I have to be honest I am pretty clueless about gender. Like I see gender function as social roles on a daily basis, but no framework to analyze it on a more meaningful level than picking up on some common behaviors and stereotypes.

  • TreadOnMe [none/use name]
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    edit-2
    3 years ago

    Gender, as generally discussed within acedemic studies, is essentially the segregation of characteristics and behaviors that are associated with a particular sexual dimorphism. What these characteristics and behaviors are are culturally constructed signifiers that signal that sexual dimorphism that develop over time and are more or less arbitrary. However, their meaning is derived from the experience of gender by gendered individuals and the performance of gender. Essentially, if your sex is male, but you wish to identify as female, the best way to do so is to adopt the generally agreed upon characteristics of a woman. But TreadOnMe, you ask, aren't those just stereotypes? Pretty much, yeah. But gender is real in the same way all cultural practices are real, because society as a whole accepts it as such. Variation is allowed, but only within certain margins in certain areas of society.

    However, gender is particularly weird in the west because of the amount of outrage variation causes. A Hollywood actor doing a facelift in order to be perceived as younger is odd but perfectly acceptable, but someone gets top surgery and people start losing their shit. I think it has something to do with Christian sexual pathology and conservative Western civilization collapse narratives, but that isn't something I'd really like to study.

  • hahafuck [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Gender is what dolls you played with, sexuality is what cartoons you watched

  • KollontaiWasRight [she/her,they/them]
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    3 years ago

    So, I'm cobbling together a lot of informal understandings here, rather than a disciplined reading of Butler or other philosophers of the area. If another comrade with a more formal understanding wants to step in and correct me, I defer entirely to them. They are correct, I am trying to synthesize a bunch of stuff from a scattershot understanding:

    I'm gonna short-hand some philosophical concepts here, so if they don't entirely land, I can try and follow up on them after the fact. I'm also gonna do this in bullet-point format, because I find dense paragraphs of philosophy unreadable.

    • Gender is a socially constructed (which is to say: it is not intrinsic) role which is performed (which is to say: gender is a series of external behaviors and signifiers).
    • This is important because it is directly opposite to sex, which is (at least for now) determined by intrinsic biological traits. What is critical to understand here is that there is nothing about gender which is inherently tied to physical sex.
    • To make this theoretical model more concrete: Possessing a certain set of chromosomes and/or genitals does not, for instance, actually mean you 'can' or 'should' wear a dress. It does not (despite some claims to the contrary) make you better disposed to caretaking tasks or productive tasks. We can therefore understand gender as constructed in its Anglosphere form as the set of behaviors and signifiers traditionally assigned to individuals based on physical sex which are not in any way intrinsic to physical sex. This contains everything from expectations of appearance and modes of speech to socio-economic roles.
    • One of the important proofs of the difference between gender and sex can be found in the ways in which gender varies from society to society. We can point to the existence of different concepts of a "third gender" (scare quotes because that's often a massive oversimplification) in some societies, for example, to challenge the traditional binary found in the Anglophone world.

    So, now let's talk a little bit about Marxism and gender:

    • First, I want to make sure that we clearly state that treating a superstructural element (and gender is mostly superstructural) as wholly dependent on and responsive to the base is vulgar Marxism. Don't take it from me, take it from Stalin (in his answer to the first question) and Engels. This is important, because one tendency of some Marxists is to treat superstructural elements as fundamentally derivative and without any motive force of their own. This is not so.
    • Second, I want to emphasize that despite that fact, gender has been shaped by changes in the base that are easy to follow. Despite the way that modern conservatives emphasize the 'conservative' principle that 'women's work is in the house' or other such nonsense, the period they harken back to in order to justify this view was, in point of fact, exceptional, and their perspective is mostly bourgeois. The simple fact is that under industrializing capitalism, women and men of the working class both worked outside of the house because they could not possibly survive without doing so. We can also see this relationship in frontiers culture in the US, where the rights and roles of women were significantly expanded on the frontier long before they were expanded in the more developed east.
    • Third and finally, the abolition of capitalist relations of production transforms gendered performance, but there is no reason to believe it eliminates them. This is important because there is often a call in radical circles for the abolition of gender. This seems to me, at the very least, to be a quixotic task. Rather than seeking to abolish gender, we must seek to liberate it - to free each individual from being assigned gender by society and allow them the power to choose, change, and define gender roles in a way that allows them to be more themselves, not less.
  • SuperZutsuki [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    This is something I've been wondering about. Queer folks talk about presenting as masc/fem but isn't what's considered masc/fem based on social norms and stereotypes? What if positions like "men don't wear makeup" and "women shouldn't be swole" stopped being dominant? I haven't put a ton of thought into this but basically, what is gender without stereotypes?

    • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      If things were different, then they would be different. If society did not make any distinctions between different genders, then people would no longer say that they were "presenting fem" because it would be incoherent. But it is coherent because those distinctions do exist.

      I don't think we can treat people as being independent of the world in which they exist. Most women today wear pants at least sometimes, but in the past it was seen as a transgression of norms. If we took a cishet, pants-wearing woman from the present back in time, then in her mind she would be presenting as cishet but society would see her as presenting as queer. Essentially, she would be a foreigner operating under different norms and understanding categories differently. Maybe she would continue identifying as cishet while presenting in a way that society at the time perceived as queer, or maybe she would adopt the standards of the time and stop wearing pants, or maybe she would start identifying as queer, since that was the way society perceived her. A person's identity is inherently tied to the outside world, regarding gender but also regarding many other qualities - who you are does not end at your fingertips.

  • hopelesscomrade [they/them]
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    3 years ago

    Like I don't like being trad masculine or even give a shit about being the traditional role that a man has to be, as a provider or someone who must commit themselves to a role or talent until death, but I don't really get the point of gender identity outside the context of what sex you prefer to be.

    I know I put my pronouns to They/Them, but I don't really get the point. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not educated enough to really have an educated opinion on this.

    I guess if it makes people happy to have an identity, then there is nothing wrong with it. My identity is basically is basically just a rejection of everything and fitting in no where and all it's ever brought me is pain and suffering

  • Bernies3trlnKielbasa [he/him]
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    3 years ago

    redpill me on gender

    This may not be the best choice of phrasing, given the subreddit r/TheRedPill and their particular views on men and women and societal roles.

  • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Uhh so basically you got these labels, and they're kinda made up bullshit based on nothing, but so is the rest of language so if you wanna communicate it can be useful to use them. Some people find the labels limiting and prefer to avoid them, and that's cool. Other people like them and find them useful for describing themselves, and that's cool too. Some people get a sort of tunnel-vision where they see these approaches as opposed but they're really not. If someone is AMAB and they like to wear skirts, they might identify as a cis male crossdresser, or as an NB who doesn't give a fuck about gender norms, or as a trans woman - and indeed, the same person might identify as all three at different points in their life. And the gender police most likely won't care about the differences. Ultimately just do what you want and let other people do what they want and if you like labels you can use them, or not.

  • Good_Username [they/them,e/em/eir]
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    3 years ago

    I've been suggesting Whipping Girl by Julia Serano pretty frequently recently. I don't know quite what you mean by "redpill", but Serano definitely talks about gender in very interesting ways. It's definitely very much written from the point of view of a trans woman, but it's really quite interesting and thought-provoking even if that's not your particular relationship to gender. So yeah, I'd suggest reading that. It's good.

    • wmz [any]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      uh because I would like to know more about it?

        • wmz [any]
          hexagon
          ·
          3 years ago

          Sure it might not be the most eloquently worded question, perhaps also intellectually lazy, considering how broad gender is. But for you to assume that I think its "incumbent on people whose experience differs from your own to justify that experience to you " is frankly ridiculous. I also dont know why and how you made the leap from gender to disability.

            • wmz [any]
              hexagon
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              edit-2
              3 years ago

              I hate "debates" and I am never interested in them. If anything, you were the one who started out being outright hostile. I simply stated my thoughts in response, that you were being ridiculous. Bye.

        • WALLTHERICH [comrade/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          no one walked up to you and asked for anything, you chose to participate (in bad faith) in this thread

          a question asked to the room at large is not the same as one asked at gunpoint. your hostility is completely unwarranted

        • Jebediah_Bronie [he/him]
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          edit-2
          3 years ago

          How was the question loaded or othering? How were they not treating you like a person when asking a very general, introductory question about, as you put it "an entire field of study"?

          You are absolutely right that it is my job to educate myself but I have to get that information somewhere. Asking a forum of people who I know to have "good opinions" about many other things sounds like a good place to start right? Especially relating to something that is such a minefield as gender is.

          You don't have to explain every detail of how you personally relate to gender, just throw out a book rec or two and have done with it, or just don't engage at all maybe?

          You started out pretty hostile and certainly did not "gently point out problematic behavior"

            • Jebediah_Bronie [he/him]
              ·
              3 years ago

              framework to analyze (gender) on a more meaningful level than picking up on some common behaviors and stereotypes

              What is the veiled insult that answers this?

              You were from the start and have continued to be the hostile party.

        • newmou [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Woah this is making assumptions on assumptions. Take your toxicity elsewhere, this site helps all of us understand oppressive systems more deeply and should welcome the good faith curiosity of this post