Gender politics and liberalism
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Author Topic: Gender politics and liberalism  (Read 3160 times)
Antonio the Sixth
Antonio V
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« Reply #25 on: March 28, 2013, 03:15:38 PM »

As this forum eloquently shows, there are lots of liberal guys who have a complete blind spot on gender issues. This deeply saddens me.

well, i don't think it would be 100% honest to portray feminism as attacked purely from the right. feminism for a long time was largely a movement of middle class white cishet women - the NOW didn't want lesbians involved when they first formed iirc, and there's still plenty of hatred towards transwomen from even mainstream feminists because they take social constructivism to its logical ends i.e. abolishing gender.

I'm not surprised that many feminists in the past may have held certain awful views, just like many progressive crusaders of the late 19th-early 20th centuries were deeply racist, or like many civil right activists were raging homophobes. Unfortunately, being on the vanguard on one issue doesn't necessarily entail being on other issues.

That said, I'm pretty sure 99% of feminists today are also strong supporters of LGBT causes.

Oh, and welcome back BTW! Smiley

a lot of them certainly are, idk, maybe i've been skewed by being on tumblr for a long time and seeing some of the more vile segments of the community.

and thanks Smiley

I don't know either, honestly, but that just seems really weird to me. A feminist who's anti-LGBT is the epitome of completely missing the point IMO.
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The Mikado
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« Reply #26 on: March 28, 2013, 07:22:13 PM »

I don't much care for the equals sign logo, but that's mainly because HRC is a terrible, terrible organization and I don't like the way they've tried to shove their way into the front of this case after opposing bringing it forward to begin with.  To me, the logo is a sign that a person has been duped by HRC into thinking that supporting them actually advances gay rights.
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Kitteh
drj101
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« Reply #27 on: March 28, 2013, 08:27:45 PM »

As this forum eloquently shows, there are lots of liberal guys who have a complete blind spot on gender issues. This deeply saddens me.

well, i don't think it would be 100% honest to portray feminism as attacked purely from the right. feminism for a long time was largely a movement of middle class white cishet women - the NOW didn't want lesbians involved when they first formed iirc, and there's still plenty of hatred towards transwomen from even mainstream feminists because they take social constructivism to its logical ends i.e. abolishing gender.

I'm not surprised that many feminists in the past may have held certain awful views, just like many progressive crusaders of the late 19th-early 20th centuries were deeply racist, or like many civil right activists were raging homophobes. Unfortunately, being on the vanguard on one issue doesn't necessarily entail being on other issues.

That said, I'm pretty sure 99% of feminists today are also strong supporters of LGBT causes.

Oh, and welcome back BTW! Smiley

a lot of them certainly are, idk, maybe i've been skewed by being on tumblr for a long time and seeing some of the more vile segments of the community.

and thanks Smiley

I don't know either, honestly, but that just seems really weird to me. A feminist who's anti-LGBT is the epitome of completely missing the point IMO.
I'm quite sure that basically all feminists still alive today are pro-LBG, but trans issues are contentious within a minority of feminists. It has to do with the social constructionist view of gender, and within the feminists who still believe in that (it's definitely fallen out of favor with most feminists, or at least the most radical forms have), many say that the concept of someone being trans implies some kind of innateness to gender more than biological differences and what is socially imposed. That belief is mostly limited to older, second-wave feminists, whereas the vast majority of third-wave feminists do accept trans people and are some of the strongest pro-trans-rights/anti-transphobia people out there. A lot of it has to do with the ideological differences between second- and third-wave varieties of feminism, particularly the third wave's emphasis on intersectionality and including the concerns of other groups like people of color, LGB, and, yes, T people under the umbrella of feminism. Also the fact that pure social constructionism w/r/t gender is a minority view among feminists nowadays, and most (not all though) feminists now adopt some mixed view of social constructionism, i.e. some part of gender seems to be innate, but the vast majority of gender roles are socially constucted. Part of that shift has been because of increasing science on the matter, see for example David Reimer. There are also some feminists nowadays who have tried to reconcile trans people and social constructionism, which is not impossible IMO.

The overall point is that the vast majority of feminists are very positive about trans issues nowadays, but there is still a minority that is not. To Windis's thing about tumblr, there are some particularly...infamous anti-trans feminists on there that do stuff like trying to find all the personal info (name, address, phone numbers, etc) of trans people on the internet (often specifically targeting those who aren't very out/public about it) and publish it online.

Ahh, what the internet does to people... *sigh*
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Antonio the Sixth
Antonio V
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« Reply #28 on: March 28, 2013, 08:59:32 PM »

Thank you DRJ for these clarifications! My knowledge of feminism is superficial and I admit I don't really have a strong grasp on its various branches and currents of thought.

Anyway, based on what you said, I think I would qualify as a "social constructionist", in the sense that I believe the presence of two X chromosome or of a X and an Y does not predetermine anything about one's personality (or only does on a so marginal level that it's not worth talking about), and that all the behavioral differences observed in society between men and women can be found to have a root in socialization.

I never imagined that this line of reasoning could be used to justify anti-transsexual bigotry, and those who would do considerably miss the point. In my opinion (again, I know nothing about the subject, so apologies if I say anything stupid), transsexuality simply means that one identifies more closely to the set of social norms associated to people of an opposite biological gender. So isn't this basically the same quest as that of feminism? Both seek to free themselves from an identity that society tries to impose on them.
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