- Joined
- May 9, 2016
The comments to this ought to be hilarious here. It was posted in my crisis intervention group a little while.
Allan Hunter identifies as female in gender identity, but presents in typical male grooming and attire. They sound more like a woman than I do on the phone, but wears a beard and manly clothing.
Dear Feminist Colleagues: How would YOU address it?
Replying to last week's blog post, my feminist colleague Emma wrote: "Perhaps you could ask a question pertinent to your point and then use the answers to develop what you want to say. For example, are you trying to talk about the idea that feminists have critiqued masculinity but then, when some men have rejected masculinity, critiqued that too?"
Yes, thank you.
Can I elaborate a little first? I'll try to keep it brief.
a) When feminists critiqued femininity, they did not say "we are not women". Quite the contrary. What they did say was "We are people, we are humans, we deserve to be evaluated by human standards, not special standards that only apply to women." For which they were accused of rejecting their womanhood and trying to become men, if you'll recall.
There's a reasons for that (I think): the masculine experience was artificially designated as the default. As in "The race of man", and "early man", and "mankind" and all that. So when women embrace a non-gendered neutral human identity, it bounces back socially as switching genders, because the neutral is the man-identity. I'm not pointing anything out to you that you hadn't previously pointed out to me, right?
Please keep that in mind when considering WHY ON EARTH some male who wants to reject masculinity doesn't just embrace the non-gendered neutrality of unisex human, not man. Saying "consider me unisex, not manly" doesn't invoke or conjure all the "special" traits marked as feminine. Because they're exceptions. The male is already the model for society's preconceived notion of the unisex generic human.
b) As a male, I don't get to say my stuff "as a feminist". It's not my platform. I don't get to use it.
c) The gender platform, including but not limited to transgender folks, can be my platform. It exists, it has concepts and terms, and I can speak to people as a person with a gender-atypical identity of some sort. It gives me a starting point.
d) Please, please, consider honestly for a moment what you would do, if you had been born male and rejected the identity foisted onto you by patriarchal society. Not for chivalrous concern-for-women reasons but for your own selfish reasons, that the MAN identity and all its priorities and traits and behaviors and ways of being in the world, totally wasn't for you because it's toxic and the opposite of being a self-realized life form and all that.
Do you think I'm going about it wrong?
Original Blog Post:
AHUNTER3.DREAMWIDTH.ORG
ahunter3 | Dear Feminist Colleagues: How would YOU address it?
Allan Hunter identifies as female in gender identity, but presents in typical male grooming and attire. They sound more like a woman than I do on the phone, but wears a beard and manly clothing.
Dear Feminist Colleagues: How would YOU address it?
Replying to last week's blog post, my feminist colleague Emma wrote: "Perhaps you could ask a question pertinent to your point and then use the answers to develop what you want to say. For example, are you trying to talk about the idea that feminists have critiqued masculinity but then, when some men have rejected masculinity, critiqued that too?"
Yes, thank you.
Can I elaborate a little first? I'll try to keep it brief.
a) When feminists critiqued femininity, they did not say "we are not women". Quite the contrary. What they did say was "We are people, we are humans, we deserve to be evaluated by human standards, not special standards that only apply to women." For which they were accused of rejecting their womanhood and trying to become men, if you'll recall.
There's a reasons for that (I think): the masculine experience was artificially designated as the default. As in "The race of man", and "early man", and "mankind" and all that. So when women embrace a non-gendered neutral human identity, it bounces back socially as switching genders, because the neutral is the man-identity. I'm not pointing anything out to you that you hadn't previously pointed out to me, right?
Please keep that in mind when considering WHY ON EARTH some male who wants to reject masculinity doesn't just embrace the non-gendered neutrality of unisex human, not man. Saying "consider me unisex, not manly" doesn't invoke or conjure all the "special" traits marked as feminine. Because they're exceptions. The male is already the model for society's preconceived notion of the unisex generic human.
b) As a male, I don't get to say my stuff "as a feminist". It's not my platform. I don't get to use it.
c) The gender platform, including but not limited to transgender folks, can be my platform. It exists, it has concepts and terms, and I can speak to people as a person with a gender-atypical identity of some sort. It gives me a starting point.
d) Please, please, consider honestly for a moment what you would do, if you had been born male and rejected the identity foisted onto you by patriarchal society. Not for chivalrous concern-for-women reasons but for your own selfish reasons, that the MAN identity and all its priorities and traits and behaviors and ways of being in the world, totally wasn't for you because it's toxic and the opposite of being a self-realized life form and all that.
Do you think I'm going about it wrong?
Original Blog Post:
AHUNTER3.DREAMWIDTH.ORG
ahunter3 | Dear Feminist Colleagues: How would YOU address it?
Teejay Wasserberg
This isn't that kind of a group. It's never been able to do much because i'm blocked more than i can post and it's specifically for crisis intervention, helping people access health and connect to community. I don't even know who pays any attention to it any more.
As for your question, I wish people would quit arguing about these things. My best days are days I don't have lecture anybody about the science of sex and gender or debate the validity of any gender role and orientation that isn't cis-het.
People are either nice or they're not. What gender role they're playing or anything else about sex and shouldn't matter and the more we debate these things, the more we oppress each other with our own internalized paraphilic phobias.
