Gender is more of a ball of timey wimey-

[halcyon iris]

So like, gender isn't really a spectrum? Because the idea of their being two points along the line is an error

[patent frigate]

spectrum doesn't require a bimodal line

[covert zenith]

wait can spectrums not be between more than 2 points?

yeah

[halcyon iris]

Being a woman and being a man aren't actually two genders, they're encompassing political classes that are assigned to a bundle of peoples genders that have nothing to do with eachother

[charred yacht]

What does this have to do with TTS Discussion. Surely would've been better to create the thread under off topic?

[bleak sequoia]

The reason I tend to avoid spectrum for gender is mainly because it implies a linear range, as with Autism 'spectrum' it tends to refer to the variety of symptoms and the difference of the number of them present

[covert zenith]

it branched off from a comment in the tts-discussion channel, we moved it here to not take up space

[patent frigate]

we are literally doing that to not spam chat. leave if you don't like it.

[bleak sequoia]

Whereas gender I personally feel like has more utility in just not attaching spectrum to it, cha feel?

[covert zenith]

yeah you can just leave the thread

[bleak sequoia]

Because 'gender spectrum' implies that things can be inherently gendered to some degree when they're not, gender is dumb and made up

[hoary cairn]

for me I see Gender as a valuable tool to an individual, a way to help you explore yourself and learn more about who you are and what you're comfortable with and how you feel best, it is a tool for exploring identity and self more than it is anything else

[halcyon iris]

The more I trans my gender the more I realize how gender identity is kinda a mythology

[covert zenith]

while gender is a social construct i dont think putting it on a spectrum somehow canonizes it as something inherent to our biology, where is that implied?

[patent frigate]

my gender is very solid i just hate explaining it to cishets lol

[halcyon iris]

Gender isn't like, an inner characteristic, it is how you interact with other people and is in fact quite surface level

The only reason it feels so important is because of caste systems

[covert zenith]

i mean my gender is pretty intigral to my identity and i wouldn't call it surface level because of all the implications it's had for my life

if anything i'd argue is'a a deep fuckin rabbit hole

[bleak sequoia]

I get that, and as an abolitionist I recognize that gender does bring some positivity to peoples lives, but the way I put it is that without gender being a sort of necessary part of our identity- without its presence people wouldn't need it as a tool to explore because you would just define yourself in more of a loose nebulous way without pre-supposed attachments to concepts

Like the skirt go spinny spinny? Cool! Want rock hard abs and to slam a monster? Neat.

[covert zenith]

i also dont believe gender is like, a binary spectrum, it's a lot of things, i guess, but surely calling it a spectrum isn't unproductive, right?

[bleak sequoia]

No need for it to be masc or femme

[bleak sequoia]

Oh not at all, Im not saying like youre doing something bad Im saying that its better to not

[willow lynx]

Spectrum doesn't, in my opinion, mean two points, but I guess that would be the definition. How about scope as a better term: The range of the effect of an operator such as a quantifier or conjunction (aka a graph with no specific points that has no defined ends).

[halcyon iris]

It is an abstract representation that isnt accurate. Models are always simplified

[covert zenith]

how should i explain to my grandma that some people are "between man and woman" or other are "simply neither" in a way that isn't just "gender is a spectrum"

[bleak sequoia]

this is where things get weird, that's the reason I just tend to stick with Gender and 'Gender Expression'

Gender is legit so dumb

[covert zenith]

like if it's not binary, then what's a good word for it, i guess

[trail oyster]

I mostly agree with this, but I haven't been able to reckon how this accounts for the difference in gender between two people who present basically the same way - say a feminine man and a feminine woman, or a twink and a tomboy

[halcyon iris]

Gender is a spectrum when you need to explain gender to granny, but it is more complicated than that

[bleak sequoia]

No like I get that its useful thats not my point

[covert zenith]

ok, sure

[bleak sequoia]

What Im saying is that IDEALLY we work towards just getting rid of it period end stop

[covert zenith]

am i mistaken about my definition of spectrum? does a spectrum have to be between two points?

[trail oyster]

bimodal is a useful word, it describes there being two clusters that don't sort into A or B full stop

[halcyon iris]

Get rid of gender except for the fun and consensual stuff

[bleak sequoia]

Spectrums don't have to be bimodal but it imples a limited range.

[hoary cairn]

Yea, like gender is a personal thing, that's kinda what I was getting at

[patent frigate]

i'm a masc woman and that's integral to helping me find community and understanding within the world. it won't go away if we "get rid" of gender somehow

[hoary cairn]

Abolish Big Gender and let everyone have their own bespoke gender they made themselves

[covert zenith]

a wide range, yeah

[halcyon iris]

Well yeah. Abolishing stuff like this is a multigenerational project potentially

I relate to society as a transfemme. I wish I didn't have too. But people take deeper meanings to superficial appearances because of the class system

[covert zenith]

as another transfemme i would also like to advocate for the abolition of gender

[bleak sequoia]

See I agree with that- but here's the thing, why define yourself along the lines of masc woman if gender didn't exist but rather just define yourself along those qualities that you like?

Like Im happy you find use in it now!

[glass jewel]

gender? i hardly know 'er!

sorry i just saw this thread

[bleak sequoia]

And Im glad it makes you happy being able to get that label and it helps you explore your own identity- but you get what I mean when I say like the reason we do it is because it exists now in society and without the enculturation of gender it wouldn't really be a thing to even consider in your identity

[willow lynx]

I like this. We don't need 'male' 'female' etc. as a defined from birth gender. We should be able to define ourselves on qualities like masc, fem, [insert term here]. But we should not be required to confirm our identity one way or another.

[halcyon iris]

No, get rid of masc and femme too

Stop putting people in boxes, even if they're more benign

[willow lynx]

I think it should be allowed still.

[bleak sequoia]

Legit could just say "Hey you have a penis? A Womb? Both? Neither? coolio."

[glass jewel]

and on a more serious note because "those qualities that you like" tend to cluster together naturally and people make up words for those clusters

[twin sail]

Gender's a generic term for systems of sociocultural conventions and, usually, structural power, relating somehow to sexed differentiation (which is. its own range of constructs), """someone's gender""" can be roughly taken to be shorthand for their relationship to gender. is the best I've got

[patent frigate]

because butch womanhood is the only way i relate to womanhood in the current day, and whatever form it takes in the future will be where i fall, regardless of how accepting people become or how wobbly we make gender.

[halcyon iris]

I mean the labels, not what is not completely described with the labels

[daring dragon]

I just want to be myself in public without having my nagging doubts eating back at me and having to worry what people think. I'm very not public with my transness and I wish I could be more public without having to worry about fitting in and fitting with people's preconceptions

[bleak sequoia]

But here's the thing- take out gender, you have a set of qualities you like and you strive to achieve those, are we really going to define Spinny Skirt Wearers on a BIMODAL SPECTRUM

(In reference to using gender to refer to sex commonly as we do now)

[willow lynx]

Why is it such a problem? I think masc and femme are legitimate terms if we stop comparing them to gender.

[bleak sequoia]

So what you're saying is you want a term for bodies of a type

[covert zenith]

everything about your gender continues to exist in a genderless society, it just stops being gendered

[hoary cairn]

Personally I do think that gender roles and general broad strokes gender stuff she be gotten rid of, but I do think that gender, in a more personal context, is super valuable to a person's understanding of who they are. Honestly I believe that people should contemplate their gender, everyone should ask themselves how they relate to their gender and how they feel like they want to interact with gender

[trail oyster]

but this doesn't account for the fact that different people can be spinny skirt wearers and still identify differently and relate to their gender differently. Identity =/= expression, and all that

[willow lynx]

I don

[halcyon iris]

Because, for example, a person might want to wear a spinny dress and put on make up, and might not want to be labeled as fem

[covert zenith]

yeah, we should have non-gendered words for those bodytypes

[bleak sequoia]

Actually its accounting for literally that- that spinny skirt is associated with gender now and I want to remove that completely

[glass jewel]

well yes historically it is bimodal in anglo culture at least. it might (and hopefully will not) stay that way in the future

[halcyon iris]

Gendering/presentationing someone without their consent is bad

[willow lynx]

Then make up a new label! No one but you can put a label on you.

[halcyon iris]

I dont want to be labeled at all

[bleak sequoia]

But yea this is one of those pipe-dream leftist ideals that I try to advocate for but don't want to like get into arguments with other people over, especially not other trans/queer folks.

I'll settle for disassociating stigma for now, baby steps and praxis and all that

[halcyon iris]

I'm okay with arguing about it, just not with cis people or transmeds

[trail oyster]

so how would you propose differentiating between say feminine men who wear spinny skirts, and feminine women who do the same?

[glass jewel]

yea same except im on the make more genders side. pic related

[patent frigate]

that's understandable and noble but throwing butch womanhood, limp wristed fruity (i say this in the most endearing way) manhood, and other groups that find community and understanding with eachother is throwing the baby out with the bathwater

at least imo

[trail oyster]

100% this

[willow lynx]

In my earlier post I said, "But we should not be required to confirm our identity one way or another." Labels can be used, but shouldn't be required.

[covert zenith]

it's a utopian proposal for sure, but one i agree with and think is possible as a cultural transition which takes multiple generations

if we're posting relevant memes

[trail oyster]

this is more or less where I'm at. Let people use gender as a landmark, but don't force people into a box

[willow lynx]

Oh, should I leave? I happen to be cis, but I'm very passionate about trans issues. If I was born a man, I would one hundred percent be a trans woman, but I happened to be born the gender I identify as.

[bleak sequoia]

Im not saying these communities dissipate at all which is where alot of confusion is generated, what I'm saying is that you remove gender from them- they still exist as they're still expressions that tend to group together, and they define themselves along the expression that they enjoy

But what you would have is a group who express the same way, uniting because of their mutual identity with oppression or stigma attached to it

[halcyon iris]

But that community cannot exist without oppressive power structures.

When you get rid of homophobia/transphobia etc, things will change. You can't stop that. The question is how they will change

[bleak sequoia]

It is interesting to think about how much of the LGBT community exists due to oppression

[halcyon iris]

Well, and wanting companionship, but mostly oppression

[hoary cairn]

Woof, I'm not quite ready to open up that can o brain worms today

[covert zenith]

all the benefits you get from gender i could honestly see still widely existing in a genderless society, just without the pain gender causes.
Like, the community you find with people who are like you would be the same cis people find community in people like them. It's just not gendered. Nothing is "masculine" or "feminine" and in some regards i honestly find gender to be kind of an advanced form of gatekeeping

[trail oyster]

but the expression is not the only thing that matters - I don't identify with and don't want to group with effeminate men (in a gender sense), even though I am very similar in my presentation to them. I want to group with tomboy/stem women because that's more where my identity is

[bleak sequoia]

But I mean a 'gay' club would still exist in a world without gender for sure

ITs just where those who hang go to hang.

[covert zenith]

we should cause issues to get people to band together to stop those issues. it builds character 😎

[bleak sequoia]

Then you would do that.

Because at its core, there are differences between the groups!

[halcyon iris]

Idk, I feel like if we got rid of homophobia the population would be a lot more gay/bi and there might not be a need for exclusively queer spaces

[trail oyster]

I guess what I'm saying is - I don't see the harm in keeping gender around as a shorthand for those differences

[patent frigate]

75/25 on agreeing with this and disagreeing

[bleak sequoia]

Let me ask you a question-

If I want to go play warhammer 40k

do I go into the general populace or do I go to a games workshop store

Essentially spaces would exist the same way they do today but without the stigma since its more just the grouping of characteristics etc etc

[halcyon iris]

Well, 40k is a niche hobby. I dont think that is a reasonable comparison?

Like, I'd just go to a game store, where people are playing 40k, x wing, magic, etc

[bleak sequoia]

Yea this works so

You go to a place for a specific activity

If I enjoy penis havers, and want to get involved with other penis havers, I'd go to the place where they tend to congregate

[trail oyster]

but "40k fans" is an identity that exists and is useful. I see gender as being similar to that - very useful for grouping in that regard

[bleak sequoia]

so you'd end up having pseudo-queer spaces

[halcyon iris]

But if homophobia and stuff wasn't a problem, why not just go to a general population bar and flag wanting to sleep with x?

Like, there are more than enough 40k players at the normal game store

And Im not sure what the tournament analogy would be

[bleak sequoia]

A convention lol

[patent frigate]

if we no longer have people labeling themselves as "x" how do we signal that?

[halcyon iris]

Also like, when you get rid of gender, don't you kinda have to acknowledge that our model of sexual attraction is completely useless?

[bleak sequoia]

I agree, I just think that it ultimately falls shorter of utility than completely removing gender from society and grouping by traits you express by

[hoary cairn]

The issues you have with a gendered society exist in a genderless society too though, people feel attachment outside of the oppression to their gender identity, gender is something that can't really be separated from identity in that sense, your gender is a part of who you are, even if you are outside gender and don't have one that's still a form of gender. To quote the excellent band Rush "if you chose not to decide you still have made a choice". Totally removing gender is like totally removing a part of what makes us people. I can understand wanting to remove the rules and trauma/oppression around it but I don't see how you could totally remove it, even if you did communities would simply come up with new terminology for the same thing

[halcyon iris]

That is a fair point.

Assuming there is no more misogyny, maybe people would just hit on people theyre attracted to in a normal and healthy way?

[bleak sequoia]

Oh don't get me wrong

I think that if we have a gendered society but lacking any and all attachment to sex

we've basically abolished gender

And thats real good

[covert zenith]

in a genderless society, there is no oppression in relation to gender identity in the same way no one in our current society is oppressed for like, having blue eyes or whatever.

[trail oyster]

because the trait I want to group by is "masc-ish women"? not "masc-ish people" in general

the gender part is actually important

or more precisely, the gender part is one of the traits

[bleak sequoia]

What is gender in this case?

[covert zenith]

gender is important to denote in our current culture where gender exists, yes

[bleak sequoia]

No like not joking your case path, what is 'woman'

[trail oyster]

someone who chooses to identify as "woman" instead of something else

[bleak sequoia]

And that matters to you why?

[trail oyster]

I don't know why, it just does

[bleak sequoia]

Okay so

You agree sex is separate from gender yea?

[trail oyster]

yea ofc

[bleak sequoia]

So anyone who identifies as a woman is a woman

[halcyon iris]

I understand wanting to hold onto labels though. Like, being a lesbian is very important to me, even though I acknowledge that it is kinda not actually possible to be 100 percent straight/gay(because those terms are simplistic reductions)

[bleak sequoia]

So what you're doing here is saying that the label woman is important, despite it only meaning that you're choosing that label for it

[trail oyster]

precisely

[bleak sequoia]

So my question is

so if we substitute woman with like 'chair'

Does it make a difference?

[willow lynx]

Okay, so in this hypothetical society without gender: What about medical issues? How would those be handled?

For example, biological females have different treatments for depression than biological males do. Would there be a system for 'birth gender' to inform doctors, and only doctors, of the gender assigned at birth?

[bleak sequoia]

Like if everyone in the group you choose to be in and want to be in subscribe to the same label

[halcyon iris]

You're confusing sex and gender.

And binary sex is also fake, medically

[trail oyster]

it's the history and associations of "woman" that appeal to me, so yea the specific label matters

[bleak sequoia]

What history and associations?

[halcyon iris]

Reductively, sex is a spectrum

[covert zenith]

can i just say as a gender abolitionist, i will probably never stop identifying as a trans woman, personally? it's a multigenerational thing. We're talking about a future society of future people who dont yet exist

[willow lynx]

Sex then. Would that still exist? And it is not entirely fake. Though the depression example may not be the best one.

[bleak sequoia]

Gender abolition means many things friend, most primarily removing its impact from stigma/oppression first and foremost

[trail oyster]

all the million subconscious associations in my mind that exist between that word and other concepts

[bleak sequoia]

So

[halcyon iris]

Sex is socially constructed, watch the philosophy tube thing on social constructs

[bleak sequoia]

So theoretically what matters isn't 'woman' so much as everything associated with it

so I guess for clarification do you like the aspect of inheriting a legacy of 'woman' or just because its linked to those previous concepts

[covert zenith]

sex isn't binary but there is a real medical difference in many cases, no?

[patent frigate]

this solution is impractical. trans fems who take estrogen and a t-suppressor are more within the range of cis women's medical risks, ie: breast cancer. medical should be handled based on body parts, hormones, and intersex conditions based on those categories, not broad A or B full body categorization based on a single trait (in this case genitals).

[halcyon iris]

Yes, but grouping those differences into two sexes isnt necessary and reductionist in a way that can cause harm

[covert zenith]

tru

[bleak sequoia]

It actually has been shown if men were screened to the same degree women's bodys are ALOT of deaths could be prevented

[willow lynx]

You can say what you want about philosophy. Generally speaking, people of the male sex cannot get pregnant, people of the female sex can. (Unless, like you said, there are hormones involved, but in a genderless society, why would we need hormones?)

[covert zenith]

additionally sex already determined by a number of factors medically, not just genitalia (which is what sex is defined by social, and that's a construct).

[trail oyster]

both. any replacement term for "woman" in a hypothetical gender-free society would need to basically map 1:1 to the term in order to replace the value I get from the label/landmark, which imo renders the replacement pointless

[hoary cairn]

Not really, when you get into the actual biology of sex you realize that what sex a thing is is basically a big as melting pot of mixed up genes and traits that sometimes dont even match the usual expected outcomes. Essentially there are like a million different things shift and stuff so it's impossible to be like "This is male sex stuff and this is female"

[bleak sequoia]

To look the way you want

[bleak sequoia]

Gotchya gotchya so this is a core disagreement we can't reconcile with eachothers positions

[willow lynx]

Okay, fair. So, should doctors know sex and medical history then to make informed decisions?

[patent frigate]

because my body and mind felt like a foreign entity warping me from the outside, and that would still be the case in a genderless society.

[halcyon iris]

What about infertile females, are they another sex?

[bleak sequoia]

I think that gender brings more negative utility through its presence in society than the positive utility that it brings individuals who want to inherit a legacy of formerly associated people, whereas you think that the legacy is too important to give up

I think both positions are valid, because its not like I can verify mine

[trail oyster]

I think so. I do agree with you that this is a very down-the-road kind of disagreement, and honestly if grew up in the society that this argument actually belongs in, I would almost certainly have different opinions on the matter

[halcyon iris]

What about people with both sets of genitals, in different arrangements? Should we create a different sex for each one? Best to do away with the classification system entirely, as biology is discreet not digital

[willow lynx]

"Generally speaking," I don't think people who cannot get pregnant are a different gender, but I think that knowing whether someone's sex is male or female can help identify issues.

[bleak sequoia]

So

This is REALLY hard to prove

[covert zenith]

yeah no one here is advocating for gender to suddenly be erased today, it has utility in describing the people of today. Just like race does. But i mean, i advocate for a society where races dont exist and there's just people, y'know?

does that make sense or did i make it worse lol

[hoary cairn]

Man I love talking about gender with trans folks, always leads to soemreally interesting discussions

[bleak sequoia]

Because if you're not expected to look a certain way or enculturated to associate things like that- and you would theoretically have access to more or less pursue the puberty you want

[bleak sequoia]

Exactly - like race is dumb and a social construct but to remove it entirely today would be like trying to remove a brain tumor with your bare hands

[halcyon iris]

Being a gender abolitionist and seeing hormones as a way of body hacking and not as a dysphoria relieving mechanism because you're already so confident in your gender

[bleak sequoia]

You'd do more harm to the people suffering the consequences of its current existence and its legacy than you would help anyone

[bleak sequoia]

God just can we get to transhumanism yet

[patent frigate]

in specific medical context it can be useful to know "this person has a vagina" but it is equally important to know "and he has been on hormones for 36 years and has different risk factors for specific things" both are true.

[bleak sequoia]

I work and slave under capitalism so that my descendants can be cat boys.

[halcyon iris]

You can't just stop acting like a social construct doesn't exist to end it, you actually have to take steps to resolve it

[hoary cairn]

Gender 2.0, now with no historical baggage and way more options

[trail oyster]

that makes sense, and I'm not against that kind of advocacy so long as it's only done in spaces (like this) where we're all on the same page about sex vs gender

[glass jewel]

i think u meant "continuous" vs "discrete"

[bleak sequoia]

Only if this is released in a press conference with Natalie Wynn coming out in a black turtleneck dress

[patent frigate]

if i had access to hormones during puberty i would have taken them in a heartbeat, regardless of societal expectations for manhood and womanhood

[trail oyster]

yeah a list of medical history is the most useful thing w/r/t medical treatment, way moreso than just "this is what this person was assigned at birth"

[hoary cairn]

Please, let me be a formless angelic being of flame and eyes and feathers but also with bangin' tits and a huge hog

[bleak sequoia]

Hell yea!

Thats the idea

[halcyon iris]

Well I meant analog and digital but yeah, my bad

[bleak sequoia]

You should be able to help yourself along to the body you want

[trail oyster]

big same.

[willow lynx]

But I think sex should be included in the medical history as a basis.

[trail oyster]

yea ofc. a list of the person's sex/biology would be one of the first entries in the history

[halcyon iris]

But you dont have to define their biology into a sex

Just give them the medical info without sexxing them

[bleak sequoia]

Dude I couldn’t have this conversation with the cissies because fuck am I tired of explaining the metaphysics of gender lol

[patent frigate]

yes, and i would still be as butch as i am, and would want to feel less alone in that butch womanhood, and throwing out the entirety of the things that define those feels like a total loss of that

[hoary cairn]

Gender is a quark, it simultaneously exists and doesn't

[willow lynx]

Not everyone has the same biology, I get that. But we need a term for 'mainly female' and 'mainly male' as well as terms for different mixes and presentations.

[covert zenith]

idk anything about eyes but in a reality where different eye colors need different treatments and you can like change your eye color or whatever, yeah. Sex should have about as much implication as that.

i feel like i've been sayin real stupid shit today i need some water lol

[patent frigate]

correct, but at current, that is all certain things are covered under, which means trans women who need mammograms, or trans men who need cervical cancer screenings get left with the bill because they "don't need those"

[halcyon iris]

No we don't except as medical jargon in emergency situations. Just give people the more accurate information possible without labeling people

[covert zenith]

cis ppl be like "this contradicts what was stated in biology 101" to the biology professor teaching bio 102

[bleak sequoia]

People really don’t understand lies told in education of children make things easier to build on later

Like gravity for example

[twin sail]

I don't know what it would mean to live in a genderless society. I know that I don't, that I'm a constituent and product of a cultural history shaped by a long history of wishing to justify various imperialisms and heterosexual family structures, that this heavily impacts how I experience and construct reality, and for most purposes this is what matters. y'know

[willow lynx]

I don't agree with the way things are done at all, no. But, we can't completely erase biological reasoning from the picture.

[bleak sequoia]

Why

[patent frigate]

i think we're arguing in favor of the same thing with different wording.

[bleak sequoia]

Your argument is that we cant just say the basic description of a thing

[halcyon iris]

Sex binary =/= biology, in fact it simplifies things in ways that are often contrary to biology

[bleak sequoia]

We might need to dip back into all chat

things are getting transphobic again

We just got a 'the gays are best at blaming others' comment lol

[covert zenith]

hey guys we have more idiots in #tts-discussion btw incase you're fullscreened

[bleak sequoia]

Good talks, really fun and productive

[willow lynx]

It's a good simplification though. It can be quickly used as a substitute for a thorough look at someone's biology.

Thank you all for being nice and welcoming. See you around.

[patent frigate]

in emergency cases sure. but i would hate to be put in a men's ward again despite being a woman because "tall + butch = man" in the doctor's eyes.

[covert zenith]

in the the context of the society we talked about where they asked if it was reasonable for sex is denoted in medical history, men's wards wouldn't exist. Just wards

[patent frigate]

true but they currently exist and i was put in one with mostly male nurses

[covert zenith]

yeah that's fucked up

[halcyon iris]

Oh geez

[trail oyster]

that is incredibly messed up

[halcyon iris]

(A long rant on mental wards)

[mossy sable]

as we spoke about @obtuse grail !

here it is

[obtuse grail]

woot

[mossy sable]

there's a lot to look through here but first of all hello ^^

what are your pronouns?

[bleak sequoia]

Who dares necro my thread

[mossy sable]

i dare. i thought it was interesting

[bleak sequoia]

Fair lol

[daring dragon]

I forgot about this thread

[mossy sable]

there's a bit to read through, what happened near the end of it

[obtuse grail]

I'm one of them He/Hims

[mossy sable]

hey hey~

so something I made a while ago. is this diagram

[bleak sequoia]

Basically it ended with me disagreeing with Lori I think? Or Zombified?

Where basically we agreed to disagree because they felt that their attachment to the concept of womanhood based on its historical precedents matter more than the negative utility gender as a whole brings to society

Since we're both civil we just agreed that's the good stopping point because we can't resolve that ethical contention really

[mossy sable]

ah that's an interesting topic.

Feminist Metaphysics (what are the definition of words)

I was reading something a while ago about the definition of woman and the category of woman.

there are several definitions in feminist thought, each with their own issues and problems

I don't fully understand all of it

[obtuse grail]

The negative utility of gender has more to do with the negative utility of society, imo

[mossy sable]

but it is something that feminists interested in metaphysics sought to figure out.

because after all, if you can't define, who is a woman, how can you fight for the rights of women?

But I understand that this is a small branch of feminism and there's so many aspects of feminism beyond this

https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/feminism-gender/ this was the article i read.
do note that due to the date it is written it is behind on the state of the art in feminist metaphysics

[bleak sequoia]

Yea it’s hard to separate them I’d the thing

Is*

Because we define gender by grouping traits and expression but we also have to look at experience of that gender- how can you separate the experience of womanhood for example without the specific experiences of it

TERFS take advantage of that grey zone

[obtuse grail]

I have a hard time here, because IMO intersectionality makes it impossible to separate experiences of womanhood from experiences of blackness, or poverty, or any number of other constructed identities.

[bleak sequoia]

Oh for sure

[mossy sable]

as the above article would say, not all woman have the same traits or experiences, and that there is no unifying experience or trait that all woman have

[bleak sequoia]

Agreed!

[mossy sable]

but early on, when it spoke of that, it was talking about white women primarily at the exclusion of black and brown women

[bleak sequoia]

Im at the grocery right now so it’s a little hard for me to take this on super hardcore right now haha

[obtuse grail]

POP QUIZ TIME, DROP THE GORCERIES DROP EVERYTHNIG

[mossy sable]

no worries i'm just here to go about the gender is a spectrum thing

that's why i shared my chart ^^

[bleak sequoia]

(To give you an idea I’m a double major double Minor- BA in CS Philosophy, minors in Sociology and Queer Studies)

[mossy sable]

awesome! you know more about this than I do

[bleak sequoia]

So I love these take

Talks*

No no no

I’ve studied it a lot but that doesn’t mean I know more or what you do!

[mossy sable]

i am willing to take that bet ^^

A lot of it is too hard for me to understand

I work more with tangential things in advocacy, with a vague understanding of the feminist thought that apparently supports it

[livid crescent]

I wish I had studied more stuff involving gender and sexuality in college. I kind of tangentially touched on it for my paper in my last 400 level course.

[bleak sequoia]

It’s cool- it’s just having any sort of like disagreement in there gets tense

[mossy sable]

why should there be disagreements over metaphysics

that get tense

[bleak sequoia]

C/W: Sexual assault discussion in the book Stone Butch Blues. || Once we read a book called Stone Butch Blues, and in it the Author (Ze, Zin) tells a story of basically them hooking up with someone at a wedding who was yelling transphobic homophobic stuff earlier||

[mossy sable]

there's a lot of external threats to our community

[bleak sequoia]

||And they um, came wearing a strap to the wedding, and ended up hooking up with this person in the dark so they never realized||

||That they weren’t a man||

[mossy sable]

while i do enjoy the mention of stone butch blues

[bleak sequoia]

||And uh, you could hear a pen fucking drop when I said out loud that it was rape||

[mossy sable]

I think we do have to follow the #rules

and also be aware that as queer people we should follow some stronger rules (such as not mentioning sexual assualt without spoilers because we know better)

[bleak sequoia]

Sorry my bad

I’ll edit once I can get to a computer and tag spoilers

[hoary cairn]

Stone Butch Blues is really amazing. That book was very formative to me

[bleak sequoia]

Yea good book

Just it was uh, how can I put this- I took that queer lit and film class the same semester as I was in an ethics 400 course

So it was an interesting read at the time lol

[hoary cairn]

I keep trying to write a glowing comment about it talking about how excellent it is and how good of a book it is and they all feel so shallow to what that book is. It is a beautiful and impactful book that is very hard for me to read due to the content but important for that exact reason

[bleak sequoia]

The book is a hard read for sure- the first few chapters alone were really hard because of (C/W Sexual Assault) ||Basically being extremely related to my own rape story literally in both context and feeling||

Like I legitimately had to set the book down for a few days after that because of how bad it hit me

I think it is a good story- but I think my after thoughts of the book were tainted by the point I talked about earlier, where after that happened my compassion turned into somewhat guarded sympathy

(It doesn't help that when trying to discuss that in class in the midst of still working our way through the book, I kind of just got shouted down by people saying I was wrong and sort of refusing to listen to me on that)

[ionic tiger]

the conditionality of consent is a hard thing to get for some reason

[bleak sequoia]

Which is a shame because it is pretty simple

[ionic tiger]

well it can get complex if you don't have full information but that goes for any kind of non-documented agreement

[trail oyster]

this might be necro'ing again, but that may have been me? my thing though is I don't agree that there is any negative utility inherent to gender - what negative utility we see is caused by forcing people into boxes rather than intrinsic to the idea of gender

so like, if we stop forcing people to conform, let people identify and express how they want, and treat gender more like a landmark than a bucket, I think all the negative utility would go away

[bleak sequoia]

But without that negative utility gender literally does not exist as we know it, so I think trying to separate the two is literally more in my court of abolition

Like if we created a Society with “gender” but no ties to sex (or enforcement of gender norm related to sex) then abolition achieved we did it Reddit

[trail oyster]

hm if that's what you mean by abolition, then I'm on board lol

I wouldn't call that gender abolition, any more than we've abolished "being a star wars fan" because you can identify and express that fandom however you want

[bleak sequoia]

I mean I would because then you no longer have gender roles

It means “woman” and “man” literally mean nothing

As at that point you’ve divorced it from any sort of categorical association or oppression

It’s effectively the same as saying “I’m a goth” it’s a grouping of aesthetic traits from that point forward

[trail oyster]

gender is the identity part though, not the aesthetic part

at least in my mind

[bleak sequoia]

While I agree- that's because of the role the gender role enforcement plays in our society

If you gouge that out, which you would be doing by completely removing its association with sex and expectations of anybody to conform to any specific gender

Society effectively becomes genderless, how you define it is up to you- it becomes aesthetic

Whereas now, because it is heavily associated with sex and oppression of anything that deviates from ASAB, that defines gender's role in identity because it's what roles you want to portray that relate to your self-perception

[trail oyster]

this might be an agree to disagree then, because I don't see it that way. like, I could be a star wars fan, and somebody else could be a star wars fan, but we could have no overlap in which movies or characters we like (aesthetics), but we both find meaning in the term "star wars fan"

[bleak sequoia]

I think in this case of you example where the 'aesthetic' of star wars fan is broad- your defining specific relationship with that aesthetic- in this case 'star wars fan' would be something akin to 'woman'

and like prequel fan, originals fan, sequels fan, etc would be the the refined identity within that group

(e.g. Butch, High Femme, etc)

[trail oyster]

basically yea

[bleak sequoia]

Okay yea cool, but if there is nothing binding you to that, it's something you define based on your self perception

(your love of star wars, and whatever specificity within that)

It is at its core

aesthetic

Its your relation of your self-perception into a societal role

[trail oyster]

I disagree that that is aesthetic at its core

[bleak sequoia]

No at its core

its about expression of self-perception

But that expression becomes aesthetic rather than a mandated role

[trail oyster]

the expression does, but the identity does not

[bleak sequoia]

Yea the self-perception doesn't shift

(Self-Perception, basically the way you view your own identity)

It may shift without external pressure a bit, but thats natural with any change in life

[trail oyster]

right

I just don't see how you're getting from there to "gender becomes purely aesthetic"

[bleak sequoia]

So if Im not being clear-
Even without 'gender' applying, your identity does not change. "Gender" itself more or less becomes a labeling system for that inner self-perception. Gender as it exists now cannot be defined without roles that it includes (Roles including how to behave in society, how to present publicly, voice and tone inflection etc)

So for example one of the problems now is the conflict between identity and gender expectation- a good example is Butch women

[trail oyster]

I would say that the roles are a part of expression, ie forcing people into the box

[bleak sequoia]

Yea exactly

[trail oyster]

but the identity has little to nothing to do with that

[bleak sequoia]

yea yea exactly

so the idea is to shift it from roles to identity completely

[trail oyster]

I'm not sure if we even disagree that much then lol

[bleak sequoia]

rather than our current shitty interplay between the two

So like Butch Women like I said are the perfect example of a strong identity present within womanhood but still contradicting societal gender roles

My ideal world is to completely cut out the role so its just the identity of 'Butch Women'

[trail oyster]

so, a clarifying question: how would you differentiate between say a twink man and a butch woman who present/express nearly identically, but identify differently?

[bleak sequoia]

Most Gender Abolitionists are Gender (Role) abolitionists

[bleak sequoia]

How they define themselves.

Let me put it like this

Is a woman who presents zero femininity still a woman?

[trail oyster]

ok so I think we actually agree, we've just been getting hung up on terms

[trail oyster]

yea ofc

[bleak sequoia]

Perfect yea

So then we agree that its purely identity based and it should be

[trail oyster]

yep

[bleak sequoia]

so yea I think maybe I miscommunicated on the nature of abolition

[trail oyster]

I guess I just got confused because I had a different idea of abolition in my head

[bleak sequoia]

Because Gender (Role) abolition helps people understand it a bit more in depth

Nah Im not talking like us all becoming agender and living without anything

[trail oyster]

yea saying gender (role) abolition makes it a lot clearer to me

[bleak sequoia]

Because ultimately if we got rid of those labels

we'd just come up with new ones based on our identities we end up choosing and defining ourselves along because we tend to flock to like minded people

So whats the point lol

Keep the term women, get rid of any baggage it could carry baddabing badda boom

[trail oyster]

that is a clearer way of stating what I was trying to say in the original discussion a couple days ago

coolio

[gloomy plinth]

i can agree with this being a doctorwho fan 🙂

[wet apex]

same

[cunning basin]

This honestly..