myurbandream reblogged
Here’s something to chew on.
myurbandream reblogged
The Canadian Senate has passed an amendment to a transgender rights bill that would ban trans people from using the bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. Now, trans people in Canada (and their trans supporters in the United States) are sharing photos on Twitter and Facebook of themselves in public bathrooms they would be legally obligated to use under Senator Donald Plett’s bill. Check the hashtags #PlettPutMeHere and #WeJustNeedToPee for a dynamite collection of trans folks showing why these laws are absurd. Badass. (via BuzzFeed)
I have a right not to see a penis in the ladies room. Men have a right not to see a lack of a penis in a men’s room. I have a right to my opinion. It doesn’t make me a homophobe. It does not make me intolerant. It does not make me a bad person. Your gender issues are not my issues. Maybe we as a society need a third option.
If you’re seeing a penis in the women’s room, sorry to break it to you buddy but you’re the one being gross and peeping in on other women.
Trans people just want to fucking pee. The fact that you’re so concerned about our genitals that you’d spy on us in the loo makes YOU the creep, not us.
Grow the fuck up.
How would you even see the genitals of someone in a women’s restroom? There aren’t urinals; all the stalls are individualized. You’d have to be actively *trying* to look through the cracks in a closed stall door in order to see anyone’s bits. Is…is that what you’ve been doing?? o.O If so, are you then totally cool if the person in question doesn’t have a penis any more? The presence of a penis is all you’re concerned about? That’s the sole start and end of your issue? Because I suspect it’s not, given that the legislation in question is based on one’s gender assigned at birth, NOT whether or not they’ve chosen to medically transition. And someone who doesn’t have a penis isn’t going to be trying to be using a urinal in a men’s room. They’re going to be using a stall to do all their business as well. And if they’ve got one, then no man is going to be seeing a (gasp) vulva when they don’t want to. Unless they’re *peeking into the stalls* like you do. Would you want someone peeking into your stall to see what’s between your legs? Because that seems to be the exact kind of world you’re advocating for, and that seems far, far more creepy than just letting people pee in peace.
myurbandream reblogged
myurbandream reblogged
This is utter and absolute bullshit and Caster Semenya and all the other women who will find themselves in her position in the future due to this absurd, discriminatory ruling deserve so much better. I am so angry and so sad for her.
myurbandream reblogged
i WAS SO INTRIGUED BY THAT LIONESS THAT I HAD TO LOOK UP MORE INFO ON HER AND I AM NOT DISAPPOINTED
rubyfruitjumble
I love this butch lioness
myurbandream reblogged
in light of the recent, disturbing trends i’ve seen growing on tumblr and elsewhere lately, i’d like to clarify a few things about butchness as an identity, a concept, and a subject worthy of respect.
butch is a lesbian identity historically defined by aspects of presentation, behavior, and self-perception. it has its roots (at least in america) around world war ii, where thousands of women took on stereotypically masculine jobs in the women’s army corps, becoming welders, truck drivers, and more confident in breaking from feminine ideals. it emerged as a coherent idea within lesbianism around the forties when the lesbian bar scene took off and saw its heyday in the fifties and sixties, where butches learned from each other how to dress, act, woo femmes, and carry themselves and their brave identities with self-assurance and pride. since then, it has grown and changed alongside lesbian culture and gender perceptions, surfacing a little differently every decade.
butch is an intriguing and gorgeous gem from lesbian history (and lgbt history as a whole). lgbt individuals have forever sought ways to express their desires and identities outside of society’s stringent gender-based norms. masculinity, in particular, has been closely guarded, held holy, and a means of oppression. women who had nothing to do with men whatsoever — women hated by men as a whole — forged their own rules and roles and lifestyles from the ashes of men’s pride, with utter indifference towards that which men held dear.
butch is outside of the common perception of gender. it stands against the idea that gender identity and presentation must be thought of as completely distinct — and also allows that gender identity and presentation be held distinct and at odds with one another. there are butches who affirm themselves completely as women and butchness as an integral part of their womanhood, in opposition with the standards of femininity imposed upon women everywhere. there are butches who identify personally and intimately with the androgyny and gender nonconformity that butch presentation necessitates, and might go by he/his pronouns or have their children call them “dad” without being any less lesbian, any less butch. these are both completely valid and acceptable ways of being butch.
butch is not maleness or male privilege. butches are not men. masculine presentation does not a man make. butch is by necessity lesbian, and lesbianism by its very existence has everything to do with women and nothing to do with men. butch is complex, challenging, and diverse, and requires nuance in consideration and analysis. this is not something to hate. this is not something to fear. it is something to wonder at, to appreciate, to learn from.
butch is not evil. is not ugly, unless a butch would like to reclaim the ugliness that society’s spite has thrust upon her. is not oppressive. is not something to be conflated with maleness, whether cis or trans.
butch is beautiful. is handsome. is brave. is enduring. is revolutionary. is significant, both historically and for today. is magnificent. is admirable. is strong.
butch hatred is not the hatred of men or the hatred of some ridiculous, universally oppressive “masculinity.” butch hatred is hatred directed towards women and, furthermore, lesbians. butch hatred is the hatred of lesbians who have been a significant part of the backbone of lesbian culture as long as lesbian culture has existed. the women hated foremost in the twenties were those who wore pants. the women labeled as “gender inverts” for their posture, confident stance, and preference for “men’s activities” in the late nineteenth century wrote the first books women like them could turn to for stories of women’s love for women, for women not acting the way women ought to. (see the well of loneliness by radclyffe hall.)
butches are not privileged for their butchness. butches are widely disadvantaged and punished for their gender nonconformity. the fact that we live in a day and age where some people — some lesbians, even — are so isolated from actual gender dynamics that they would believe that women can get goodies from society for not acting “like women” is completely, wickedly mind-boggling.
stop with “masculine privilege.” stop with “butch privilege.” stop with “femme oppression,” which is a post for another day. the hatred of butches is frankly inexcusable and deeply shameful. you are better than this, and butches deserve far, far more than the spite and ignorance you show them.
this post is wholly inclusive of trans butches.
myurbandream reblogged
DIVORCE HIM
Our society has a number of loveable buffoons who fool around and are excused from acting like prats because they’re funny. They might be rubbish at most things but as long as their banter is flowing, we put up with it.
These types are almost exclusively men. You don’t get hilarious, idiotic women being lorded as icons of our culture. Diane Abbott is dismissed as a cretin while Boris Johnson is a joker.
Which begs the question: is conscious male incompetence a form of misogyny?
If you labour the point that you can’t cook, then chances are that you won’t be made to cook. If you make a hash out of doing the laundry or hoovering, you’re forcing someone else to take over.
Few have the patience to watch someone do a job badly over and over again and so often, they’ll just take it upon themselves to do your chores as well as their own. Emotional labour is doubled when you’ve got an incompetent clown on your hands.
I was recently listening Semi Circles, a BBC radio comedy starring Paula Wilcox, first broadcast in 1989.
It’s about a housewife who recently wakes up to the fact that she’s spent the past eight years being a slave to her kids and nice-but-emotionally-dim husband.
Part of this awakening is the realisation that she does all the housework because her husband is crap at it. Left alone, he makes inedible food. He lets the kids stay up well beyond their bedtime. He leaves the house a tip.
He doesn’t even try to do a good job because he fears that if he’s too good at these jobs, his wife will make him do more of them.
Put these garbage men in the garbage where they belong.
I went and checked the original source and it’s worse. While most of the comments get the problem (the lying, not the eggs) some of them just cannot see that this shit is actually a big honking warning sign for bigger shit. A loving person is not capable of doing this.
He literally puts his mere convenience over her actual well being. This guy thought up and executed a plan where she has to do *all* the work (because of course it wasn’t just this one specific thing) while he watches her tire herself out from the sidelines. Imagine this going on for *years*. …now imagine this with kids. You think this guy cares if she gets off during sex? Would he take care of her if she were to get sick? Would he ever lift a finger if he could get away not doing it?
She can’t trust a word he says and he doesn’t give a shit about her needs. It’s not about the *eggs*.
Sorry to reblog from you, stranger, but this commentary is all very good. I especially appreciate the emphasized statement that “a loving person is not capable of doing this.” That line is going to rattle around my brain for ages — the words feel good in my mouth. How you’ve said it is just so right.
I want to add some of OP’s further comments on the thread she made:
“To be fair, I have pretty high standards for cleanliness and his idea of clean vastly differs from mine and honestly, that’s okay! But now I’m starting to seriously wonder if he sabotaged cleaning, too, just to get me to do it. Dishes, for instance. He will wash half and leave a nasty sink full of the rest, claiming he’ll do them later. This drives me nuts, so I just do them. Often he will leave crusted on shit on then, too, so okay, I’ll just do them, right? Now because of the egg business, I’m seeing it as malicious.”
→ The husband is lazy. He seemingly commits to housework, only to bail partway through, and doesn’t even put in the effort required to do the job right in the first place.
“Yes, he sucks at dishes and laundry to the point he is banned from doing them. He will leave clothes in the washer overnight and doesnt separate anything to the point I’ve had many white clothes ruined. My favorite white brassiere is now pink due to his bullshit.”
→ The husband is inconsiderate of his wife’s property, even that which is well-loved. Could his repeated failure to learn how to do this task have been a ruse? Did he anticipate his banishment from laundry duty? OP now has to genuinely wonder about this.
“I’m starting to think he does things wrong on purpose now just to get me to do it. Another example! My car. For a while my driver side door wouldn’t open from the outside, so I had to crawl through the passenger side. He ordered a handle and kept putting it off for WEEKS. Finally, he says his hands are too big to do it, so I had to do it.”
→ The husband makes excuses for himself that cast him as an unwitting victim to fate, with the implication that he would totally do [action], if only he could. He distances himself from any possibility of blame.
Obviously, anonymous forum posts are taken with a grain of salt — we, as readers, will never know for sure if OP is real. That’s not a concern for me, though. Like I don’t care. The fact is that if one assumes this is all true, it is very obvious that the poster’s husband is a perfect example of maliciously feigned incompetence. He’s manipulative and lazy to the point of cruelty, expecting his wife to work while he fails to lift a single functioning finger. The statement that “he likes her eggs better” isn’t cute like some have stated in the replies to this post; it’s just another excuse that walls him off from criticism, a bullshit reason he pulled out of his ass to make her feel guilty and unreasonable for being upset.
The absurdity of the situation when taken at face value — lying about eggs, getting mad about making eggs, even just the reality of deviled eggs (an inherently silly prep style) being someone’s favorite food — extends an air of the absurd to the wife’s concerns, and to others’ warnings. I have noticed several comments to the tune of, “These people are all mad about eggs? What a joke! How oversensitive. That’s just how men are; this is just what marriage looks like.”
It’s fucked up, is what it is.
…deviled egg lady, if you’re truly out there somewhere, I hope you told your husband to make his own goddamn eggs from now on. It’s literally the least he can do.
@manthedog
“It’s literally the least he can do.”
we all just witnessed a fucking murder and it was beautiful.
Real talk time, folks:
If your partner (I am deliberately not using gendered words here), frequently and unashamedly feigns ignorance or incompetence to get out of tasks that affect both of you, warn the asshole once, warn them twice, and then dump the lazy freeloader.
Even someone who is legitimately bad at something can become moderately good at it, if they put some effort in, especially if it is important daily life tasks like cooking, cleaning and laundry.
For example: say your partner can’t cook. Not even something simple like pasta with tomato sauce. They never remember how much salt and pepper to put in that tomato sauce and they always forget that they have the pasta on the stove and then the entire thing burns. Well guess what? That’s what we invented cook books and recipes and egg timers for. Write that shit down (which ingredients, how much, how long, which temperature, etc.), then show them how it is done, and show them how to set the timer on their fucking phone, because I guaran-goddamn-tee you that every modern phone comes with a timer function. Show them how to do it once. Show them how to do it twice. If they still fuck it up the third time, you either have someone on your hands who cannot read (in which case, wow, great trust they have in you, their partner, that they don’t even tell you about that) or who just can’t be bothered to follow step by step instructions that were neatly laid out for them.
Your time is too precious to waste it on constantly babysitting your partner. A relationship should never be unilateral. It’s a team effort. And within a team, everyone has to pull their weight. If they can’t work with you, they are working against you.
deathspeaker
Like, I know how to do laundry, I know about separating things out, how different settings should be used etc. but I dump my load into the washer and ignore all that.
But it’s my clothes. And only my clothes. I don’t care if the colors run.
I would NEVER do that to my partner’s clothes. I don’t do that for my father’s clothes when I do his laundry (which is uncommon he usually does his own).
Weaponized ignorance/the bumbling man trope needs to fucking die. This shit is EASY. They just don’t want to do the work so they dump the effort onto their partners. It’s horrid.
1nkblots
One of my psychology professors actually talked about this in the context of her own husband and how she dealt with it, which was namely: don’t let your partner get away with not doing basic housework just because they’re “bad” at it. All you’re doing is teaching them that incompetence (genuine or not) is rewarded, and reinforcing that behaviour.
When she saw that he (genuinely or not) had no idea how to properly wash dishes, she showed him how to do it, then she stood beside him and talked him through doing it, then she watched him do it on his own.
When he fucked up the dishes again while unsupervised, she went through the whole process again - “here I’ll show you, now you do it while I watch”
She never got mad at him, or yelled, or did anything where she could be accused of overreacting or being dramatic, just acted every time like she was teaching a child how to do these things for the first time. And after two or three rounds of this, he would start doing chores properly while unsupervised, either because (a) he now actually knew how to do them properly, or (b) (more likely) he’d realized that feigning incompetence would not get him out of housework, and he’d have to go through the humiliating experience of being taught how to do it again every time he fucked it up. And eventually he stopped the “feigning incompetence” thing altogether and started asking for help if he couldn’t do something instead of just not doing it.
(of course, I completely understand if someone doesn’t want to go through this process and just dumps their partner’s ass for being an asshole, and it’s not always going to work if they’re determined/malicious about it rather than just doing what they’ve always done, but this is one way to deal with it)
I mean ideally if someone is really bad at something or hates doing something, maybe one partner keeps doing it and the other partner does something else in turn. But the problem with these bumbling “I’m just bad at any inconvenient chores” dudes is that they do this across the board. They’re not going to go out of their way to do something nice because one partner is lifting the devilled egg reponsibility on their own. My ex boyfriend told me for fucking MONTHS he was going to paint a section of the kitchen wall. FUCKING MONTHS. When he finally did it (cause I was suuuuuch a naggy bitch) it took 20 minutes. If someone universally can not make an effort for their partner, whether it be laundry or remembering their preferences or common courtesy, it’s a sign that they don’t care. And yes, I am fully aware that there are mental health issues to make that harder, I have plenty of them. So I will probably forget important names and dates, and that sucks, and I won’t enjoy getting up early with you either, but I’m very happy to do all the dishes or set out tea things the night before when I am still awake and you’re sleeping, even if I don’t wake up when you do. Affection really is in the little things, and it’s so disgusting how women are constantly berated for being “over emotional” or “blowing things out of proportion if they point out a small thing that is a symptom of a much bigger problem.
Women should not have to train their partners to do basic shit. There is a pervasive expectation that it’s a woman’s job to either a) do ALL the housework/emotional work/kinship work and/or b) train the men in their lives to do it, often while the men purposefully refuse to pay attention or retain the information. And it’s misogyny.
Men are capable of figuring shit out on their own, especially in the era of YouTube tutorials and wikihow shit. Their incompetence in the face of these resources is deliberate. They are deliberately choosing not to learn to do work that they know they can get the women in their lives to do.
That’s not women’s responsibility. Women should not be expected to keep track of all the household chores and assign some to their partner in the first place – men are capable of noticing when dishes need to be done or floors need to be swept. And women should especially not be expected to train the men in their lives in the details of how to do that work.
Men need to step the fuck up and take classes or do some googling to make sure they know how to do their share of household work. If they don’t, they’re choosing not to.
myurbandream reblogged
Also have you noticed the traditional skills that men are supposed to have are mostly all things that only come up for specific situations, like changing a tire when the tire goes out, fixing the house when it needs to be fixed, fixing the car when it won’t work, and the traditional skills expected of women are things that have to be done everyday and always, like doing the dishes, cooking, and taking care of children.
Men’s work is a solution to a problem and when it’s done it’s done. Women’s work is a never-ending tide of tasks that must be accomplished every day.
And the practical result of this is that when a woman doesn’t know how to change a tire or un-clog a pipe, she’s belittled for this apparently gaping chasm in her knowledge, despite the fact that you can go years on end without encountering some of these supposedly-essential skills - while (traditionally) nothing is ever said of men who can’t cook or don’t know how to clean their own clothes, despite having been fully immersed in both since their first day on this earth.
myurbandream reblogged
I want someone to explain to me this…
How are there more than just two genders? How is it that gender is different from sex? Why would you consider gender to be a social construct? How is gender a spectrum? Why do you feel the need to disassociate gender and sex when biologist have already proved that gender and sex are the same thing?
Personally speaking, I don’t understand why anyone would want to try and push gender identity shit down other people’s throats in the most radical way possible, but it’s fucking annoying as hell. To think that you know better than what biologist have studied for years makes me question your intelligence.
Here’s some food for thought people:
XX chromosomes = Female XY chromosomes = Male
Penis = Male Vagina = Female
Testosterone = Male Estrogen + Progesterone = Female
Gender = Sex
Until you can come up with a reason as to why gender isn’t biological and why I’m a piece of shit for not believing your bullshit, then please stop trying to change around shit just because you hate to hear the opposing voice and accept the facts as they are.
This is an open response to those who believe in the multiple genders/gender spectrum bullshit.
emo420
oh boy, you’re in for a hell of a ride. and don’t worry, there will a TL;DR at the bottom of this post just in case you’re too lazy to read or are simply unwilling to have your ignorant worldview dismantled by actual concrete facts.
but first, let’s look into the social construction of the gender binary and gender itself.
the narrow-minded idea that there are only two genders has been continuously debunked by biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and doctors alike, first of all. second, gender and sex aren’t necessarily the same thing, but they are both the same in the sense that they are both social constructs made to describe natural phenomenon, not actually based in any scientific reality. much like the concept of species; it’s a model, and no model is an actuality—then it would not be a model, it would be a fact.
simply put, gender is only your sense of, and internal mental relationship to masculinity, femininity, and androgyny, which can be expressed through words, behavior, or clothes. in other words, it is simply an intimate and personal sense of self in relation to gender, gender roles, and one’s physical body. it does not actually have anything to do with biology—even less so than sex. reproductive organs are not related whatsoever with gender. sure, it’s typical for the majority of people to identify with a gender that’s associated with their genitals, but that doesn’t mean it’s normal. the majority doesn’t outweigh the minority, and isn’t any more significant than them. the majority of people are straight, but that doesn’t mean gay people are abnormal, it means they’re less common. much is the same with people whose gender does not match the gender they were assigned at birth. suggesting your gender relies solely on your genitals is also very harmful for people who are intersex. ultimately, your gender is in your head and it is mutually exclusive from your genitals or any other attribute of the physical body. there is truly no scientific, biological, or medical basis for any sort of binary system of gender, and in fact the gender binary completely contradicts the laws of natural variation.
The Yogyakarta Principles on The Application of International Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity further elaborates on the definition of gender to be “each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means) and other expressions of gender, including dress, speech and mannerisms.” the principle 3 of this document reads as follows: “A person of diverse sexual orientation and gender identities shall enjoy legal capacity in all aspects of life. Each person’s self-defined sexual orientation and gender identity is integral to their personality and is one of the most basic aspects of self-determination, dignity and freedom”.
citations from other works of literature:
• Wendy Wood, “Gender: An Interdisciplinary Perspective” (2010) - “Sociological explanations, in turn, often fail to recognize that gender beliefs are influenced by individual-level factors. For example, people differ in the extent to which they hold gender identities, or personally identify with a sex category. Although identities often reflect categories of male or female, they also may include alternatives (e.g., intersex, transgender). The specific content of gender identities can include communal or agentic personality attributes, gender-typed interests and occupations, or gendered ways of relating to others. Men and women act in gendered ways as they regulate their behavior in line with a valued gender identity. Thus, people may do gender because it enhances their self-esteem and positive feelings.” (p.g. 337)
• Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1990)
- “If gender is the cultural meanings that the sexed body assumes, then a gender cannot be said to follow from a sex in any one way. Taken to its logical limit, the sex/gender distinction suggests a radical discontinuity between sexed bodies and culturally constructed genders. Assuming for the moment the stability of binary sex, it does not follow that the construction of ‘men’ will accrue exclusively to the bodies of males or that ‘women’ will interpret only female bodies. Further, even if the sexes appear to be unproblematically binary in their morphology and constitution (which will become a question), there is no reason to assume that genders ought also to remain as two. The presumption of a binary gender system implicitly retains the belief in a mimetic relation of gender to sex whereby gender mirrors sex or is otherwise restricted by it. When the constructed status of gender is theorized as radically independent of sex, gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one.” (p.g. 10)
• Gerald N. Callahan, Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of Two Sexes (2009)
- “We understand that gender—the ways that society molds us into proper girls or boys, men or women—is complicated. Gender depends on lots of things—upbringing, culture,the stories fed to us by television and movies, hormones, and power struggles.” (p.g. x-xi)
- “…there is a naivete about the way we ignore the fact that some people don’t fit neatly into the either-or of gender. I believe that gender is rather a continuum than an either-or proposition.” (p.g. 108)
• Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (2000)
- “All of which brings me back to the five sexes. I imagine a future in which our knowledge of the body has led to resistance against medical surveillance, in which medical science has been placed at the service of gender variability, and genders have multiplied beyond currently fathomable limits. Suzanne Kessler suggests that ‘gender variability can… be seen… in a new way—as an expansion of what is meant by male and female.’ Ultimately, perhaps, concepts of masculinity and femininity might overlap so completely as to render the very notion of gender difference irrelevant.” (p.g. 101)
- “Given the discrimination and violence faced by those whose cultural and physical genitals don’t match, legal protections are needed during the transition to a gender-diverse utopia. It would help to eliminate the ‘gender’ category from licenses, passports, and the like. The transgender activist Leslie Feinberg writes: ‘Sex categories should be removed from all basic identification papers—from driver’s licenses to passports—and since the right of each person to define their own sex is so basic, it should be eliminated from birth certificates as well.’ Indeed, why are physical genitals necessary for identification? Surely attributes both more visible (such as height, build, and eye color) and less visible (fingerprints and DNA profiles) would be of greater use. Transgender activists have written ‘An International Bill of Gender Rights’ that includes (among ten gender rights) ‘the right to define gender identity, the right to control and change one’s own body, the right to sexual expression and the right to form committed, loving relationships and enter into marital contracts.’” (p.g. 111)
there are no limitations on who you are, how you feel, or what identity you construct for yourself, therefore people can and do construct more gender than the two traditional ones, and all of them are valid. plus, the simple fact that some people don’t identify as one of the two binary genders is proof that there are other genders. if someone identifies are nonbinary, then nonbinary people exist. it’s that simple. even if that’s just one person, it exists in society, ergo it is.
now this is a fun one; let’s move on to the social construction of “biological” sex.
even if gender was the exact same thing as sex, it still would be neither binary nor a scientific absolute. in her novel Sexing the Body, Anne Fausto-Sterling explains that there are 5 specific measures of “biological sex” according to modern medical science:
1. chromosomes (male: XY, female: XX)
2. genitalia (male: penis, female vulva and vagina)
3. gonads (male: testes, female: ovaries)
4. hormones (male: high testosterone, low estrogen, low progesterone; female: high estrogen, high progesterone, low testosterone)
5. secondary sex characteristics (male: large amounts of dark, thick, coarse body hair, noticeable facial hair, low waist to hip ratio, no noticeable breast development; female: fine, light colored body hair, no noticeable facial hair, high waist to hip ratio, noticeable breast development)
in real life, very few people actually match up with all five categories. estimates by the intersex society of north america notes the frequency and prevalence of intersex conditions, and puts the total rate of human bodies that “differ from standard male or female” at around one in 100, while anne fausto-sterling estimates that 1.7% of the population do not fall within the usual sex classifications. however, both of these estimations are somewhat outdated, so it could easily be a much higher percentage.
there are people out there with XY chromosomes, testes, a vulva, a vagina, “female” secondary sex characteristics, and “male” hormone patterns; people with XX chromosomes, testes, a penis, “male” secondary characteristics and “female” hormone patterns, and there are even people with both “male” and “female” secondary sex characteristics or hormone patterns at the same time, regardless of their genes, gonads, or genitalia. now, these people are technically intersex assuming that the two sex system is absolutely true. however, in order for the binary to even be considered real, every single person on earth must completely match up on all 5 markers of sex all the time. that’s not what happens in real life. in real life, literally tens, if not hundreds of MILLIONS of people have bodies that are contrary to the biological concept of the two sex system.
let’s look further into Fausto-Sterling’s book and consider the case of the athlete maria patiño. patiño has “female” genetalia, and she has always considered herself to be female and was considered so by others. however, she was discovered to have XY chromosomes and was barred from competing in women’s sports. patiño’s genitalia were at odds with her chromosomes and the latter were taken to determine her sex, and she successfully fought to be recognized as a female athlete, arguing that her chromosomes alone were not sufficient enough to not make her female. intersex people like patiño illustrate that our understandings of sex differ and suggest that there is no immediately obvious way to settle what sex amounts to purely biologically or scientifically. deciding what sex is involves evaluative judgements that are influenced by social factors.
the only thing in your body that has a “biological sex” in any sense is your gametes, which some people don’t even produce, which your body can easily stop producing, and which are a very minuscule part of the rest of your body. the rest of your body, including your genitals, has no “biological sex”.
citations from other works of literature:
• Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (2000)
- “Consider Angela Moreno’s more recent tale. In 1985, when she was twelve years old, her clitoris grew to a length of 1.5 inches. Having nothing to compare this to, she thought she was normal. But her mother noticed and with alarm hauled her off to a doctor who told her she had ovarian cancer and needed a hysterectomy. Her parents told her that no matter what, she would still be their little girl. When she awoke from surgery, however, her clitoris was gone. Not until she was twenty-three did she find out she was XY and had had testes, not ovaries. She never had cancer. Today Moreno has become an ISNA activist and credits ISNA with helping her heal psychologically from the damage done by lies and surgery.” (p.g. 84)
- “We stand now at a fork in the road. To the right we can walk toward reaffirmation of the naturalness of the number 2 and continue to develop new medical technology, including gene ‘therapy’ and new prenatal interventions to ensure the birth of only two sexes. To the left, we can hike up the hill of natural and cultural variability. Traditionally, in European and American culture we have defined two genders, each with a range of permissible behaviors; but things have begun to change. There are househusbands and women fighter pilots. There are feminine lesbians and gay men both buff and butch. [Transgender people] render the sex/gender divide virtually unintelligible.” (p.g. 101)
- “Because of their loyalty to a two-gender system, some scientists resisted the implications of new experiments that produced increasingly contradictory evidence about the uniqueness of male and female hormones. Frank, for example, puzzling at his ability to isolate female hormone from ‘the bodies of males whose masculine characteristics and ability to impregnate females is unquestioned,’ finally decided that the answer lay in contrary hormones found in the bile. Others suggested that the finding of adrenal sex hormones could ‘save’ the hypothesis of separate sex-hormonal spheres.” (p.g. 191)
- “But scientists are a diverse lot, and not everyone responded to the new results by trying to fit them into the dominant gender system. Parkes, for example, acknowledged the finding of androgen and estrogen production by the adrenal glands as ‘a final blow to any clear-cut idea of sexuality.’ Others wondered about the very concept of sex. In a review of the 1932 edition of Sex and Internal Secretions, the British endocrinologist F. A. E. Crew went even further, asking ‘Is sex imaginary?… It is the case,’ he wrote, ‘that the philosophical basis of modern sex research has always been extraordinarily poor, and it can be said that the American workers have done more than the rest of us in destroying the faith in the existence of the very thing that we attempt to analyze.’” (p.g. 191-192) {
• Anne Fausto-Sterling, “The Sex/Gender Perplex” (2000)
- “Deciding whether to call a child a boy or a girl, then, employs social definitions of the essential components of gender. Such definitions, as Suzanne Kessler observes, are primarily cultural, rather than biological. Consider, as another example of this claim, problems caused by introducing European and American medical approaches into cultures with different systems of gender. For example, a group of physicians from Saudi Arabia recently reported on several cases of XX intersex children with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), a genetically inherited malfunction of enzymes which aid in making steroid hormones. Despite having two X chromosomes, some CAH children are born with highly masculinized genitalia and are initially identified as males.” (p.g. 643)
• Judith Lorber, Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology; Gender and Society, Vol. 7, No. 4 (1993)
- “…bodies differ in many ways physiologically, but they are completely transformed by social practices to fit into the salient categories of a society, the most pervasive of which are ‘female’ and ‘male’ and ‘women’ and ‘men.’” (p.g. 569)
• Lisa Adkins, Sex in Question: French Materialist Feminism (1996)
-“One of the most important developments in early 1990s’ anglophone feminist theory is seen to be the destabilisation of the apparent orthodoxy regarding the relationship between sex and gender. It is no longer assumed that sex is a ‘natural’ or ‘biological’ category, with gender a social or cultural construction somehow imposed on top of it. ‘Sex’ is increasingly recognised as a sociohistorical product, rather than a fixed, transhistorical, or taken-for-granted category.” (p.g. 15)
- “… that the division of society into two sexes is the product, and not the cause, of oppression; that ‘sex’ is a political category and there would be no ‘sex’ without oppression; and that heterosexuality is of central importance in defining the sexes as natural, different and complementary.” (p.g. 16)
• Maria Lugones, “The Coloniality of Gender” (2008)
- “Despite [countless] anthropological and medical studies to the contrary, society presumes an unambiguous binary sex paradigm in which all individuals can be classified neatly as male or female.” (p.g. 6)
• Sarah Richardson, “Sexing the X: How the X Became the ‘Female Chromosome’” (2012)
- “…the human X chromosome carries a large collection of male sperm genes.” (p.g. 909)
- “Currently, there is a broad popular, scientific, and medical conception of the X chromosome as the mediator of the differences between males and females, as the carrier of female-specific traits, or otherwise as a substrate of femaleness… associations between the X and femaleness are the accumulated product of contingent historical and material processes and events, and they are inflected by beliefs rooted in gender ideology.” (p.g. 927)
• Gerald N. Callahan, Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of Two Sexes (2009)
- “In truth, humans come in an amazing number of forms, because human development, including human sexual development, is not an either/or proposition. Instead, between “either” and “or” there is an entire spectrum of possibilities. Some people come into this world with a vagina and testes. Others begin their lives as girls but at puberty become boys. Though we’ve been told that Y chromosomes make boys, there are women in this world with Y chromosomes, and there are men without Y chromosomes. Beyond that, there are people who have only a single unpaired X chromosome. There are also people who are XXY, XXXY, or XXXXY…There are babies born with XYY, XXX, or any of a dozen or more other known variations involving X or Y chromosomes. We humans are a diverse lot.” (p.g. xi-xii)
- “Nondisjunction can happen with any chromosome, including the sex chromosomes X and Y. A single sperm or egg may end up with two, three, or more X chromosomes, and a single sperm may hold more than one Y chromosome. In truth, sperm and eggs come in variety packs. If that alone isn’t enough to derail the simple XX/XY, female/male idea, a mystery known as anaphase lag can also cause developing sperm or ova to lose an X or a Y chromosome along the way. And even after fertilization, sex chromosomes can be lost or gained. And even among men with the normal 46,XY karyotype, the size of the Y chromosome can vary. That means that my Y chromosome might be three times the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Y chromosome. Here certainly, quantity matters; perhaps size does as well. The end product is a panoply of possible sexes by any definition, an array of human beings as grand and as varietal as the fragrances of flowers: 45,X; 47,XXX; 48,XXXX; 49,XXXXX; 47,XYY; 47,XXY; 48,XXXY; 49,XXXXY; and 49,XXXYY.” (p.g. 62)
- “Intersex people are not a few freakish, unfortunate outliers. They are instead the most complete demonstration of our humanity… We, as a society, are very hard on people who don’t fit out preconceptions, especially our preconceptions about sex. What intersex people have shown us is the truth about all of us. There are infinite chemical and cellular pathways to becoming human. […] Sex isn’t a switch we can easily flip between two poles. Between those two imaginary poles lies an infinite number of possibilities.” (p.g. 163)
• Anonymous Author, “The Problematic Ideology of Natural Sex” (2016)
- “Around the world, over the past four or five hundred years, people have been cajoled, threatened, forcibly re-educated, beaten, imprisoned, locked in mental hospitals, put in the stocks, publicly humiliated, mutilated, and burnt at the stake for violating one or more of the precepts of ‘Natural [Biological] Sex.’ That’s the sure sign of enforced ideology, not a true natural law…”
- “If we truly believe in science, in a rational world where we look objectively at what is, rather than impose our beliefs onto reality, then we need to reject the Ideology of Natural Sex. We need to see the reality of the sex spectrum and stop framing intersexuality as a rare disorder that somehow violates natural law. We need to understand that different societies have divided the sex spectrum up into different numbers of social sexes, and that binary sex is no more or less arbitrary than trinary or quartic sex systems…”
• Courtney Adison, “Human Sex is Not Simply Male or Female. So What?” (2016)
- “It is no surprise, then, that the sex binary is so firmly rooted in Euro-American thought, along with many others (think body and mind, nature and culture). It underpins and naturalises gendered divisions of labour through, for example, the notion of women as the weaker sex. Language mirrors the distinction between male and female, as in the way we talk about the sexes as ‘opposite’, and throughout life we are encouraged to think in binary terms about this central aspect of our existence.”
- “While these gendered binaries play out in social life in reasonably clear ways, they also seep into places conventionally seen as immune to bias. For example, they permeate sex science. In her paper ‘The Egg and the Sperm’ (1991), the anthropologist Emily Martin reported on the ‘scientific fairy tale’ of reproductive biology… scientific knowledge is produced in culturally patterned ways and, for Euro-American scientists, gendered assumptions make up a large part of this patterning.”
- “In Gender Trouble (1990), the feminist theorist Judith Butler argues that the insistence on sex as a natural category is itself evidence of its very unnaturalness. While the notion of gender as constructed (through interaction, socialisation and so on) was gaining some acceptance at this time, Butler’s point was that sex as well as gender was being culturally produced all along. It comes as no surprise to those familiar with Butler, Martin and the likes, that recent scientific findings suggest that sex is in fact non-binary. Attempts to cling to the binary view of sex now look like stubborn resistance to a changing paradigm. In her survey paper ‘Sex Redefined’ (2015) in Nature, Claire Ainsworth identified numerous cases supporting the biological claim that sex is far from binary, and is best seen as a spectrum. The most remarkable example was that of a 70-year-old father of four who went into the operating room for routine surgery only for his surgeon to discover that he had a womb.”
- “Looking to other times and to other cultures, we are reminded that sex is to some degree produced through the assumptions we make about each other and our bodies. Modern science is moving towards consensus on sex as a spectrum rather than a simple male/female binary, and it is time to start casting around for new ways of thinking about this fundamental aspect of what we are. Historical and anthropological studies provide a rich resource for re-imagining sex, reminding us that the sex spectrum itself is rooted in Euro-Western views of the person and body, and inviting critical engagement with our most basic biological assumptions.”
• Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex (1992)
- “For quite different reasons, Catharine MacKinnon argues explicitly that gender is the division of men and women caused ‘by the social requirements of heterosexuality, which institutionalizes male sexual dominance and female sexual submission’; sex-which comes to the same thing-is social relations ‘organized so that men may dominate and women must submit.’ ‘Science’, Ruth Bleier argues, mistakenly views ‘gender attributions as natural categories for which biological explanations are appropriate and even necessary.’ Thus some of the so called sex differences in biological and sociological research turn out to be gender differences after all, and the distinction between nature and culture collapses as the former folds into the latter.” (p.g. 13)
- “There are two explanations for how the two modem sexes as we imagine them were, and continue to be, invented: one is epistemological and the other is, broadly speaking, political.” (p.g. 151)
• Asia Friedman, Blind to Sameness: Sexpectations and the Social Construction of Male and Female Bodies (2013)
- “Thomas Laqueur argues that in the past, specifically prior to the 19th Century, male and female bodies were seen very differently than they are today. They were perceived as more similar than different, and instead of two sexes, there were just two variations of one sex. Laqueur further demonstrates that the shift in perception to seeing the sexes as two categorically different things was not the result of gaining more scientific knowledge, since many of the relevant discoveries were actually made after the fact… So the question for Laqueur is, if it was not due to advances in specific scientific knowledge of sex differences, what was responsible for that shift from seeing one to seeing two sexes? And his answer is essentially cultural change. He argues that sex or the body is the epiphenomenon, while gender, what we would normally take to be the cultural category, is what is primary. Marian Lowe makes a similar point when she argues that ‘if race, sex, and class were not politically and economically significant categories it is likely that no one would care very much about biological differences between members of these groups. To pay attention to the study of sex differences would be rather peculiar in a society where their political importance was small.’” (p.g. 45-46)
- “Further, regarding chromosomes, keep in mind that XX and XY are 50% the same, and the egg and the sperm actually have the same sex chromosomes every time both contribute an “X” to make a female. Sarah Richardson offers a much more scientifically precise version of the same fundamental argument in her critique of recent accounts claiming significant genetic variation between males and females. “Sex differences in the genome are very, very small: of 20,000 to 30,000 genes, marked sex differences are evident in perhaps half a dozen genes on the X and Y chromosome, and, it is hypothesized, a smattering of differently expressed genes across the autosomes… In DNA sequence and structure, sex differences are localized to the X and Y chromosomes. Males and females share 99.9 percent sequence identity on the 22 autosome pairs and the X, and the handful of genes on the Y are highly specific to male testes development. Thinking of males and females as having different genomes exaggerates the amount of difference between them, giving the impression that there are systematic and even law-like differences distributed across the genomes of males and females, and playing into a traditional gender-ideological view of sex differences.” (Richardson, Forthcoming: 8-9) The essential point is this: Males and females are much more genetically similar than different.” (p.g. 206)
“biological sex” is just as biased, unscientific, and subjective as the concept of gender is, and to base sex or gender on chromosomes or genitals or some other arbitrary feature is to ignore and marginalize the truth. there are millions of people who have different genitalia, lack them all together, or are intersex, people with differing karyotypes (i.e. XXY, XXX, XYY, X, etc) or chimerism (a body where some cells are of one karyotype and others are of another), and there are people with all kinds of genetic/epigenetic/biological conditions. these are all normal, natural variations of the human body that aren’t inherently connected to each other. to say sex or gender is defined by any of these features is erasive, intersexist, transphobic, and entirely contrary to what actual biologists and geneticists have been saying for decades.
just because you cannot handle your societally constructed worldview surrounding sex, gender, and genetics being smashed by sociology & biology itself doesn’t mean, additionally, that you have the right to make other people feel unsafe and uncomfortable just because you don’t like having your viewpoint being dismantled. don’t act as if you somehow know everything about sex and gender just because you took 10th grade biology and ate up some oversimplified explanations. the complexities of human behavior & the diversity of sex and reproduction in life can’t be completely covered in a simple high school biology class. shocker!
not to mention, the idea of a gender binary is a very, very recent concept solely rooted in colonialism and racism, not science.
in fact, the idea of third and nonbinary genders is as old as human civilization. (the list below is a very VERY brief history of nonbinarism):
§ 2000 BCE: in mesopotamian mythology, among the earliest written records, there are references to types of people who are neither men nor women. in a sumerian creation myth found on a stone tablet from the 2000 bce, the goddess ninmah fashions a being “with no male organ and no female organ”, for whom enki finds a position in society: “to stand before the king".
§ 1800 BCE: inscribed pottery shards from the middle kingdom of egypt, found near ancient thebes, list three human genders: tai (male), sḫt (“sekhet”) and hmt (female).
§ 385-380 BCE: aristophanes, a comic playwright, tells a story of creation in which “original human nature” includes a third sex. this sex “was a distinct kind, with a bodily shape and a name of its own, constituted by the union of the male and the female: but now only the word ‘androgynous’ is preserved.”
§ 77 BCE: genucius, a roman slave is denied inheritance on the grounds, according to art historian lynn roller, of being “neither a man nor a woman.” he is “not even allowed to plead his own case, lest the court be polluted by his obscene presence and corrupt voice.”
§ 1871: british administrators pass the criminal tribes act in india, effectively outlawing the country’s hijras—a community that includes intersex people, trans people, and even cross-dressers. celebrated in sacred indian texts, hijras had long been part of south asian cultures, but colonial authorities viewed them as violating the social order.
§ 1970: mexians in oaxaca state establish vela de las intrepidas (vigil of the intrepids), a festival celebrating ambiguous gender identities. the zapotec culture embraces a third-gender population called muxes. muxes trace back to pre-columbian times, when there were “cross-dressing aztec priests and mayan gods who were male and female at the same time”.
§ 2014: india’s supreme court recognizes the right of people, including hijras, to identify as third-gender. the court states, “it is the right of every human being to choose their gender.”
this binary gender system of ours is comparatively very new, and has been forced upon the rest of the world by white europeans in destructive and violent invasion, genocide, and complete appropriation and destruction of the original cultures of each land. really, it is the binary system that is unnatural. multiple genders have always existed in this world. and despite the best attempt of european colonialists, they continue to exist today, indicating that it is part of human nature to not fit in a neat binary and instead have multiple genders. even within the united states, multiple native american tribes have a system that includes up to six distinct gender categories.
multiple countries and cultures around the world have either three or more genders officially recognized, or no genders recognized at all (here’s a more interactive and informational map). plus, there are also many completely gender-neutral languages, where gendered pronouns and/or gendered categories don’t exist whatsoever.
citations from other works of literature:
• Maria Lugones, “Heterosexualism and the Colonial /Modern Gender System” (2007)
- “Lugones introduces a systemic understanding of gender constituted by colonial/modernity in terms of multiple relations of power… gender itself is a colonial introduction, a violent introduction consistently and contemporarily used to destroy peopks, cosmologies, and communities as the building ground of the ‘civilized’ West.” (p.g. 186)
- “As global, Eurocentered capitalism was constituted through colonization, gender differentials were introduced where there were none. Oyeronkk Oyewhmi has shown us that the oppressive gender system that was imposed on Yoruba society did a lot more than transform the organization of reproduction… many Native American tribes were matriarchal, recognized more than two genders, recognized ‘third’ gendering and homosexuality positively, and understood gender in egalitarian terms rather than in the terms of subordination that Eurocentered capitalism imposed on them. Gunn’s work has enabled us to see that the scope of the gender differentials was much more encompassing and it did not rest on biology.” (p.g. 196)
• Gerald N. Callahan, Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of Two Sexes (2009)
- “Our history suggests that we haven’t always imagined that humans come in only two sexes, and that things far removed from what we might call facts have played major roles in determining our thoughts about sex. Even today, several human societies believe in more than two sexes.” (p.g. xi)
• Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (2000)
- “Were we in Europe and America to move to a multiple sex and gender role system (as it seems we might be doing), we would not be cultural pioneers. Several Native American cultures, for example, define a third gender, which may include people whom we would label as homosexual, transsexual, or intersexual but also people we would label as male or female. Anthropologists have described other groups, such as the Hijras of India, that contain individuals whom we in the West would label intersexes, transsexuals, effeminate men, and eunuchs. As with the varied Native American categories, the Hijras vary in their origins and gender characteristics. Anthropologists debate about how to interpret Native American gender systems. What is important, however, is that the existence of other systems suggests that ours is not inevitable.” (p.g. 108-109)
• Phoenix Singer, “Colonialism, Two-Spirit Identity, and the Logics of White Supremacy”
- “Colonialism as practiced by Western culture is used to erase traditional non-binary roles of gender orientation and systems of sexuality, i.e. the Two-Spirit. Identifying as Two-Spirit becomes not just a traditional way of expressing Indigenous beliefs of gender orientation and sexuality but a political identity in resistance of colonialism. Through the use of inherently violent, assimilative measures, these traditions of the Two-Spirit in Indigenous societies are lost in many of our communities and are replaced by the Western gender binary and spectrum of sexual orientation. As this paper will show, this plays into the colonialist logic of white supremacy and how it relates to the Indigenous body, colonizing Two-Spirit identity.” (p.g. 1)
- “When Europeans came to Turtle Island, much of their culture, their ideals, their beliefs and institutions came with them through the continued centuries of settler-colonialism. Building their own nation upon this land, they were able to more permanently construct and impose their culture upon others. The Western colonization of the Americas brought forth many institutions which sought to erase and displace Indigenous cultural traditions and beliefs. Through the use of violence, forced assimilation, demonization of Indigenous beliefs and then appropriation of Indigenous culture, the subjugation of Native sexuality and gender roles have continued unquestioned in the minds of the settler and of our own people. It can be said and will be shown, that the Western binary is a system of oppression and repression and is actively a form of institutional violence against the Two-Spirit. This is all connected to the idea of white supremacy and domination over Indigenous bodies and beliefs, of colonization of our very selves. Thus an analysis of colonization and white supremacy is not complete without an approach towards Two-Spirit identity in our own communities.” (p.g. 1-2)
- “Before the colonization of this land, there were as many as six traditional gender orientation roles among numerous tribes. However, due to boarding schools erasing these traditions […] the Christianized related the existence of the Two-Spirit as sin… The Western Gender Binary is thus superimposed upon all cultures and their histories seen through the gaze of not only male dominance but a male/female paradigm that does not account for the existence of third, fourth, fifth and even more varieties of non-male/female expressions and identities. […] The Western Gender Binary does not see the Two-Spirit, the Western Gender Binary only sees a Man acting in ‘Unmanly’ ways or a Woman acting in ‘Unwomanly’ ways… The influence of Western culture on the erasure of Indigenous “queer” and Two-Spirit peoples has created a system of sexual assault, homophobia and transphobia used against our peoples, entangled with the history of colonialism. As part of the settler mentality, we can see these actions as colonial violence against the Two-Spirit and are also the results of genocide. To reiterate previous statements, the Western gender binary is a form of superimposed and universalized colonialism upon Indigenous bodies and minds.” (p.g. 5-6)
• Anonymous Author, “The Problematic Ideology of Natural Sex” (2016)
- “…we have ignorance of the long and violent history of the imposition of the Ideology of Natural Sex under European colonialism. The genius behind framing an ideology as ‘natural’ is that its history erases itself. Why would anyone study the history of something natural and eternal? We don’t study the history of covalent bonds in chemistry or cumulus clouds in meteorology. And so we don’t study the spread of European binary sex ideology under colonialism. If you do, you’ll find that all over the world before European colonialism there were societies recognizing three, four, or more sexes and allowing people to move between them—but that’s a subject for another post. Suffice it to say that societies were violently restructured under European colonialism in many ways, and one of those was the stamping out of nonbinary gender categories and stigmatization of those occupying them as perverts.”
to say that nonbinary genders don’t exist would not only be scientifically incorrect and historically inaccurate, but it would be to say that the cultural traditions of these people are invalid, and only the white european standard of gender, which was forced onto indigenous people via genocide and forced assimilation, is “correct”. trying to enforce western concepts of gender on other cultures is an act of blatant racism and imperialism, and presumes that one group somehow knows more about the human condition, which is, on all levels, factually as well as historically and ethnically wrong.
TL;DR:
neither gender nor biological sex is innate, binary, or a scientific reality in any way, shape, or form, and the vast majority of biologists, scientists, doctors, psychologists, historians and anthropologists have been debunking these ignorant claims for decades and proving that both of these concepts are socially constructed. since gender as completely subjective, nonbinary genders have existed since the dawn of human civilization, even dating back to mesopotamia, the VERY FIRST human society, at that. there are many countries today where there are officially more than two genders recognized, and there are multiple languages that are entirely gender-neutral. the gender binary itself is an entirely european theory based on a complete lack of understanding of science, and was only recently forced on the world via colonialism, violence, and genocide. saying that nonbinary genders aren’t real is an act of transphobia, racism, and imperialism, and is the same as saying that thousands of cultures around the world, millions of personal experiences, and entire societal structures throughout history are not real, which makes no sense. it is part of human nature and basic natural variation to not fit into oversimplified binary categories.
but you know, curse those special snowflakes, or whatever.
emo420
this is an updated version of my original response. please reblog this edited version of my post instead if you’ve already reblogged the previous/original version.
@enderkevin13 If all that seems too complicated for you, you can start with this post: https://www.facebook.com/grace.pokela.1/posts/10100443442509510?pnref=story where a biology teacher explains in simple terms how XX and XY chromosomes DON’T always equal female/vagina and male/penis, that biologists have actually realized that gender and sex AREN’T the same thing, and now that we know this schools are shifting away from teaching the simplistic and inaccurate binary version you dredged up for us in your opening post. So now that you’ve been brought all of these fact-based reasons, many from biologists, are you convinced? Or should we be questioning YOUR intelligence, as you’ve indicated is the appropriate reaction to have when encountering someone who thinks that they “know better than what biologist have studied for years” ?
myurbandream reblogged
A sincere question
For the trans/ non-binary/ gender-queer/ gender-questioning people out there: is it OK for my 5-year-old kid to ask if you are a boy or a girl? What is the polite way to handle his curiosity, in the moment as it occurs?
I have somewhat explained these concepts to him when we are at home, in the abstract... but the abstract concept is different from real-world etiquette. And sometimes you're at the store and you encounter someone who doesn't obviously fit into one of the two standard options, and your kid just drops that curious preschooler question into the middle of the aisle at full volume. I don't know whether to shush him, or let the other person answer his question for themselves, or something else? What do I do here?
Any advice for a mom who wants to do this correctly?
myurbandream reblogged
insanelygaming
Animal Cross-Dress and Fuck Your Gender Roles: New Leaf.
evil-is-the-new-sexy
No but the best part of this is that this isn’t Nintendo telling adults they support GSM rights.
It’s Nintendo telling kids it’s okay.
maire-cherri
I might of reblogged this but its too important to not reblog again
myurbandream reblogged
lenarise-deactivated20191107
by the way the funniest thing ive read all week is this post on reddit i think where somebody asked for the pros and cons of different stem majors and so this one girl responded and she said she was a software engineer i believe and then she said “ok pro #1. i never have to wait in line for the bathroom ever again. there are more female restrooms in this building than there are women”
myurbandream reblogged
We’re Ready
I was presenting an assembly for kids grades 3-8 while on book tour for the third PRINCESS ACADEMY book.
Me: “So many teachers have told me the same thing. They say, ‘When I told my students we were reading a book called PRINCESS ACADEMY, the girls said—’”
I gesture to the kids and wait. They anticipate what I’m expecting, and in unison, the girls scream, “YAY!”
Me: “'And the boys said—”
I gesture and wait. The boys know just what to do. They always do, no matter their age or the state they live in.
In unison, the boys shout, “BOOOOO!”
Me: “And then the teachers tell me that after reading the book, the boys like it as much or sometimes even more than the girls do.”
Audible gasp. They weren’t expecting that.
Me: “So it’s not the story itself boys don’t like, it’s what?” The kids shout, “The name! The title!”
Me: “And why don’t they like the title?”
As usual, kids call out, “Princess!”
But this time, a smallish 3rd grade boy on the first row, who I find out later is named Logan, shouts at me, “Because it’s GIRLY!”
The way Logan said “girly"…so much hatred from someone so small. So much distain. This is my 200-300th assembly, I’ve asked these same questions dozens of times with the same answers, but the way he says “girly” literally makes me take a step back. I am briefly speechless, chilled by his hostility.
Then I pull it together and continue as I usually do.
“Boys, I have to ask you a question. Why are you so afraid of princesses? Did a princess steal your dog? Did a princess kidnap your parents? Does a princess live under your bed and sneak out at night to try to suck your eyeballs out of your skull?”
The kids laugh and shout “No!” and laugh some more. We talk about how girls get to read any book they want but some people try to tell boys that they can only read half the books. I say that this isn’t fair. I can see that they’re thinking about it in their own way.
But little Logan is skeptical. He’s sure he knows why boys won’t read a book about a princess. Because a princess is a girl—a girl to the extreme. And girls are bad. Shameful. A boy should be embarrassed to read a book about a girl. To care about a girl. To empathize with a girl.
Where did Logan learn that? What does believing that do to him? And how will that belief affect all the girls and women he will deal with for the rest of his life?
At the end of my presentation, I read aloud the first few chapters of THE PRINCESS IN BLACK. After, Logan was the only boy who stayed behind while I signed books. He didn’t have a book for me to sign, he had a question, but he didn’t want to ask me in front of others. He waited till everyone but a couple of adults had left. Then, trembling with nervousness, he whispered in my ear, “Do you have a copy of that black princess book?”
He wanted to know what happened next in her story. But he was ashamed to want to know.
Who did this to him? How will this affect how he feels about himself? How will this affect how he treats fellow humans his entire life?
We already know that misogyny is toxic and damaging to women and girls, but often we assume it doesn’t harm boys or mens a lick. We think we’re asking them to go against their best interest in the name of fairness or love. But that hatred, that animosity, that fear in little Logan, that isn’t in his best interest. The oppressor is always damaged by believing and treating others as less than fully human. Always. Nobody wins. Everybody loses.
We humans have a peculiar tendency to assume either/or scenarios despite all logic. Obviously it’s NOT “either men matter OR women do.” It’s NOT “we can give boys books about boys OR books about girls.” It’s NOT “men are important to this industry OR women are.“
It’s not either/or. It’s AND.
We can celebrate boys AND girls. We can read about boys AND girls. We can listen to women AND men. We can honor and respect women AND men. And And And. I know this seems obvious and simplistic, but how often have you assumed that a boy reader would only read a book about boys? I have. Have you preselected books for a boy and only offered him books about boys? I’ve done that in the past. And if not, I’ve caught myself and others kind of apologizing about it. “I think you’ll enjoy this book EVEN THOUGH it’s about a girl!” They hear that even though. They know what we mean. And they absorb it as truth.
I met little Logan at the same assembly where I noticed that all the 7th and 8th graders were girls. Later, a teacher told me that the administration only invited the middle school girls to my assembly. Because I’m a woman. I asked, and when they’d had a male author, all the kids were invited. Again reinforcing the falsehood that what men say is universally important but what women say only applies to girls.
One 8th grade boy was a big fan of one of my books and had wanted to come, so the teacher had gotten special permission for him to attend, but by then he was too embarrassed. Ashamed to want to hear a woman speak. Ashamed to care about the thoughts of a girl.
A few days later, I tweeted about how the school didn’t invite the middle school boys. And to my surprise, twitter responded. Twitter was outraged. I was blown away. I’ve been talking about these issues for over a decade, and to be honest, after a while you feel like no one cares.
But for whatever reason, this time people were ready. I wrote a post explaining what happened, and tens of thousands of people read it. National media outlets interviewed me. People who hadn’t thought about gendered reading before were talking, comparing notes, questioning what had seemed normal. Finally, finally, finally.
And that’s the other thing that stood out to me about Logan—he was so ready to change. Eager for it. So open that he’d started the hour expressing disgust at all things “girly” and ended it by whispering an anxious hope to be a part of that story after all.
The girls are ready. Boy howdy, we’ve been ready for a painful long time. But the boys, they’re ready too. Are you?
I’ve spoken with many groups about gendered reading in the last few years. Here are some things that I hear:
A librarian, introducing me before my presentation: “Girls, you’re in for a real treat. You’re going to love Shannon Hale’s books. Boys, I expect you to behave anyway.”
A book festival committee member: “Last week we met to choose a keynote speaker for next year. I suggested you, but another member said, ‘What about the boys?’ so we chose a male author instead.”
A parent: “My son read your book and he ACTUALLY liked it!”
A teacher: “I never noticed before, but for read aloud I tend to choose books about boys because I assume those are the only books the boys will like.”
A mom: “My son asked me to read him The Princess in Black, and I said, ‘No, that’s for your sister,’ without even thinking about it.”
A bookseller: “I’ve stopped asking people if they’re shopping for a boy or a girl and instead asking them what kind of story the child likes.”
Like the bookseller, when I do signings, I frequently ask each kid, “What kind of books do you like?” I hear what you’d expect: funny books, adventure stories, fantasy, graphic novels. I’ve never, ever, EVER had a kid say, “I only like books about boys.” Adults are the ones with the weird bias. We’re the ones with the hangups, because we were raised to believe thinking that way is normal. And we pass it along to the kids in sometimes overt (“Put that back! That’s a girl book!”) but usually in subtle ways we barely notice ourselves.
But we are ready now. We’re ready to notice and to analyze. We’re ready to be thoughtful. We’re ready for change. The girls are ready, the boys are ready, the non-binary kids are ready. The parents, librarians, booksellers, authors, readers are ready. Time’s up. Let’s make a change.
myurbandream reblogged
When I brush my daughter’s hair and elaborately braid it round the side of her scalp, I am doing the thing that is expected of me. When my husband brushes out tangles before bedtime, he needs his efforts noticed and congratulated—saying aloud in front of both me and her that it took him a whole 15 minutes. There are many small examples of where the work I normally do must be lauded when transferred to my husband. It seems like a small annoyance, but its significance looms larger.
My son will boast of his clean room and any other jobs he has done; my daughter will quietly put her clothes in the hamper and get dressed each day without being asked. They are six and four respectively. Unless I engage in this conversation on emotional labor and actively change the roles we inhabit, our children will do the same. They are already following in our footsteps; we are leading them toward the same imbalance.
This article really makes me not miss my ex. Or …. just about every male coworker I’d had.
(via jadegordon)
Source: harpersbazaar.com
myurbandream reblogged
HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS IS AN EMERGENCY
That bit about “belongs to the legislative branch” – if that passes as it stands, it sets precedent to ignore Roe v Wade, to ignore gay marriage, to ignore Brown v Board of Education. Every fucking advance we’ve made in the last sixty years has come through the Supreme Court first.
It is *absolutely* deliberate that this is attached to a bill about trans rights, because that gives them the maximum “oh well that doesn’t affect me” safety from progressive activists as well as the maximum “yeah fuck those tr*nnies back to hell” coverage from conservatives. Very few cis people give a shit about trans rights, and a LOT of cis people care a hell of a lot about hurting trans people.
This is where TWEFs kill feminism. You don’t get up in arms against this bill, you lose your birth control, your reproductive freedom, your right to work, everything. But hating trans women is more important.
dorkilybeautiful
I was going to point out that the DOJ’s opinion the same night as the trans ban has a similar effect, but just comes from law enforcement, but holy shit, this is worse than I thought.
myurbandream reblogged
TeenVogue still kicking ass and taking names.
friendlyneighborhoodeldergod
ALSO: The Bugis people of Indonesia have five genders, one of which is neither male nor female.
You’ll find examples of nonbinary and GNC people being accepted all over the ancient and non-western world. It’s almost like sex and gender are actually spectrums and heteropatriarchy isn’t normal.
They aren’t. They have just been forcibly “normalized” (violently shoved down everyone’s throat) by those who not only were being vocally bigoted but were in a position were they had the power to enforce their bigotry. @deadcatwithaflamethrower
Always happy to pass on historical accuracy.