On 9/20/2013 10:47 PM, Kevin Gorman wrote:
Hi John -
I'm tired so I could have just missed someting, but I'm not not really
sure how you got your post out of Emily's post, or for that matter,
out of the rest of the thread. A discussion about archaic gendered
terminology (and face it, aviatrix is archaic) is not an attempt to
define all genders as the same, and equally, it is not an attempt to
invalidate anyone's gender identity. Invalidating someone's gender
identity is a very serious problem; please don't suggest that someone
has done so without very clearly explaining what you mean. (And by
serious problem, I mean that if I see a situation occur on this list
where I honestly feel that someone is attempting to invalidate someone
else's gender identity, things are going to go BOOM.)
Thanks,
Kevin Gorman
Frankly, I'm still not comfortable about going from being a woman to be
a "gender" and always was suspicious of the term as somehow down playing
womens rights/feminism/ and my own philosophy of women co-creating a new
world to replace that self-destructive empire of violence and ego which
patriarchy (created by males/men) has wrought.
Finally I got around recently to reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender which (while surely another
imperfect wikipedia article) does say a few things of interest that make
it clear it's not some hard and fast ideology of how people define
themselves or others define them.
It still feels to me like a phrase feminists adopted in the 1970s to
make it clear their society-imposed "gender roles" should not restrict
their actions in anyway has been twisted in the last decades into a
phrase that says that having certain physical/emotional/social
experiences as a women throughout your life really doesn't qualify you
to say what you as a woman want or need in terms of rights, privacy,
protection, etc. if louder voices talking about some nebulous concept
called "gender" declare otherwise.
In the 1970s and 80s and even early 90s it seems that bisexuality,
homosexuality, androgeny, pansexualism, cross-dressing, etc. were fun
options and the most liberal and libertarian of us enjoyed associating
with the very liberal types who practiced them, if we did not do so
ourselves. Now it seems they've become ideological big stick, including
enforced by law, which have thrown up suspicion and resentments where
before their was tolerance. (One of benefits of old age is having lived
through various social evolutions.)
Exactly what the ideology is, I still am not sure and I'm sure that
those with even less experience of the varieties of human expression are
even more mystified.
It seems that harsh criticism and even accusations of bigotry are often
directed at those who may prefer not to figure out what this "gender"
business is all about and simply talk about sex or being a woman or a
man; or those who make innocent faux pas in language or attitude; or
those who ignore one groups' definition of the ideology, much to the
wrath of that group; and especially those who have genuine ideological
or political questions or skepticism of some interpretation or other,
including feminists.
So when I see a sentence like " I mean that if I see a situation occur
on this list where I honestly feel that someone is attempting to
invalidate someone else's gender identity, things are going to go BOOM."
I honestly have to wonder, what the heck is the ideology being promoted
for whom and by whom. What is it I am allowed to say about my gender
identity or anyone elses and what is it I am not allowed to say?
And is it something that women have a say in co-creating or are we once
again locked out from creating the dominant ideology that rules the world...
CM
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