All about Sophie
Trans “activism” at its “center your movement on meeeeeeeeee” worst:
“Girlhood and womanhood aren’t defined by genitalia”
Yesterday’s Women’s marches were overall a big success and an amazing time to come together, but several messages seemed to come straight out of the sixties. Feminism can do better.
How dare women make a defiant and humorous point in order to push back against Donald “pussygrabber” Trump? How dare women allude to Trump’s belligerent contempt for women by mocking his “grab them by the pussy” brag? How dare women refer to their own anatomies? Women should be ashamed of themselves for doing such a thing. Women should be ashamed of their bodies and certainly of their genitalia.
What about the
menztranz?“Girlhood and womanhood aren’t defined by genitalia”
Girlhood and womanhood are defined by —
— well, we can’t say, exactly, but definitely not your ladyparts. So shut up already.
Well, now you put it like that, it comes kind of close to a definition, no?
Funny how we seem to have gone from a concept of white male privilege (something that demonstrably exists) to a concept of vaginal privilege (something much more nebulous, and really, not in evidence). At what point did being born with a vagina suddenly elevate me to the pinnacle of privilege, to the point that I must never, ever, ever allude to the fact that I am, in fact, a woman?
And, when Trump comes out with a tape in which he brags about “grab ’em by the girl dick” then their complaint will have more relevance.
#4: Touché! (Oops) ;-)
‘Girlhood and womanhood are defined by —’
Whatever I feel like, subject to change without notice.
Ironic that someone protesting Trump would take it “why can’t this be all about meeeeeee” attitude.
It’s an impressive showing that somebody saw Jonathan Chait making an ass of himself over how calling this the “Women’s March” excluded poor men like him, and said, “naw, I can do better than that!”
I have been waiting for the right opportunity to mention a highly interesting episode of “The Philosopher’s Zone” from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The subject was gender, and the guest, Rebecca Reilly-Cooper of the University of Warwick, made a point that I had not really considered enough before, that when a person identifies as a girl or woman, they have to be referring to some concept external to themselves (unless you want to talk about having the “soul” of a woman, which she rejects). If someone says, “I feel that I am woman,” what does that even mean? She also challenges the ever-expanding use of the word “gender.” Anyway, I liked it, and I don’t at all do justice to her words, so here is a link to the podcast: link
Yes. The first thing of Rebecca’s that I ever read on the subject (I had read some of her posts at the Philosophers’ Magazine blog before that) clarified that point for me too.
Yes, clamboy, I’ve always wondered about “feeling” like something other than one “is”. I only know what it feels like to be “me” and I wouldn’t extend or project that onto anyone else. I would make no claim that I feel like any other man, or that they would feel like me. I wouldn’t claim to know what anyone else’s subjective sense of themselves was, whether they are male or female. I would think that other people have a sense of “me-ness” as well. Is this sense of myself male or masculine? I couldn’t tell you as I’ve had no experience inside any other subjectivity than my own. My particular experience of life behind my eyeballs is mine. I know other people have their own particular experiences. I have my doubts that such experiences are any more transferable between individuals as they are between species. I might “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes”, but my internal experience of that mile is not going to be identical to that of the person whose shoes I’ve borrowed. Perhaps this comes from my privilege, a lack of imagination or poverty of empathy, but I can’t imagine any one else being able to feel like anything other than their own “me-ness”. Apart from mental exercises like reading fiction or biography, taking drugs or having an illness (and even these are perhaps going to be perceived by me as a momentary, step away from or shift of my “usual” self as opposed to a complete transformation into a completely new, other, self) , the experience of “feeling like someone other than myself” is as difficult, or impossible for them as it is for me. Maybe it’s just me.
That doesn’t mean I haven’t had others label me. Not coming across as a “manly man”, I have been called “gay” or “fag” on occasion, though I am not so inclined. This happened a number of times when I was young enough not know what those terms meant but old enough to be aware that what they meant was “bad”.
I’ve now used up more than my fair share of quotation marks in this post, so I shall finish before I need to use any more. I hope that some of what I’ve attempted to say makes some kind of sense; I make no claims to that, either.
YNnB, I can identify with what I take you to mean, quote marks and all. It rings true for me. Thanks for sharing that.
Your Name’s not Bruce (I hope it’s not too familiar of me to omit the question mark) – it makes all kinds of sense.
It’s a Thing in philosophy, as I understand it – for instance there’s an argument that we can’t know (or, less radically, take it for granted etc) that other people are conscious just because we are – “we” meaning “I.” All of us as an I are limited to our own minds so we can’t know what others are like, and we can’t just assume they’re all pretty much the same. That’s how Descartes ended up with Cogito ergo sum as the beginning point – we can know that much, but all else is extrapolation.
(I’m probably getting this all wrong, because I’m not a philosopher.)
So yeah – we absolutely can’t just assume that we know what it’s like “to be a woman” or anything else. (See Thomas Nagel’s famous essay “What Is It Like to be a Bat?”) We know what it’s like to be our one self, and that’s all.
Trump scenario 101: On arrival at the White House, Trump grabs his carpet bag and tips its contents onto the floor. First object to hit the deck is his torso from a dressmaker’s dummy, upon which he practices the self-proclaimed skill for which he became world famous long before his elevation to being POTUS .
Second thing out is his well-thumbed personal copy of My First Junior Atlas published by Little Golden Books.
Trump scenario 102: Trump, one morning idly flicking through his copy of My First Junior Atlas, spots Barbados close by Florida, or is that Cuba? Trump decides to grab Barbados for his Presidential portfolio. Decides he can grab that pesky Cuba later.
Trump scenario 103: Trump unpacks on arrival in the White House. First thing out of the carpet bag: his Monopoly set. Grabs the board and resumes playing where he left off before. Can’t help himself.
Trump scenario 104. Next he unpacks his gold-plated pocket electronic decision-maker from Tandy. (Original plain.) Uses it to decide things, like which real estate he will grab in his Monopoly moves? Will I or won’t I grab Barbados?
Idea 1: Gender is about your physical parts.
Idea 2: Gender is about the category your society puts you in (probably based on your parts).
Idea 3: Gender is about… um… what something-something feels like?
I don’t want to deny anyone’s experience or the picture they have of themselves, because that seems unkind, disrespectful, and unnecessary. But I will admit to not understanding what “feel like a man/woman” means, if that’s divorced from biology and society. I guess I also have to admit that not too much in this world depends on my understanding it.
OB:
I recall disputing this with you before today.
In other words, to be a ‘philosopheer’ is to be in a speciall class of “thinker’.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/philosopher
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophelia_Benson
The works of some philosophers are hard to understand. The works of others are made deliberately and unnecessarily so (eg the merchants of pomo.)
That is where another class of philosopher has to step in and untangle the mess.
I rest my case.
I’m relieved that this makes sense. I had thought to float ideas like these on previous, relevant posts, but was not sure enough of them to do so. Glad I didn’t end up in “not even wrong” territory.
Ophelia: dropping the question mark is fine! It’s not a nym that flows easily off the tongue or the keyboard, so if that works for you it works for me. The Pythonic reference to the Philosophy Department of the University of Woolamaloo is about as close as I get to actual philosophy these days…
@Your Name’s not Bruce? I also want to say yes, what you wrote makes perfect sense and is similar to how I think of these questions. Ophelia and I, and a few others, had a similar exchange of views a while back on the subject of first-person narrative, so I totally get you.
Seems to me that some transpeople are overextending their psychological identities.
Here is my theory. We have both a body or somatic sex and a brain or psychological sex. For cis people, the large majority of people and a reasonable reference, the two kinds of sex are the same, while for trans people the two kinds of sex are opposite. A transwoman is somatically male and psychologically female, while a transman is somatically male and psychologically female.
Some transpeople, it seems, want to claim that their somatic sex is their psychological sex, even if it is clearly the opposite sex.
But many transpeople go through lots of surgery and hormonal treatments and the like to give themselves an approximation of a somatic sex equal to their psychological sex. That suggests that such people perceive their bodies as having the “wrong” sex.
iknklast #4:
A good summary of the point that I was trying to make.
@Loren –
The way I see it – in other social primates, juvenile females are observed to model adult females (observing and mimicking their behavior and social roles) moreso than they do adult males, and vice-versa for juvenile males. Whatever you want to call this “pull” to act like (and be perceived as) one sex over the other, even if a very real neurological phenomenon, I’d really shy away from language such as “psychologically female” or “male-brained”. For one, it’s not as if this phenomenon – biologically-driven or not – is some quintessential, defining characteristic of the human brain. And for another, there’s a mountain of sexist pseudoscience bullshit that goes by the same vernacular (just google “science” and “male-brain vs female-brain” for a vomit-inducing taste).
For me, largely based on the observations of how transgender behavior manifests itself (in its intensity and persistence, its impact on psychological health, and as a variable largely independent of any specific set of childhood experiences) , I think there’s good reason to think this gendered-developmental-inclination does exist in humans. I also think the science in recent years backs this up – and would happily dig up some links for anyone skeptical of this. However, I also suspect that, due to increases in intelligence (and associated social complexity) of the Homo S. evolutionary branch, its value in reproductive success has diminished greatly, and it’s probably best considered as a vestigial artifact. As such, characterizing human psychology in terms of “male-brained” vs “female-brained” is a lot like trying to understand the human digestive system in terms of the interplay between each organ and the appendix.
I think the oft-dissected semantics of transgender individuals (e.g. “I’m actually a boy”; “I’ve always known I was a girl”, etc.) are, ultimately, the closest our language comes to allowing trans folk to communicate their experience of having a gendered-inclination that runs counter to their physical bodies and culturally-prescribed roles. Given that, for many transgender people, these forms of expression begin to surface at the age of 4 (and younger), I don’t think it’s a fair cop to claim that they’re based on gross misunderstandings of the field of Philosophy (formally or informally constructed).
That said, I fully shared in the cringe-inducing sensation expressed by Ophelia and others upon viewing the primary article’s web-comic.
That’s such a cheap shot. Nobody said that. But anyone who knows or cares anything at all about how we figure out the world and ourselves, which I think has to include anyone who reads this blog, is aware that our intuitions get a lot of things wrong. That’s not a matter of “gross misunderstandings of the field of Philosophy” but just of the way our minds work. See, for instance, Leonard Mlodinow’s Subliminal.
Sure, you can just throw up your hands and say our hunches never get things wrong, but that’s a pretty anti-intellectual thing to do…as was that cheap shot.
@Ben
As I’ve said before, in response to a favorite trans talking point, You absolutely have the right to define yourself however you want. You don’t have a right to my agreement with your self-perception.
(Generalized “you,” of course.)
@Your Name’s Not Bruce? #10
That was beautifully said.
Me too.
The other day I was part of a long, heated comment thread on Facebook. A trans person asked one of the other women, “If you woke up tomorrow with a man’s body, would you be a man?”
I wasn’t asked, but my answer would be, absolutely I would be a man. I would still be “me,” but in a male body. Being human in an adult male body is what “man” means.
This particular thought experiment has all sorts of problems, obviously, but I think if we overlook those and respond intuitively (which is the only way to go with most thought experiments,) it reveals something important about the divide here. What I think of as my most fundamental “self,” except for bodily experiences, is not a gendered being. It’s just me. I’m only gendered because other people see my sex, and treat me certain ways, accordingly. “Me” includes my body, but gender is extrinsic to me.
I can understand experiencing a somatic dissonance with one’s body. But I don’t see how one can experience gender dissonance unless one strongly prefers society’s gender norms for the other sex. But we’re constantly being told that that’s NOT what being trans is, that it’s nothing, no nothing to do with gender norms. (Obligatory: it’s fine to be a boy who likes pink and princesses, and I absolutely support you! But don’t confuse that with being a girl, because “girl” doesn’t mean inherently liking those things.)
On the contrary, I think a poverty of imagination or empathy shows when one assumes they know what it feels like to be someone else–let alone an entire sex-class.
I honestly think some transwomen objectify women just as much as any proud sexist who rates women by their looks. I think they think being a woman is about constantly being an object in others’ eyes, being aware of it, and playing to it. They perform what they think of as womanhood, and they think that’s what being a woman is. Surely that could be what it is only for the most narcissistic (or narcissistically-wounded, think: Marilyn) among us.
And of course even Marilyn wasn’t Marilyn all the time.
@Lady Mondegreen That was all beautifully expressed but this:
‘What I think of as my most fundamental “self,” except for bodily experiences, is not a gendered being. It’s just me. I’m only gendered because other people see my sex, and treat me certain ways, accordingly. “Me” includes my body, but gender is extrinsic to me.’
is perfect. Thank you.
Thank you, guest.