered to social norms of femininity for the short period of time I was married to my ex, then abandoned all pretense and adhered to the social norms of being iknklast, and no one else. So was I woman while married to my ex? (Who is gay, so maybe that means I was a confused man? Or he was?) And did I quit being woman once we split and I became me again? Or…
Damn, this is confusing. And insulting. And wrong.
Aye, ‘appen it is. Bloody soft Southern wimmin, all simpering and ain’t got a bloody fight in any of ’em. Mebbe they should try getting up two ‘ours before going to bed, working twenty fives ‘ours a day down t’pit wi’ nowt but yesterday’s newspaper fer dinner, then walking fifty miles ‘ome, stopping on t’way to scour t’rubbish tip fer old rags and rusty nails to cook fer t’kids and t’hubby.
That’ll put some ‘air on their poncy Southern chests, I tell tha.
Have ‘they’, now?
Species Identity: Dog
#Whether trans or cisgender, intersex or not, many mammals identify as dogs. However, what this means varies a great deal depending on their other intersecting attributes. It is important not to assume, for example, that being a dog necessarily involves being able to bark, or fetch sticks, or protect sheep from wolves and bears. Being a dog in a British cultural context often means adhering to social norms of dogularity, such as being barking, chasing after sticks, rolling over onto one’s back and sticking one’s legs in the air, and stealing food at any opportunity.
However, of course, not dogs adhere to all these things. For example some neurodiverse dogs may struggle to express emotions, or with social situations. In some northern working-class contexts doggedness is associated with whippets and flat caps. As always an intersectional understanding is vital and we need to be mindful that what is culturally regarded as the epitome of dogularity is golden, middle class, youthful, non-disabled, heterosexual, cisspecies, and good at retrieving. This strongly shapes all dogs’ experiences of doghood.
Newspaper? You were lucky! All we ever got was used toilet paper….
Used toilet paper? We used to dream about eating used toilet paper!
All of this makes perfect sense to me.
I have only one question: So what does woman mean?
What a useless guide. The construction “Being a woman in a British cultural context often means […]” shows that gender is simply cultural expectation, and is not inherent to being a woman; and the follow-up “However, of course, not all women adhere to all these things” renders the whole excercise pointless. If a woman can match ‘stereotypical expectation A, but also not match it, then why bother with the stereotype at all? It seems that their own definition is self-refuting.
Whatever you want it to mean – provided you are a trans-woman with true intersectional cred, and you acknowledge that woman sometimes means having a penis and that being born a woman means you are 100% privileged on every axis, and any such woman is cis-scum who is committing genocide merely by her existence as a non-trans woman.
AoS @ 3 – BAHAHAHAHAHAHA thank you for that.
I wonder sometimes how people who write this sort of drivel function in their daily lives. How on earth is it oppressive to suggest being a woman might involve breasts, two X chromosomes or being able to bear children but it’s not oppressive to talk about how women are nurturing, fucking vulnerable and aargh concerned with appearance. That’s the most shallow male-gaze stereotype of women imaginable and yet they can say all this with a straight face.
Fuck these people. I’m with iknklast. Let me be me and stop telling me what I should and shouldn’t wear, say, think or feel. I’m tired of being shoved in boxes I don’t fit while being berated for thinking there’s more to being a woman than a simple assertion of ‘identity’.
Ophelia, my pleasure. I followed your lead and googled the name, and the picture on the results page of that person dressed in flat cap and tweed jacket (which is required uniform North of the Watford Gap, tha knows) just completed the stupidity of that person’s ‘Northern women’ quote.
Claire, that ultimate authority on all the things, PZ, once explained in a post that unless every single person on Earth was tested for xx or xy chromosomes then we cannot say that women are xx and men xy, therefore shut up about chromosones.
The man’s a fucking professor of biology and an avowed materialist, yet he seems to accept dualism and wishful thinking over actual science. It’s a strange world.
AoS, I think PZ has gotten caught up in his cult of personality. He has a role to play to remain popular with the “in” crowed, and like that professor in the 50s who hung out at the malt shop and used teenage slang, he is determined to remain “hip” and great with the young crowd…as long as that young crowd is “woke”. He must have some terrible cognitive dissonance to believe the things he says:
1. There is a spectrum of sexuality (true)
2. Therefore, this supports the idea that trans-women are fully on the women side (false)
3. We have to test every single human that has ever lived for chromosomes to make a statement (falser)
4. We should listen to the women when they tell us they are being disrespected, etc (during the Rebecca Watson debacle)
5. We should not listen to the women when they tell us trans-women may not have the identical experience of other women, because cis-privilege, bigotry, and intersectionality (contradicting the above)
6. Schrodinger’s rapist means that women must be cautious about strange men in elevators, but gender identity means that we must not worry about male-bodied strangers in bathrooms (because we’re less vulnerable in bathrooms? Because there is zero chance that a cis-hetero male would enter a women’s bathroom to harass women? Because PZ sez so?)
I’ve also noticed that when he talks about trans and bathrooms, he always discusses trans-men using men’s bathrooms. I suspect the cognitive dissonance requires a lot of rationalization.
AoS, that post of PZ’s was when I stopped even silently lurking there. It was just one long ramble throwing the complexity of genomics and biochemistry against the wall and basically saying, because it’s all so complex we can’t really tell and therefore should let people self identify. As you say, a tacit acceptance of dualism and the ineffable.
I bet he doesn’t ask his zebra fish or spiders how they identify…
Except when it doesn’t…
But remember: Any suggestion that the trans conception of womanhood has anything to do with cultural gender roles and stereotypes is an evil transphobic strawman (and probably literal violence, responsible for the murder of trans women etc.)
(And of course nothing signals adherence to “social norms of femininity” (i.e. “being nurturing, caring, social, emotional, vulnerable” etc.) like all that talk of punching women in the face etc. coming from loud, aggressive, entitled people with dicks…)
#13
Point 6 is the big one. Shut up and listen to women’s concerns about male aggression! Women are entitled to safe spaces from men! Unless he calls himself a woman!
“Whether trans or cisgender, intersex or not, many people identify as
women. However, what this means varies a great deal”
True.
…dependng on their other intersecting attributes.”
Don’t understand. True maybe?
“It is important not to assume, for example, that being a woman necessarily involves being able to bear children,”
True but is that a common mistake?
“or having XX sex chromosomes, or breasts.”
Okay so now what we’re saying is: never mind sex, we’re defining the female gender here. Fair enough.
“Being a woman in a British cultural context often means adhering to social norms of femininity, such as being nurturing, caring, social, emotional, vulnerable, and concerned with appearance.”
If we’re talking about being a woman in terms of gender not sex, isn’t this trivially true? The word ‘often’ may need deleting.
“However, of course, not all women adhere to all these things.”
Not all what? Not all people who adhere to feminine social social norms adhere to femine social norms? Yes they do.
We must be talking about woman as in sex now. Not all natal women adhere to female gender norms. Absolutely true.
“For example some neurodiverse women (on the autistic/aspergic/ADHD spectrums) may struggle to express emotions, or with social situations. In some northern working-class contexts femininity is associated with strength and aggression.”
Right. Not all natal women conform to all the norms of feminitity, and norms of femininity vary across cultures and sub-cultures.
” As always an intersectional understanding is vital and we need to be mindful that what is culturally regarded as the epitome of femininity is white, middle class, youthful, non-disabled, heterosexual, cisgender, and thin.
This strongly shapes all women’s experiences of womanhood.”
So the feminine gender norms are based on some ideal of the young, thin, beautiful, white, classy lady. Maybe so. Does this ideal include being cisgender? I’m not sure what that means since we’re trying to define gender and the definition of cisgender makes reference to gender. The word ‘cisgender’ can’t enter into the definition of ‘gender’ if the word ‘gender’ enters into the definition of ‘cisgender’, can it? Isn’t that circular?
Being as charitable as i can, perhaps what is meant here is that we should not assume that everybody gendered as female was gendered as female at birth. I.e. trans people do exist: having been subject to one set of gender norms they choose to make themselves subject to another. E.g. a person of the male sex chooses to conform to the female gender norms. That’s coherent.
I guess how i would rewrite this definition is:
A woman is a female person. ‘Female’ can have two different meanings because sex and gender are different. Being of the female sex is a matter of biological fact. Being of the female gender is more difficult to define. The female gender is a set of social norms usually imposed on members of the female sex. These norms can vary across times and cultures. Whether by choice or otherwise, many members of the female sex do not conform to female gender norms. Furthermore, many people who are intersex conform to those norms and are gendered as female. Some members of the male sex, again whether by choice or otherwise, conform to female gender norms. It is important not to conflate sex and gender.
Is that better?
Better, as it leads at least separates sex from gender, a.k.a. the behavioural expectations lumped on people due to their sex. Which immediately prompts the question: why have those behavioural expectations at all?
Holms, exactly. If behaviour is judged on gender-expectations, or gender predicated on behaviour, any transgression from the gender ‘norm’ is bound to have an effect on impressionable minds. In fact, with the exception of those very rare ‘hyper-males/females’, the entire world population could be considered to be transgendered.
I would suggest that that was the agenda all along, if not for the sneaking suspicion that many current trans people want to be seen as unique, different and therefore special.