Gender Nihlism

[kdkorz10211]

So I came across this post on Tumblr, and I am VERY interested in hearing folks' thoughts about it.  Fair warning, it's a bit heavy reading.

Gender Nihlism

[Ayla]

While I quite like the post and the author's perspective I am uncomfortable with their assertion that:

"The “prediscursive body” does not exist. Essentially what this means is that there is no such thing as an inherent gender; that gender, including its effect on the brain and behavior, is completely socialized and performative (which means that it’s something that we perform constantly and without a choice in the matter, just like every other aspect of personality), whether or not that socialization is “successful” (i.e. someone adhering to the same gender they are coercively assigned as at birth). This also means that the “biological” differences between men and women are caused by them being coercively gendered by society, not the other way around."

From my perspective, 'gender identity' is not 'completely socialized and performative'. While there may be social and psychological aspects, it seems to me that there is a sense of self which is inherent. Whether this is a sense of a 'gendered self' or not is debatable but there is no doubt that if gender was completely socialized and performative then hrt would have zero effect on gender dysphoria, stress or discomfort. The fact that hrt is enormously beneficial and therapeutically effective, suggests to me that gender has a biological aspect. This is consistent with studies of brain structure which suggest that as per sexuality and gender or self identity, that there are many, if not infinite, variations and that gender identity is bio/pycho/social in origin which aligns with the view of Affect Theorists. Brain plasticity (structure changing in response to experience) is unlikely to fully account for the observed differences in brain structure or indeed identity.

Having said this I do agree that the 'abolition of gender' is a valid objective but I suspect that this argument is designed to force fit my lived experience as a transgender non binary into a feminist theory which seeks to dismiss biological causes and factors. In so far as biology is ignored then I find this argument weak.

[Taka]

they won't ever win that fight. a theory that doesn't account for actual biological differences, particularly in brain structure, won't take society anywhere.

men have power because they instinctively support each other, particularly in oppressing non-men. of a man doesn't display this sort of behavior, it's most likely because his brain structure is different in some way.


blaming it all on the men is unfair though. women select what genes they find attractive for reproduction. most women seem to prefer the competitive, sexist guys when it comes to that, even if they'd rather make a family with a softer man. causes a whole lot of infidelity.

gender being a socialconstruct just doesn't fit with serious research. you may hypothesize as much as you want to make the world one that fits your needs on paper, but that doesn't make it into reality.


would bemuch more consteuctive to invent ways of grabbing hold of the power that patriarchy wants to rob you of. but in order to do that, you'll first have to recognize the existence of gender typical behavior caused by actual biological gender.

[Trinity]

I am in a similar opinion to both Taka and Aisla. Yet..

Hardwiring, and the attractions to elements that are of male or female typical assignments, I don't think that is a social construct.  My need for heels and satin and to be pretty and to be female bodied have nothing to do with the constructs.  It has to do with who I am, my physical gender.

When I look at my face and see it from different perspectives, my body the same, its not constructs I see. But the construct influences my perception.

It is forced gender that to me is the matrix, the deception part of it all. Forced social dos and donts, forced and rigid punishment for deviating from the gender norms.

In the society, the greatest pushback I get is when I am in the middle of it all and they see it as in your face nonbinary. It violates their gender rules, when I am presentationally (and in reality) mixed, and elements of both genders are present. It jars them, disturbs them. And they seek to punish what threatens them. Me out there with only lipstick on and my hair combed back is asking for it on the street, I have to make it work, the two polarities visibly separated out causes trouble. Being androgynous does not. Thats just my street experience.

But, the biological drive, I do believe that is gendered. It may be nonbinary too, middle ground, it is for so many. And the enforcement of the constructs interferes with a mans freedom to have a woman carress the male breast, for example, or much more his butt. Those raised in rigid male culture cannot handle that. I was raised in such a culture. Mindshattering frankly.

And what is wrong with that anyway, to be very feminine is to celebrate your femininity, to be very masculine is to celebrate your masculinity, I can do that socially at will, believe me, and the same is true of nonbinary mix, it is freedom from the construct, it is flying the matrix.

Even the matrix has physical rules, there are things that are there that are building blocks of gender. The difference is whether we use them, or they use us.

As to male female domination, I doubt that will ever change. I work in a male dominant work culture, as a male, it is an advantage for me to do that. When I want to. I do soften it up, challenge their gender roles, at this point, they respect that I am nonconforming, men respect stregnth in percieved males, they percieve me as male, because I choose to reveal that part of self to them, and keep the other parts hidden, for my safety, and because it is none of their business.

Its working the construct, working the matrix. That changes nothing of my need for hormones, my need to be touched as a woman is touched, to be taken as a woman is taken. As I need to be taken. A different gender...gender divergence. Heavily weighted to the female binary in me. But not socially...socially it is such a different experience, it remains simply a different gender. Another gender. My own gender.

So no, I don't agree with the article, but I do agree with the enforcement issues, and that to me is the whole core of the matrix construct. It is enforcement without freedom. Sheer peer pressure at its very worst, based on an illusion of what is a male, and what is a female. That becomes caricatures of self, it is not truth. They are afraid of the truth, they cannot accept what is real.

IMO.

Trinity

[kdkorz10211]

As for my thoughts on it, I am somewhat torn. In a sort of Buddhist "everything is emptiness" kind of way, I can see that although gender may be composed of psychosociobiological aspects, it has no inherent "ultimate reality". (Note that in th relative truth, day-to-day sense, gender is absolutely a thing). I think the goal of abolishing gender, at the very least the forced aspects of it, very noble and worthwhile, although clearly far off. I'm not sure how I feel about the thought that gender in and of itself is inherently an oppressive thing. Social expectations around gender, sure, but me viewing myself as a boygirl? I don't think that necessarily has to be about putting myself into a relative position of power or lack thereof. Though I do agree that society will attach a power level to my gender regardless of my wishes. Meh, I'm not sure what to think. On some levels I like it, and on others it feels like it's invalidating my methods of survival in society's gendered system.

[Deleted]

I have to say I wasn't terribly impressed with this article.  To give one little idea why, I'll quote this bit:

. . . the only way for oppression to be completely ended is for gender to be destroyed.

I think this is very naive.  The only way for oppression to end is for the human race to grow up and lose its taste for oppression.  Let everything else in this article be true, even if gender is a way of oppressing people, there are other ways of doing it.  People like to oppress others because it makes their own position more comfortable in ways.  Even if we could "destroy gender" and put an end to that sort of oppression, people being what they are, they'd come up with something else.  So let gender be a means of oppression, people use that means because they want some means of oppressing others and one way's as handy as another.  There's more than one way to skin a cat.

We don't have to erase racial differences in order to have racial harmony.  We just have to accept that one color's as good as another.  Nor do we have to erase gender in order to have gender harmony.  We just have to accept that one person's as valid as another.

For me, this is the key: accept that one person's as valid as another--because the human race will always be diverse, and if we're into oppression, we'll always have plenty of ways to justify it.

[EchelonHunt]

Whenever I read these kind of articles, I always think of what someone else posted once before here.

The "What would I do if I was on an island all by myself?" scenario.

Pretty damn sure I would still feel dysphoric about my body, even if there is no-one to see it, it's a source of internal conflict, something I instinctively knew as a child that I was a boy, felt "wrong" in my body long before I was even aware to the differences between girls and boys or that I, myself had been born a girl in the first place.

I initially thought it would be exciting to think of a world where all things male & female become gender neutral - mainly on public things like toilets, clothing... but then, earlier, I thought, if clothing and appearance stopped being gender-specific and became gender-neutral, how friggin' boring would that be? No more fancy skirts, lingerie, just unisex shorts and plain t-shirts would be fairly gender neutral. Everyone would look the same, it would greatly limit one's ability to express themselves but t-shirts and shorts are in itself, considered a mix of neutral/masculine, depending on how the person looks while wearing them so that would be a complete failure in attempting to eradicate gender.

It was an interesting concept to think of but that's just what it is, a concept. Nothing less, nothing more. If anything, I look back on it and think how dumb I was for thinking it would be a good idea when nowadays, I feel most comfortable expressing femininity while having a male body.

I like how the article goes as far as saying transphobia and homophobia will no longer exist but doesn't go the full nine yards and says outright that gender dysphoria will cease to exist, too. It strongly hints at it though, saying "What does it mean to be trans or nonbinary if there is no longer any assigned gender or gender binary to defy?"

Ignorance, hatred, violence will thrive regardless of gender being abolished or not. If there is no gender, people filled with hatred and a drive for inflicting violence, will find some other reason to hurt and kill others.

Also, is the author of the article mixing gender up with sex? Because erasing gender doesn't necessarily erase biological sex or one's sense of gender identity, nor will erasing gender erase centuries of sexism that has been rooted into society.

If they want sexism gone, everyone on the planet must have their bodies be altered to become sexless in order to truly remove sexism by the root.

Sexism is defined by what genitals a person has, the cisgender notion that "Your genitals reflect your gender identity", and stereotypes involving those things.

But that alone, while it may remove sexism, it won't remove discrimination and hatred humans have against one another for whatever reason.

Making everyone sexless wouldn't solve anything anyway.

I mean, can you imagine the kind of shit storm that would happen if it did happen magically overnight? It would be like those "normalising" surgeries they perform on intersex infants, but only in this instance, it's performing neutralisation or nullification surgery on everyone, regardless if they are cis, transgender or non-binary.

Not to mention, sexual reproduction via physical sex wouldn't be possible anymore. Sexual activities and the porn industry would be halted completely, actually wait, scratch that, anal will still be possible and using strap-ons, unless people who are in charge of implementing gender nullification, they would probably want to erase everything that resembles the sexual organs that once confined them from freedom.

Ok, so that last part about a sexless society comes across as some kind of cult. I don't deal too well with articles that uses so many big words so as a result, I try to understand the parts I can read and go off on a little tangent

[Deleted]

Dec 30, 2015 0:30:50 GMT 8 EchelonHunt said:

I like how the article goes as far as saying transphobia and homophobia will no longer exist but doesn't go the full nine yards and says outright that gender dysphoria will cease to exist, too. It strongly hints at it though, saying "What does it mean to be trans or nonbinary if there is no longer any assigned gender or gender binary to defy?" . . .

Also, is the author of the article mixing gender up with sex? Because erasing gender doesn't necessarily erase biological sex or one's sense of gender identity, nor will erasing gender erase centuries of sexism that has been rooted into society.

Yeah.  You know, it's odd.  Sometimes you get the impression that certain transpeople don't actually understand transgenderism any better than your average cisperson does.

Recently, e.g., I saw a cisman complaining about this notion, "Assigned Male/Female at Birth".  Says he, you're not assigned a sex at birth.  You are a given sex.  Now that's true for everybody except intersex people, but what he's not copping onto is that assigning someone at birth as male or female means labelling them strictly according to their genitalia.  It ignores the question of gender identity--which is where trans/NB people get caught out.

And so when this writer asks the question, "What does it mean to be trans or nonbinary if there is no longer any assigned gender or gender binary to defy?", they're missing the point.  The state doesn't assign gender arbitrarily.  It assigns it according to genitalia--and the sexes are always going to have different genitalia.  That's what makes them different sexes.  And that's why the gender binary exists, because two different sexes ensure that it does.  And that's why being trans/NB will always mean something because there will always be a gender binary to defy in a certain sense.

Now it depends on what sense you mean.  For example, when I see ciswomen, I say to myself, "That's what I should have been."  In that sense, the gender binary is very meaningful to me.  And no man would want to look or dress the way I do. In that sense, the gender binary is very meaningful to me.  On the other hand, I was just asking myself what is it I do that no man could do.  I can't think of anything off the top of my head.  E.g., I work as a free-lance translator.  Men do that.  I like listening to music, reading, watching films, going for walks.  Men can do all those things.  I go to the café for coffee, I go to the supermarket, I visit the library, I take care of my business in the post office.  Men can do all those things.  So in that sense, a gender binary means nothing to me. 

That is, when you're talking about gender roles, a gender binary means relatively little to me.  And in this sense, this is where lots and lots and lots of us agree.  No matter what you are, cismale, cisfemale, trans, NB, whatever, you should not be bound to a certain role because of your gender.  But in other areas (which we generally call "gender expression") such things will mean a lot, depending on the individual.  Like me, e.g.  I want to be perceived as feminine and I make a considerable effort to try to ensure that I am.  And when we're talking about gender identity, that's something that everybody has, something that is biological, and something that people absolutely demand be acknowledged.  I don't know that anybody would volunteer to have their gender identity erased.  Maybe some would.  But not me.  Because it is me, it's a very precious part of me and no way would I want to give it up.  I want to be me.

So if we're talking about "destroying gender", we might mean eliminating gender roles and sexism.  I think most people would go along with eliminating the latter, but not necessarily the former.  Or we might mean eliminating distinct gender expression.  A lot of us wouldn't go along with that.  Or we might mean eliminating gender identity--which is impossible.  So we need to be more precise as to what we mean when we're talking about "destroying gender".

[Taka]

women who learn the system and how to (ab)use it, can gain a ridiculous amount of power. buddhism is typical chinese, but they still talk about female beauty as something that may destroy cities and ruin whole countries.

men are caught in the same system. all compete to reach the power, but half of them or more obly do it because it's expected of them. by women and other men.

i'd love to see the system broken, but it's hard to fight insticts which have been selected though thousands of years.
we may get somewhere if more gender atypical people breed.

i do believe some in biology... my favorite teacher in the school where i work, a serious former scientist, says that all men are the same when it comes to chasing power and oppressing others together. she could agree that there may be individuals who don't follow this norm, when i said this would be caused by differing brain structure.

i'd rather listen to her than most sociologists. i've observed people and animals enough to believe that we are nothing but mammals in most aspects.