Identity Politics, Feminism and Nationalism
 

Okay, so with the veritable scrummage going on in the "It's Election Time" blog, I figured we open up that whole can of worms and have a structured debate. Because why not, right?

I tried to sum up the comments under the blog into three broad church topics that can be interlinked, so I guess I'll address them one at a time, give my opinions, get the ball rolling and all that. Can we try to be civil with each other? There's a lot of personal bull shit being tossed around over there, I always kinda assume that the moment you switch from theoretical argument to just insulting a person, you've run out of ammo for your points and you're pretty much just running your argument without any evidence. You know, let's kinda just have a brainstorm and see what happens. Also I'll skip the pretext; everyone is familiar with what caused the argument, Trump vs rationality, the nuance of voting for him as a statement vs racists vs pragmatic reasons.

First of all, I wanna put down the argument as to why we need feminism and identity politics currently. I spend a lot of time in my own progressive-leftist bubble so I do often forget there are people who equate feminism to some sort of bizarre man-castrating secret order. I do genuinely understand why some men get this idea; for instance with the "Hugh Mungus" incident, where a woman willfully chooses to be upset by this man's fairly innocuous comment that--according to him--was referencing his weight. It was a stupid over reaction.

Moving on from that, I'd like to put it to the forum that 'feminism' has a definition. There is this argument from MRAs that feminism exists to make men subservient. This is of course bollocks, and to just clarify what feminism is, here's the dictionary definition:

I think this lays it down fairly clearly and simply; feminism is simply the want and fight for equality between the sexes. It is not a crusade against men, it is not even a binary argument. All feminists want is for women, men, intersex etc. to be equal in society and economically. It's a fairly specific definition, it leaves little up for debate. There's no ulterior motive, no subtext, just plain and simple, "we want gender/sex equality".

So, I'm hoping that will allay the go to 'argument', "but but, I've seeeeeen femiNAZIS on the internet," because I think it clearly shows that if a woman on a shaky youtube video is screaming 'death to men', she's not a feminist.

With that in mind, can anyway say feminism is a bad thing?

Now then, 'identity politics' have been turned into a buzzword, with the fascists (and I refuse to call them 'alt-right' just like they refuse to use G/N pronouns) and Breitbart/Fox listeners using the term to discount the trend for politically conscious minority groups to form their own blocs. It's the same way the term, 'triggered' has been hijaked and normalised by the right to refer condescendingly to anyone on the left of the political spectrum who gets upset when social issues are raised and mocked. (This is something that upsets me, as I've had a partner who received years of torment and physical and sexual abuse, including rape, I've seen what 'being triggered' is like, and it's horrific).

Unfortunately, the hardest thing to do when someone gets upset when their pronouns are misused, or when minorities fight their corners so hard, is to be understanding. I'm lucky in the sense that I am a white woman, so therefore I have an inbuilt sense of 'privilege' (groooooan I know, but just hear me out) which sometimes makes me naive to the struggles of other people. For instance, a black Xhosa speaking lesbian woman in England will face more adversity than I do. So will a trans-woman undergoing gender reassignment, who has had to repress who they are for years because of their religious parents. Some people on the left often try to turn people's problems into a hierarchy, but there's such a danger of simplifying and trivialising people's issues by doing this, you're only gonna make people side against you.

Let me pick Nepsotic as an example. I hope you don't mind me doing this, but you've been a critic since I joined this forum, throwing jabs at me often at irrelevant times when it's been uncalled for. Nevertheless, I want to demonstrate that I can empathise with you; I've read some of your blogs, I've seen that you've struggled with mental health and depression and I want to say that sucks. I'm sure you've had to deal with people trivialising your problems, for instance when someone has a bad day at the office and they say, "oh man I'm so depressed, I had so much shit to do today," it takes away from the severity of what you go through. If I was you, my instinct would be to draw inside myself and lash out because of society's stigma of MH issues. In the UK I know it's so shit how it's treated. So I would expect someone such as yourself, not to debate people like me who agree with the 'SJWs' about the importance identity politics, but to understand and maybe actually support the disenfranchised.

Lastly, nationalism. So, I noticed there does seem to be a support for nationalism, not across the board but I do think that it's mad in the 21st century that people are against the mixing of 'races' and the strengthening of borders. For this I'm really more curious to see what people have to say, because I just think that borders should be deconstructed and people should be able to go anywhere and do whatever they want providing they register with the nation they're residing in.

Anyway, that should be enough tinder to get the fire going. As you were, citizens.

Also, apologies if some of that doesn't make sense, I'm perpetually tired at the moment and I can barely keep my eyes open like, all day.

For many, the definition of feminism is different than yours, and quoting the simplest one (which, I agree, should be the standard) might not give you the results you want. Those people like the aforementioned Zarna Joshi and other less mentally stable do call themselves feminists, yet they fight for superiority, not equality.

Equality is also a word that can be described in almost any way. For me the true equality is cloning. Clones are equal, more or less.

That's funny, because the woman on a shaky youtube video screaming 'death to men' does consider herself a feminist. Maybe she doesn't even consider *you* as a true feminist.

Jokes aside, there's a reason for the recent heck-ton of intellectually dishonest feminists start popping up in America saying things they say.

That is, the situation where there's no need for feminism in America.

There's no real wage gap between men and women, women can vote, they can run for presidency (and lose, if they're morally bankrupt puppets of big corporations) be astronauts, millionaires, go to war, do mass presentations about how being morbidly obese is not a bad thing and you should just accept it, pretty much do anything.

That situation causes problems. There are many, many employed people that get paid for fighting inequality among men and women. What do these people do when all the major problems have been resolved? They try to grasp to their jobs as long as they could, desperately attempting to justify their employment with more and more bullshit reasons.

Same applies with other, more developed countries. Meanwhile, numerous women get beaten by their husbands on a regular basis in Saudi Arabia, and Turkey is planning a bill that a man gets cleared from statutory rape if he marries the victom. Those issues are what will never be mentioned by the people in previous paragraph, because there's no money in trying to fight it for them.

In the same way as someone can say communism is a bad thing, despite being so great in theory for many people.

It wasn't exactly 'hijacked' by the right. It was being used by this clearly over-exaggerating woman (I think she considers herself a feminist, but I'm not 100% sure on that), and people thought the sole idea of comparing shell-shock to just being fat is so ridiculous they started mocking it by using the word the same way. It's not the right who came with the original comparison.

I do understand the people who aren't willing to learn at least 50 new words just to be able to refer to that person, it's ridiculous. I don't, however, understand the people who get instantly pumped up when a stranger uses a non-bullshit one, while the stranger didn't even know they're trans and just assumed their gender.

Language is abstract in and of itself. Feminism is also an abstract concept. Therefore, when putting these things together into a monster mash, working definitions and a definitional consensus is hard to come by.

The definition you suggested of feminism is very simple, and (as Varrock pointed out previously) not a working definition that I or many others would necessarily subscribe to. Gender and sex issues are highly complex and nuanced, and whilst at face value Occam's Razor seems intuitively right, I think we're really looking at a sort of Hickam's Dictum. Because of this complexity, different people will subscribe to different definitions, behaviours, and cognitions associated with feminism. Like most abstract things I guess it's very difficult to make all people use one definition.

Anyhoo. IMO Equality is not equity.

Regardless I believe that there is a need for equity between the sexes. From seemingly basic issues (at least they seem basic now) such as stopping discrimination against women when applying/retaining jobs based on pregnancy or offering men the same paternity rights as women's maternity. To more difficult challenges such as global equal education for both genders or breaking through that glass ceiling for women in high-powered management roles. I think that looking at the world and saying that there isn't an issue is, like the above definition of feminism, too simplistic and narrow in scope.

However, there are people, cultures, and societies who would disagree with me. That their gender norms or cognitions about what a woman (or a man) is should be all that the individual can achieve. So many people can (and do) feel that feminism is a bad thing or unnecessary.

I feel like we also have to acknowledge the normalisation and minimisation of things like 'trigger warnings' by the left (I'm looking at you Tumblr). A decade ago trigger warnings were useful tools for people with mental health difficulties to allow them to safeguard themselves from potential distress. Now you can find trigger warnings about the ending of the Harry Potter series.

I like to call that Shitty Life Top Trumps.

You're describing discrimination based on simple in-group/out-group processes, surely?

TL;DR: Almost everything is super complex. Let's go get a beer.

Beer is bad for you.

Wanna grab a beer and play shitty life top trumps?

MY victim card trumps YOUR victim card!

Edit: It's actually good that Sybil Ant is here, because now FA has a mouthpiece to spew shit from without having to blow pus everywhere.

Hi. You really had to be gross about it didn't you.

That's what I do. It's who I am.

Can't you just like disagree with someone without being so vitriolic and personal. It makes for an unhappy atmosphere.

yeah maybe Sybil will be the next one to bend me over their knee and spank me raw for referring to a transvestite as a transgender when i should have called them a transsexual or some fucking shit i don't know

FA knows her dickchicks, man. she's a pro. don't fuck with her.

Maybe try to not be a fucking asshole? I corrected you on a minor thing and you flew into a fit of rage, and now you're being offensive on purpose. But I don't know what I expected from this fucking forum anyway.

I might bend you over my knee, but you might like it.

For real though guys just be nice to each other SHEESH.

I would. But since you're a feminist you're probably fat.

No, but seriously. I'm just being a dick to you because you're a feminist, but it's all in jest.
I've talked to a lot of feminists on the internet and you're legitimately the first one I've met who isn't a cunt, you're actually quite civil, even if I do disagree with your ideas.

I can count like ten Tumblr stereotypes in this one sentence.

Hahaha

Nothing wrong with a little extra cushin' for the pushin'. Not that I am, but you're missing out if you ain't been there.

ANYWAY, OBJECTIFICATION ASIDE.

I don't get what you disagree with me about? Do you think women should be equal or, as Rex better said, have equity to (with?) men? If yes, we're the same, bro. If not, I mean, that's your loss.

Oh, they are completely equal in the Western world. This is why feminists annoy me, because they get up in arms about the tiniest shit when women over in Islamic countries are actually oppressed, living in a legitimate rape culture and patriarchy. They don't seem to care about that. In fact, they defend it, saying that it's their culture and that we should "respect it". That's fucking stupid.

I didn't respond to your original post because it's just the same old shit I've heard before and it gets tiring. Varrok actually made a pretty good rebuttal though and you failed to respond to it. How come?

Let's have a more interesting debate. Name one straight up oppression women face in the West and we'll talk about that.

I mean, there's a little extra cushin', and then there's mounds of butter and cottage cheese in a sack.

for a start you didn't just politely correct me, you did it like a cunt which was unwarranted considering i was being jocular. you were looking for an argument, you were looking to get offended, so i thought i'd oblige and try to give you something to be offended about.

yeah, you like complaining about the forum. you've been doing it since the day you first staggered onto here. i can't remember a time when you weren't pissing and moaning about us. i remember you on Oddchat whining about everyone non-stop, actually wishing certain members would get banned (who you don't even know) and complaining about your fucking life. yeah, at this stage i'm just being offensive on purpose, mainly because i genuinely don't give a flying fuckarette anymore. most of the people i really care about on here have either formally left, very rarely make contact or just disappeared one day. then there are people like you, the 'replacements'. wandering around making picky remarks and spoiling fun and getting TRIGGERED whenever someone dares make fun of someone else in an innocent way just to alleviate the boredom. you think it's bad now? were you ever here to see OANST or DI start raping someone's soul? this place right now is fucking tranquil (and dead) compared to how it used to be, and has been that way since before you decided to grace us with your presence.

if you don't like it here, fuck off and take your perpetual moaning with you. i won't miss you, that's for fucking sure. compared to other characters that have been and gone, who i still miss and think about to this day, your contribution to this community is insulting to me.

and yes i know i'm derailing the thread. i don't give a fuck.

im still here ma ;_;

and i'm glad you are. honestly. i've had the privilege of watching you grow and develop here over the years. i'm not gonna list people but i think anyone who knows me knows if they're included in that or not.

Okay maybe what this thread needs is some actually critiqueable bigotry, so here I go.

I can understand where MA is coming from. I remember years ago on this forum I was condescendingly told by Wings Of Fire "Ugh, gender does not equal gentials doncha know" as if it were supposed to be the most obvious fucking thing in the world. Actually he was right (for the wrong reasons), because gender is a class that nouns can have in Indo-European languages. Because "man" and "woman" in every language were different genders, gender became a metaphor for sex. Then somewhere along the line someone (probably Americans) felt uncomfortable saying a dirty word like sex so gender became an accepted synonym.

This redundancy has been seized to validate the trans ideology of "Actually I am a real woman because biological sex is irrelevant, womanhood is all about your gender." in complete disregard to popular and historical usage and without anyone ever actually bothering to explain what gender is.

The narrative used to be "I have a woman's brain trapped in a mans body" but it turns out the idea of a "woman's brain" has some ridiculously sexist implications. So now what they go with is the paradoxical "a woman is someone who identifies as a woman", no further questions asked. Oh and despite the assertion that womanhood has nothing to do with biology, the universal route for a transwoman is to undergo HRT for some reason. Anyone who complains about doctors assigning sex at birth and then alters their body to look somewhat like the sex they magically identify with is a hypocrite.

So with these layers of contradictions its only natural that sometimes someone like MA falls afoul of the cognitive-dissonoance-supressing party line. The usual response when someone, out of ignorance, says something unorthodox on trans issues is to imply that they're some sort of awful bigot. Recently their was some drama in The States concerning transwomen's right to use women's facilities such as change rooms and toilets. Apparently it's some sort of hate crime to think that women's opinions on the matter should be considered, after all these facilities are segregated on the basis of sex (not magical brain identity) to give women safety from physical and sexual violence.

EDIT
I don't want to give the wrong impression here. I acknowledge gender dysphoria as a serious mental health issue and acknowledge the psychiatric consensus that the best way to alleviate such is to let the sufferer present as a woman. I of course used preferred pronouns out of common courtesy. Within reasonable limits I think transwomen should be treated like like an otherwise real women. What I lament is the the ideology being pushed by some.

Yeah, but I hardly think someone who undergoes HRT and various surgeries is doing so just so they can harass women in bathrooms. Both sides are dumb. All sides are dumb. People on this planet are dumb.

Well, it's true. Men and women's brains have loads of differences, but that contradicts the feminist rhetoric of "men and women are the same in every way!"

I'm not implying that. I'm not even saying they should be barred. I just found it disturbing that from the onset women's opinions on the matter were completely disregarded.

Also I'm pretty sure that requiring HRT to access women's spaces is considered problematic in itself.

Fucking. This.

People like Anita Sarkeesian need that statement printed on their fucking head. Going after how females are represented in video games; The smallest non-issue in the first world and making out it's the biggest crisis facing woman everywhere. All the while, Ignoring actual problems woman face in other countries that DO actually need help.

...Also hi again.

You do know that your favourite YouTube entertainer; Jim Sterling, was on her side, right?

Is this a joke?

This thread makes me want to shut down OWF for good.

Can people please continue to report offensive posts? I don't want to have to read this shit in any detail.

What's wrong with feeling pride for your country? The concept of retaining cultural identity is a recurring issue in history (heck, Mudokons assimilating into the oppressive, globalist Industrialist culture is no different). You see communities of minorities all over the world that, rather than mix in with the majority, hold on to their culture. This is a good thing in terms of diversity, but, if you look at America and Europe, you see that immigrants' culture can often be incompatible with the local one.

Of course, we've been living in a sort of "Progressive Age." The immigrants don't want to assimilate, they want their new home to change to their whims. Sure, why not let them feel at home? But shame on those intolerant bigots who dare point to the rising crime (especially rape... Sweden is becoming the rape capital of the world). Or the fact that the "guests" are tearing up their tax-funded shelters because they ran out of candy.

With the fruits of multiculturalism going sour, many reject the heads-in-the-sand response to these ingrates loudly demanding their way (as in, from a war-torn country), or the high way. After being lashed by the whips of political correctness one too many times, the people of the Western world are taking action to ensure their descendants live in a safe world.

Yes, ideally, people could fluidly migrate around the world, but there's no denying that this mindset has led to disaster. And, if one were inclined to believe in the theories regarding a sinister globalist agenda... It's now or never. Democracy is the last line of defense. And from this comes Brexit, Trump, Le Pen... It's not going to stop any time soon, at least quietly.

Okay, there's a lot to get through here. People have asked me for responses to some issues, quoted me et cetera, and I'm sorry if my replies feel slow; I really struggle to put thoughts into words so I've spent a while taking stuff in and just trying to work out how to respond. I'm gonna do my best but bare with me if I can't adequately answer everyone's issues straight off the bat.

I'm a firm believer in statistics first, empirical evidence second, conjecture last. I see your dismissive statement that basically boils down to, "there is perfect gender equality in the western world," and it frustrates me. Not because of the sentiment, but because there is so much evidence to the contrary that you're being almost willfully naive. You cannot make a statement without proof to back it up.

There are still significant hurdles for women and intersex to jump over before we reach a degree of socio-economic parity.

It is often all to easy to dismiss "1st world" problems under the pretenses that someone somewhere has it worse. Why worry about a pay gap in France when women in Burkina Faso are dealing with horrific FGM? It is important that feminism remains an international movement, but we cannot export western feminism to these places because it would not adequately solve or target the problems women in less developed nations face. We can provide teaching, literature and methods to help feminist movements in nations such as Iran, Pakistan and Nigeria, however we cannot fight their battles for them. Moreover, women in these nations do not want us to do so, because if we did it would take their empowerment away.

So let me address specifically western gender inequality for now.

There is still a massive gender pay gap that varies across the Occident; the ONS has shown that the mean pay gap in the UK is 9.4%. In Croatia, the number is around 34%. To put that into perspective, if you are a man earning 10 euros/hr in Rijeka, your female counterpart will be making 6.60 euros/hr. I am fortunate in that I live in the UK, where the pay gap is shrinking, and the feminist movement is continuing to pressure businesses to make sure that we reach parity in the near future. A lot of pay gap differences in the UK--I feel--are hangovers of old attitudes towards a woman's "role" in society; something that has faded significantly after the 90s, as new generations are brought up to view one another as equal.

In regards to your comment about Islam; I personally believe that the issue is incredibly complex, and a lot of liberals have this sort of quantum theoretical crisis where they simultaneously call people who disagree with the tenets of Islam as racist, whilst decrying the treatment of women. This is why liberals are shitty. I believe Islam is a disgusting religion, as are most religions, however I believe that Muslims themselves do not necessarily have to be shitty people, obviously. Nevertheless, there are fundamental issues with Islam that many moderates hold, such as that same-sex marriage is wrong (I believe about 34% of Muslims in the UK believe this, according to a Channel 4 poll, which is much higher than the national average). We can fix this through comprehensive education, and over time immigrant Muslims will naturally convert to the social conventions of more acceptance. As it stands, I believe Islam is a fundamental evil of society, but there is an obvious distinction to be made between its teachings and its followers.

Sexual harassment and a pay-gap higher than almost any other industry are not small non-issues. I'm surprised you'd bring up gaming industry specific examples considering it's one of the most toxic hobbies for a woman. A lot of that is down to a sheer lack of accountability, and I think perhaps men not wanting to share a space that has traditionally been a hold out for masculinity in the past.

I mean, even from personal experience; the amount of times I've had letchy comments from gross dweebs both online and offline is disgusting, and when you add in the fact that these people often don't know how to deal with rejection, there is a very real threat of physical violence or just the most awful harassment. If you are conventionally attractive woman 'gamer', you have to run a gauntlet, be that at gamer expos or just dealing with online gamers who know what you look like. I have female gamer friends who just pretend to be men online so as not to deal with the disgusting shit that spews like fountains from the mouths of these sweaty manlets.

Anyway, I will reply to Moxco's, UTS' and Varrok's posts in more detail after work, but damn guys, I'm surprised at the amount of sheer willful ignorance in the face of fairly insurmountable statistical and quantifiable gender discrimination.

Which is funny because I don't use tumblr except to post vaporwave shit I make when I'm bored.

@Sybil Ant, could you refer to the points made in this short video?

I don't need to (although I will after work), that video is supported by information from the AEI; a pro-corporatist, conservative think tank that has objective motives to dismiss the wage gap. They've been caught up in numerous scandals, including trying to bribe scientists to state that global warming is a myth. Oh and they also promoted Charles Murray's anti-regulation crusade to try and dismantle laws aimed to protect labour and the environment.

If you provide a credible source of statistical evidence against the pay-gap, I'll be inclined to take it more seriously.

e: ok fuck it watched it. The first 90 seconds is just posturing. The statistic she talks about regarding the wage gap is stupid. Yes the wage gap is a mean collective representation across many industries, but she speaks as though if you dug further you wouldn't find a million microcosms that lead to the same outcome. The rest of the video is just "oh but women don't go for higher paying jobs." And it's funny that the narrator (who laughably is the token anti-feminist woman) doesn't delve any deeper as to why women don't 'go for higher paying jobs'. Beyond that it's just willful ignorance and trite arguments.

A little something we callｔｈｅ ｇｌａｓｓ ｃｅｉｌｉｎｇ．

I never said they weren't. If Anita brings that up in her videos, fair enough. I was merely referencing the very minor stuff she brings up about the industry I've heard about.

Gaming is a toxic hobby regardless of gender. That's mainly down to the age and immaturity of certain people, And the fact there are almost no consequences for their actions. I won't deny woman can get it much worse than men in online games and on the internet in general. If a game is filled with angsty teenage boys, I think you have to expect it. It a luck of the draw who you find online. And it's not only woman either. If you are different in any way such as having a disability or the way you speak, You're a target for those morons.

As for the attractive woman gamer interacting with other gamers, I think it's simply the fact that the majority of gamers are men and the majority of men are heterosexual. And so if an attractive person from the opposite sex also enjoys and partakes in the same hobby, that's bound to strike a chord? Nothing negative about it.

Now if an individual starts to harass and demean the other person. That's when it become a problem. But either way yeah, I can see how that can be intimidating.

Obviously, I cannot imagine fully what woman go through, I'm just giving my two cents and saying I think it's very dependant on the person or people you encounter. If that upsets you, then I apologise in advance. No way I'm I saying they're aren't any issues within the gaming industry. Far from it.

The average gamer age is going up and hopefully, a lot of them are growing up along with it. Although I admit that's unlikely :(

I have a friend who also did that a while ago. But nowadays she just doesn't even mention her gender as she says it isn't really relevant. She's there to play a game with her friends. If she goes on mic to the server, I've not once heard someone reply back in the typical "ohmygosh are you a girl?" And if they have, it's been a joke.

Again. It's a luck of the draw who you find online and how you deal with the fuckers.

And just like that. Now suddenly I'm on Anita's side! Jim Fucking Sterling son can't be wrong!

In all seriousness. No, I didn't know that. But it doesn't surprise me that much nor does it change a thing.

Fair enough, was just wondering.

The reason I'm done with this thread is because I haven't seen a single solitary point from Sybil Ant that isn't generic feminist shit I've heard before, and the posts are kind of giving me a headache. I'll let Varrok respond to it.

I don't think any of the data presented in the video is falsified, regardless of motives of the people behind it.

If the issue *isn't* women earning less for the same work than men, but rather women not taking higher-paying jobs, then it should not be considered a gender wage gap.

I do not live in the UK, but I can say with complete certainty that in Poland, which is, frankly speaking, considered a less developed country than UK or USA, women *can* take higher-end jobs, and they do. Coming from my first-hand experience: There are plenty of women in the company I'm currently working for, on both the lower- and higher-paying positions, and that company doesn't have diversification as a goal (a.k.a. they don't really give a damn).

UK and USA, however, do have strong activist groups that have gone out of their way to push in their diverse agenda to the point that some companies are forced to hire women just for the sake of diversity. They also have laws against sexism at work, to prevent the companies, to, example given, from paying women less than men. In my mind, that makes it ridiculous to think somehow women got it worse there than here.

The disregard for popular and historical usage is basically a means to try to break away from that popular and historical usage, as the current models of gender differ from them in significant ways. After all, if you’re of the mindset that the historic usage is outdated and incorrect, why continue to use it?

People do try to explain what gender is, but it’s not so easy to define when we disentangle it from sex, and especially when the existing idea of it is so well-entrenched in society and so thoroughly entangled in human identity.


There is so much tied up in gender identity that if we start to unpack it all and try to categorize everyone neatly, it would be impossible to keep track of.

Large parts of society associate physical attributes (sexual characteristics, body shape, body hair etc) with gender. Then there’s physical presentation (voice, body language, mannerisms, clothing, hair color, makeup etc), hobbies and tastes, career and skills, personality, and many other invisible things we consider when addressing another person – many of which can vary by culture. And let’s not forget chromosomes, which are not as black-and-white as often thought; and yes, even brain structure.

So how do we categorize gender? Genetics aren’t a certain identifier, brain activity isn’t a certain identifier, neither are personality, presentation of appearance, body shape, or sexual organs (as you’ve already pointed out, there’s a separation of sex and gender).

In practice, man and woman, male and female are pretty blurred categories, and there should be room for people to identify freely as one or the other or something else.

So rather than try to formalize gender categories from a huge quantity of nebulous and unreliable personal attributes, does it not make more sense to listen to how someone asks you to identify them?


What you’re describing isn’t quite true, though – not every trans person seeks hormones, or to modify their body. Most do, but not all. And I think it’s understandable that someone who wants to be recognized as female would choose to undergo treatments that would make that happen.

I don’t see the hypocrisy you assert here. Let’s consider these two issues: the criticism of assigning sex at birth, and undertaking changes to the body to be perceived as the correct gender.

Critics of assigning sex at birth argue that doing so is a conflation of sex and gender – once a baby’s sex is known, its gender is also presumed from that point on. This perpetuates the current attitude of conflating sex with gender, and sets up the situation where someone who feels their gender doesn’t match the way society perceives and categorizes them might feel they have the ‘wrong’ body.

Some people who work to alter their body to match their perceived gender do so out of a need for their body to match what society tells them it should, and others feel the need to do this because of a biological mismatch of brain and body. Either way, this mismatch of sex and gender will massively contribute to dysphoria for a lot of trans people.

Gender is one of the social constructs that people use to identify one another. It is built up from many different attributes of a person and society’s views of those attributes, and one significant attribute that society judges is the body. Even if we accept that sex and gender are different, we can also recognize that society still strongly associates the two; so someone wishing to make a change to better fit how society identifies them and relieve their own dysphoria is not a hypocrite.


So, this is the part where I try to respectfully point out some of the latent bigotry in what you’ve written here without trying to make it sound like an attack on you.

A lot of the language you’re using here (e.g. “magical brain identity”, “let the sufferer present as a woman”, “otherwise real women”) strongly implies that you have a problem with trans people. For example, “otherwise real women” implies that you perceive a trans woman as fake; a man pretending to be a woman. That’s a misunderstanding of what a trans person is striving for – they’re not trying to fake, they are trying to be. For someone who does not consider themselves to be a man and does not wish to be perceived as a man, the implication that they’re fake is little better than explicitly denying their gender identity.

This may not at all be what you meant, but this is how it can come across – and this is why people will often leap to correct problematic language, even if that comes across as annoying or pedantic.

All that being said, I do take on board your point about condescension – I think a big pitfall of progressive movements is the assumption of knowledgeability in who they talk to, and an assumption of bigotry if someone doesn’t immediately agree on presenting ideas to them. I try to avoid that, and I hope you don’t feel that’s how I’ve come across in this post.


To my knowledge, opinions on the matter were never assessed based on gender. There was a big stink about the laws “protecting women” by stopping “men entering women’s bathrooms”, but that narrative was pushed by men and women.


To my knowledge, people like Anita Sarkeesian don’t present their chosen issue as the biggest crisis – it’s an important issue to them, but not necessarily to everyone. There shouldn’t be anything wrong with choosing to focus on one issue over another.

The other problem, as Sybil has already pointed out, is that feminists don’t have a lot of influence on problems in other countries. Consider how well recent Western interventions in the Middle East have gone – if Westerners simply tried to impose gender equality on those countries, how well do you think it would work?

"I don't have any proper responses to the topic, so I'm not gonna try to formulate any."

Forming a mental blacklist of "this is stupid" for anything you don't agree with, and thinking anyone who doesn't agree with you "is part of the problem" (by the way, I didn't quite like that) is a dangerous mentality to have.

No, I'm not simply calling you out. It affects the best of us (it's why we all prefer some sources over others). But this attitude is exactly what is causing a decline in liberalism. Slog Bait said it best:

You honestly think that?
What really happened is I began writing a fucking essay on why the wage gap is bullshit and decided to throw in the towel on this entire thread when I accidentally pressed back on my phone and lost it all.

I mean, sure, think what you want. It's too tiring at this point. I could go the route that takes way less effort and just post some videos explaining why you're wrong but no doubt you'll just use them for character assassination so I'm not going to bother.

But, it is a stupid video. Not Varrok, the video. It's quantifiably wrong.

I typically try to stay out of this kind of debate, because I feel like all the problems that people bring up, while they do concern me, are difficult for me to have a meaningful opinion about. But I'll say a few words, if only just for the sake of speaking my mind.

When it comes to gender identity, I've met three people who would, as I understand it, felt they had a different gender than their sex and actively pursued ways to change that: (two of them were on hormones, the last one insisted being called Sandra rather than his given name.) I never questioned their beliefs or why they wanted to do. The main reason I didn't was because their reasons were obviously very personal and even if I could understand them, it would not be something I could relate well to. And besides, apart from having to remember to say Sandra, they didn't cause me any grief, so why start any trouble over it?

Myself, I don't think a lot about my gender or my sex. Mostly because I find it difficult to understand the want to identify at all. So when someone tells me they identify one way or the other, my usual response will be along the lines of "That's nice" and move on. I've had it previously misconstrued as disagreeing, but it's more that I just don't know what to make of it and try to carry on with life as it was before.

I will say this though, if someone looks like a man, but wants to be addressed as a woman, or vice versa or some other permutation of that which requires a different pronoun than what I immediately judge appropriate, I hope they don't get upset if I get it wrong every once in a while, because I probably will. Not out of hate, but out of a mix of forgetfulness and force of habit.

So that's all I have to say about gender. Now the next topic, feminism.

It's difficult to talk about feminism for the same reasons it's difficult to talk about Christianity; it's very much about the person more than it is the group.

My experience with feminism is limited to a few people and the internet, where, more often than not, the word feminist means a person who hates men, uses Tumblr, is obese and all those other negative connotations. I have never personally interacted with one of these. All I've seen is people who talk about them, laugh at them, explain to me how feminism isn't needed and link me videos that mock them.

Somehow, I doubt these "feminazis" are as omnipresent as they are made out to be. My experience with people I've actually met who identified as feminists or who I'd describe as feminists, is much less exciting. Very few people I've met have ever described themselves to me as a feminist, but one that I remember was a girl who I never remember hearing anything unreasonable from. The closest thing was a class discussion about a girl in an American college who made a pornographic video or something to fund her way into college and was promptly expelled for it. She, naturally, did not think this was terribly fair. "It's her decision, it's her body, she can do what she likes, it's not affecting them." was the gist of her argument. The only argument I heard against it was that if they didn't expel her, it might send the wrong impression about the college. Myself, I don't really think it's the school's business, but I was undecided and still am somewhat.

My personal experience of interacting with feminists is fairly limited, as I said. It seemed to me that she pursued feminism as Sybil describes it, so for me, I'd say that's not too far off what your average feminist wants. I would like to see a new word for this pursuit though, since I feel that might help gain some distance from the emergence of the more extreme views that are sometimes seen on the internet.

I don't identify as a feminist. I don't really know if I support the idea of equality between sexes, since that seems impossible to me, due to inherent differences. I support both having access to the same opportunities, because I don't see any significant downside to allowing it. It seems unlikely to me that both sexes are going to be just as good at all of them though, but I guess that's obvious.

I think it would be wrong to say there is no place for a feminist movement these days. I don't want to say what they should be doing, because all the issues that I think are important, I find extremely difficult to put into words that don't sound contradicting. There is, in my experience, a significant difference between how men interact with other men and how men and women interact with women and men (leaving out how women interact with women, because all I know is what I've eavesdropped on and what I've seen them do). I understand why this is and I would say that there's always going to be a difference, but I also think that it's understandable to want to change that, at least to some degree.

I'm currently hungover, so I think I'll stop for now, maybe say some more about this, or talk about nationalism.

I spent the last 10 minutes trying to come up with a witty comment to leave my mark on this thread. But you know. Fuck you all. The pay gap is bullshit, feminists are whining bitches, men and women are not equal, never will be and never should be. Goodbye.

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/...20130808210140

Insightful.