Re girls only

Maybe the 'agender' was due to not having the old-style male stereotypical content, and yet not being atracted enough to the stereotypical female ones.

OK, gibberish typing from me at a close.

Until the next message, obv.

in the past, 'masculine traits' seemed confined to Football, Beer and leering at 'birds' whereas fem traits were babies, fashion and so on.

Actually, whether gay or straight, the whole "Hunters" vs "Gatherers" was more accurate wrt male/female aspects, so I have found.

A lot of advanced, useful analysis here.

For the life of me I can't figure out why someone would be more likely to claim to be "agender" (I suppose that's supposed to be a reference to me? It's wrong, thanks) if they are more likely to be deemed to be the "default gender" (whatever that means) or if their speech is impugned (or sought to be silenced) because of their gender.

What you're saying is, "I can't understand why anyone in a position of power would give up power!". I can imagine lots and lots of reasons for not wanting un-"earned" power (as much as gendered power is earned, which it isns't) if it means identifying with something you don't feel similar to, or don't want the repercussions of.

What you're saying is, "I can't understand why anyone in a position of power would give up power!"

I don't really understand your response. Perhaps it helps to understand that my post dripped with I thought obvious sarcasm?

xpost (up 2) should I automatically assume sarcasm there?

Or is that your way of saying I'm in over my head with regard this subject, and be quiet and listen?

You might want to work on that obvious sarcasm thing.

xp

I've known a few people who perfected the art of sarcasm.

And you know what? They got everything they ever wanted in life.

Um, wow. That was unexpected. (~sarcasm~) I was actually talking about a group of women on that minority sexuality forum that I mentioned briefly above, but as usual INTERRUPTINGCOW has decided it is all about him, and is going to moo all over the joke. I mean thread.

In a funny way, this bears out what I was saying about the "hunters/gatherers" thing. Some may well see a series of thoughts and information, and some might look for one conclusion, see none, and decide there's nothing to see.

Et Set.

Damn! Am offline for a couple days and don't even know where to start reading. You've been busy!

I don't really find "hunters" vs "gatherers" to be a particularly useful dichotomy when trying to address "masculine" vs "feminine" because, well, actual studies of genuine hunter-gatherer societies (as opposed to cossetted academics ~imagining~ hunter-gatherer societies from the safety of their post-industrial homes) has shown that it's by no means simple or clear cut. Also, hugely cultural, and changes, society to society.

Also, dichotomies in general are just *unhelpful* because most lifestyles and indeed most *people* involve a mixture of *BOTH*.

I'm mostly wondering if this "agender" tag is a useful thing to try on myself, despite my horror of labels. But I just don't think it's a realistic demand. I just find it really interesting that it's predominantly women who label themselves that way. (Because, really, all a man has to do to be considered "gender: default" is to not be overtly feminine.)

What I would like is the *freedom* to be able to operate in a default mode without gender, where my gender isn't even a salient issue. But I don't think that's Agender, that's just Male Privilege. But I don't want to be ~a man~ (though it would be *interesting* to be a man for a day or two, just to see how it all works) I just want to operate in a sphere where gender (either or any gender!) is not the first thing anyone sees. Which is I guess impossible.

There are more new women hunters each year than male hunters these days, from what I've heard.

I guess I'm just fascinated by this 'agender' thing that these women are exploring, even if I'm not sure I could ever apply it to myself.

(Kind of in the same way that I am *fascinated* by lesbians but was p hopeless at being one myself.)

There are more new women hunters each year than male hunters these days, from what I've heard.

What about grabblers?

http://cbswycd.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/miranda_buck-e1288260433120.jpg?w=385

Well, of course no definition/dichotomy ever works 100% of the time.

It's more that when a male decides to transgender towards becoming female, they have to live 'as' for a year before any operation is offered. So they do 'lessons' in walking 'right', and so on.

Is this reinforcing the cliche?

FT, what are the implications of the 'agender' term? If you start w/ Butler, gender always exists whether it is explicitly masculine, feminine, genderqueer, etc. There's no getting away from it since there's not way of getting away from cultural mediation/construction. Is agender refuting both traditional performances of gender AND the idea of gender itself? If you're agender are you making a claim of a-culturality? Does agender have anything to do with an absence of affect?

Mordy, those are all really great questions and I'll try to think of a non-confrontational way of asking these people if they have personal answers to them.

I have asked a couple of times if there is some resource or wiki about agender - there is for Neutrois but that seems a lot more ... hard core for a better word. Like it's actually trying body modification in a similar vein to trans ppl, in order to rid themselves of physical gender. But this agender thing seems to be something which is almost being made up as they go along (that is not a criticism - that's its strength, that it's self defined, not a label that others put on them.)

I like the idea of something that is about resisting stereotypes and saying "these boxes don't apply to us, please take them away" a lot more than I like the idea of having to change one's body. That's just personal, though. I'm fine with my body, I just dislike other people's ideas about what the secondary characteristics of my body *mean*.

Do any of these posters also relate to, or consider themselves asexual, or is this something entirely different?

Well, given that it is a forum dedicated to asexuality, many of them are on the asexual spectrum. But asexuality and agender are absolutely not the same thing at all.

Although there seem to be a much higher proportion of trans, genderqueer and agender ppl in the asexual population than the general population (perhaps because if one is questioning one set of identities it makes sense to also question the other) but they do not appear to be *correlated* much at all - i.e. not all agender ppl are asexual, not all asexual ppl are agender.

So, yeah, it's something different, even though exploring that particular avenue does seem to lead to people also questioning the other.

It's more that when a male decides to transgender towards becoming female, they have to live 'as' for a year before any operation is offered. So they do 'lessons' in walking 'right', and so on.

Is this reinforcing the cliche?

― Too Many Headphones (MarkG oo la showaddywaddy), Thursday, December 29, 2011 3:51 PM (2 hours ago)

i mean, there are various concrete examples of how the idea of gender "variance" consolidates a straight binary understanding of gender. the very regulation of these "transitions" from one to the other is the most obvious example. although trans might be understood as a gender in and of itself, and by that i mean that there are many trans people who self-identify as trans, these same people would be denied treatment unless the goal of a transition is to be a "real" woman or man.

it just seems pretty unhelpful to try to understand why a certain group of people have this desire more so than others. i mean surely we should just work to create a space of openness about gender (which is what that teacher was doing that i was into) rather than trying to account for or explain or i guess diagnose certain ways of performing gender.

The only reason I'm even trying to understand why a certain group of people have a certain identity more so than others is because I'm trying to figure out if it might be a helpful term or descriptor or identity or way of understanding myself.

Like, I am also reading a super-interesting book about recent studies of Sexual Fluidity, and how it looks as if it might be very prevalent in women. And knowing that it is prevalent in women, and knowing that I was born female help me to fit together the pieces of whether that is something which might ~apply~ to me.

I do actually find this helpful for myself. Like "are people who are similar to me, doing this thing as a way of dealing with something that *I* find difficult" - anything beyond that is I guess problematic bullshit theorisation and I should leave it off. But trying to find out more about this thing to see if it fits me, I find that helpful.

It probably doesn't fit, nothing ever does, but I don't think it's unhelpful for me to try to explore it.

Girls thread cont.

Kind of an unfortunate thread title

cuntinued

Lady, Love Your Cont.

a friend of mine:
http://www.kveller.com/blog/parenting/the-c-word/

Alright, I've never heard that Essentially, the point of that book was that the word “cunt” used to be an honorific term for the female ruler of a country before and if true, it's awesome, but also kinda sad. Because it can just join the long list of terms (see Dale Spender) of female-specific words that started off neutral (or part of a pair like master/mistress or courtier/courtesan) but they got turned into sexual slurs basically.

I think in that case it's a very fortunate thread title.

the future of the word actress maybe? O:)

I would be interested in seeing documentation of that outside of that guys blog or reblogs of that guys blog.

(just because I searched that book for relevant terms and various permutations in Google books and didn't turn anything up).

page 5 of that book:

"Cunt" is related to words from India, China, Ireland, Rome and Egypt. Such words were either titles of respect for women, priestesses and witches, or derivatives of the names of various goddesses

and then it cites Barbara Walker's The Women's Encylopedia of Myths and Secrets p. 97

The word "actress" has pretty much already been through that kind of degradation in the previous 400 years or so. It's not really until the 20th Century (and I suspect that the Cinema had a lot to do with this) that the word actress *stopped* being a synonym for whore. It p much was for most of the 17th, 18th, 19th Centuries.

There are still a lot of usages where it retains a problematic or unsalubrious connotation ("AMW" or "actress/model/whatever" springs to mind) so it's hardly as if it's just an innocent little word.

How many of the "actress" negative connotations were rooted in the past theatre where men played all roles?

To an earlier point: I think that men who present in some way that is perceived as "feminine" are definitely more attacked than men who fit a traditional masculine role, but those roles are so defined by place, time, and social group that it's easy to be insulted in a way that questions your gender or sexual preference by crossing boundaries.

I mean, woman-on-woman insinuation of homosexuality as a slur isn't unheard of, but it's kind of the go-to insult for man-on-man challenges. It might just be that women are more clever and socially schooled in the "pushing out the social outlier" language and actions, but braindead men will be yelling "faggot" forever.

Well the reason that only men played all the roles was because it was considered shameful or disgusting for women to go onstage at all - so, again, misogyny. The term "actress" meaning woman going onstage only really dates from the 17th century. Actors in general were never considered salubrious but of course only the female of the word pair took on the negative sexual connotation.

There is tons of documentation on this stuff - that Dale Spender book I keep recommending for a start.

I don't even want to get into why slurs involving sexuality are so gendered. As someone who was repeatedly called "lesbian!" (usually by boys not by girls, before any of us were even old enough to have a sexuality) for "inappropriate" gender presentation - that phrase certainly is in the insult repertoire though nowhere near as common. I suspect, again, that the implication is that "being *like* a woman" (I.e. a "fag") is far more shameful to the heteronormative masculine mindset than is *loving* women (even though loving something as shameful and disgusting as women in a misogynist society is still considered pretty vile.)

I'm not sure that homophobia and misogyny can really can really be teased apart in heteronormativity - they are v different things but both come from the same original prejudice and value set. They are usually fellow travellers (tho obv they can appear separately and differently)

(I constantly feel like I'm mansplaining in this thread bcuz I feel like this is such basic entry level feminist discourse - I deeply apologise if I ever come off that way, or appear patronising. I have no formal education in any of this stuff so I constantly worry that ppl w advanced gender studies degrees are totes eyerolling at me.)

I was trying to make a similar point (about the link between homophobia + misogyny) during a discussion on old-ilx about the etymology of the word 'faggot' (in the Louis CK thread re that particular episode). A character on his show had made the claim that the word came from the bundles of sticks used to burn gay men. It seems like the etymology actually comes from a derogatory term for old women (who were imagined to be hunched over carrying bundles of sticks around) which was then transmuted to become a slur for homosexuality. The point being that there is this very strong association between misogyny + homophobia, and often its the former being repossessed for the latter.

forgive my ignorance but what is "mansplaining"

let me google that for you

http://scienceblogs.com/thusspakezuska/2010/01/you_may_be_a_mansplainer_if.php

got it

Ha ha ha <3 Mordy.

And yes, as noted on the girl thread proper, yes it's kind of a misandrist term bcuz 1) not all men are mansplainers and 2) it's not just men that mansplain, also White ppl mansplain to PoC and straight ppl mansplain to queer ppl etc. etc. but no one's come up with a better term for it -it's not just explaining, it's not just explaining RONG but it's explaining RONG across that unique disproportionate gradient of Privilege where the Splainer is convinced they are innately better qualified on account of their engrained, unacknowledged assumption of automatic superiority despite a lack of relevant experience.

(Which is why, when a man calls me a "womansplainer" in a discussion of sexism, I laugh my head off at how badly he is missing the point, and also proving mine at the same time)

Anyway sorry I've been meaning to say something about that for some time coz I just started using the word without ever explaining it.

Also v v good point on "faggot" as insult.

I understand and accept the underlying concept - men are often patronizing toward women - but as with so many neologisms it's reductive and fuzzy. by simply attaching "man" to the neutral verb "explain" the term too easily implies that all men are condescending by nature. or maybe that's the point?

misandrist, ok i googled this one. learning stuff today, which IS the point.

I feel like the blogger's example comment for definition #1 was very on-the-money, actually. Probably doesn't fit within the definition of "mansplaining".

Also, it's a very annoying construction for a word.

men are often patronizing toward women

This is a little reductive, though tbf it is how the term is often used on the internet. Rebecca Solnit's essay "Men Who Explain Things" gets into the problem deeper and more broadly: http://articles.latimes.com/print/2008/apr/13/opinion/op-solnit13.

No no, the point isn't that *all* men are condescending, not at all. The point is that it's a certain kind of condescending which is deeply attached to male privilege.

Like, if one says that "prostate cancer is a male disease" it doesn't mean that all males have it! It means that it's a disease that 99% affects Cis men because of the structure of male anatomy?

(Cis meaning not Trans or intersex, biologically male and gendered male - sorry if this is more terminology bug just in case)

Misandrist = derogatory towards or showing hatred of men as a group. It's what a lot of ppl might call "reverse sexism" except the problem with that is that the term "Sexism" implies not just hatred of women (misogyny) but also a systematic and structural inequality that goes beyond individual prejudice. I know, it's complicated. Learning is good! :)