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America is at a fourth turning, we have had a revolutionary war,
civil
war, world war and are due for a fourth, this time, gender, war
around 2020, 80 years after 1940, and initiated by 4 years of
trump,
white nationalism, Fox News etc.
The war will be won of course by the advent of human
powered
flapping
flight, but I digress.
Knowing this there should be an online registry for men who are ok
with women running things. It can be like a social network where
false registries can be disputed. This page can serve as the
beginning of the registry and an opportunity for the opposition to
show its true colors.
Soft Power.
bloke with 10% brain, 90% fluid in the old noggin
http://www.sciencea...ng-of-consciousness
[not_morrison_rm, Feb 13 2017]
Zer x-ray photo
http://www.sciencea...ages/brainscan.jpeg
[not_morrison_rm, Feb 13 2017]
6 Feminist Myths That Will Not Die
http://time.com/322...-gap-myth-feminism/
[Voice, Feb 20 2017]
Female pedestrian signals ignite debate in Australia
http://www.bbc.co.u...-australia-39188096
Why ? [8th of 7, Mar 07 2017]
Formed behavioral gender is now a worldwide topic of discussion
http://www.bbc.com/...s-trending-39271690
Started March 10. Click through links to Teen Vogue > BuzzFeed > Channel 4 for the backstory. [notexactly, Mar 16 2017]
women of Paris can wear the trousers (legally) after 200-year-old law...
http://www.independ...ll-and-8480666.html
[not_morrison_rm, Mar 17 2017]
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White Supremacism, shirley? Fascism is right-wing and nationalistic, and generally racist, but caucasians don't have a monopoly on racism (vide Idi Amin). |
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<bookmarks page, anticipating upcoming opportunity to call Godwin's Law> |
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I'm all in favour of women running things. After all, you don't want somebody in charge who you can't control. |
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[Max] you always make me laugh. Thank you. |
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<discreetly edges away from [MB] and towards blast shelter> |
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<reaches for remote lock for blast shelter door> |
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It's only 1,359 days until the next presidential election, what could possibly go wrong? |
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There can be no feminist men or feminist trans women.
There can be men and trans women who sympathise with
feminism. It's a vital distinction. Otherwise there is a risk
that there would be a "woman's movement" run by men and
trans women, in other words a men's movement which
purports to know better than women what's in their
interests. |
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// It's only 1,359 days until the next presidential election// Sp.: 450 |
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Depends on which president you're talking about, I had in mind the president of the Heckmondwike wheel tappers and shunters... |
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//There can be no feminist men or feminist trans women. |
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Debatable...some blokes have been kind of handy "George Lansbury MP resigned his seat so that he could fight a by-election on the suffrage question." and to say to feminist trans women they aren't women seems to be a bit rich.. |
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// a men's movement which purports to know better than women what's in their interests // |
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It's worked fine for all of recorded history... |
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This could get long, complicated and fractious, [not]. I
would make a distinction between gender identity on the
one hand and gender on the other. Gender just is class.
The prototype, and there are deviations from this of
course, is that women exist by selling the means of
reproduction, like the proletariat exist by selling their
labour, and in return they do a lot of unpaid work which
is essential for producing the next generation of paid
workers and supporting the current generation, whereas
men exist by engaging in paid labour and delegating tasks
to women such as housework and reproduction, so
effectively they are the bourgeoisie. However, clearly
these traditional roles have drifted in recent history, but
then so have economic classes in other senses, for
instance many more people own shares than they used
to. |
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There's an element of class consciousness and false
consciousness in gender, and the problem is that having
been, for example, socialised into the male role by, for
example, producing the kind of wall of text you may be
currently perusing, men in the sense of people who are
socialised as men, as opposed to people who identify as
women or men, which is a somewhat different issue,
though connected, will tend to use language as a barrier
to communication and a means to dominate and assert
superiority, and it is very hard indeed to fight against
that. I know because I've tried and failed. That means
that a man/trans woman (and trans women are women,
yes) is a dangerous entity to have in the women's
movement because the power will tend to gravitate to
her/him due to social conditioning. Moreover, because
we have been perceived as male during our formative
years we're likely to be earning more, have higher social
status and so on. Yes, the GD does take a heavy, even
fatal, toll, but because we've been perceived as male we
have been taken more seriously by strangers than if we
had been perceived as female from the start. We are
women, but we absolutely have male privilege and we
have no place in feminism except as allies. |
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But, having probably peed you off royally, I would also say
this: a left-handed brain is a left-handed person, a
neurotypical brain is a neurotypical person, a dyslexic
brain is a dyslexic person and a brain with typically
female corpus striatum etc is a female brain and
therefore a female person, and another word for female
person is woman. |
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Hmm, the brain is a funny thing, Exhibit A some French bloke who basically lost 90% of his brain, but could still hold down a job in the civil service. See link. |
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Just a minute, what about our facetious and intentionally provocative anno ?
Doesn't that deserve some sort of irate riposte ? |
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<takes on a maniacal tone> |
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// another word for female person is woman. // |
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// woman // Sp. "domestic slave". |
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C'mon, have a go. Give it your best shot. |
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Nahh, I'm too knackered, getting on for midnight.. |
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Wading through Seveneves, and it's not that good.. |
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You're conflating "woman" with "feminist". |
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And mean "feminine" when you say "feminist". |
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If you were to graph how the word "feminism" is used you'd find 3 major spikes: |
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1. hates men, penises, patriarchy, obelisks, etc.
2. aspires to fill a traditional man's role, as a man would
3. spreads feminine values (usually in the context of existing predominantly male values)
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I don't see how actual physical equipment, natural or modded, is a prerequisite. Though #3 would conceivably be more naturally done by a natively equipped woman, with female brain wiring... much like - other considerations notwithstanding - men are generally better at peeing standing up than women. |
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<starts to jump up and down in frustration> |
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// You're conflating "woman" with "feminist". // |
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More like conflating "woman" with "person"... |
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<looks round for cat poo to thow> |
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<flicker of regret at outstanding success of previous cat extermination campaigns> |
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<resolves to ask [MB] how to get a rise out of annotators - he's good at that> |
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<I'll tell you when you've asked nicely enough to be let out of the blast shelter. You might also want to ask yourself whether a blast shelter is designed to keep the blast out, or in.> |
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<notes large olive-drab painted box in corner> |
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<opens lid>
.
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.
.
<tries to remember if it's the red wire or the blue wire you're supposed to cut> |
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<bites knuckles and gibbers> |
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Defining a tomato or avocado as fruit doesn't do anything for the practical purposes of making a salad. That is, assuming you enforce the use of a traditional salad definition as drawn up by a small group of reactionary saladists sometime in the last century. |
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It may be factually 100% correct, it might be a fair taxonomic distinction, but I'm not sure whether, on balance, it helps, salad-wise. |
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I'd really like to help build a better world - and think that anyone who wants to help, should feel free to do so inclusively, irrespective of their race, gender or identity. Pretty much anything else is a distraction (...and as such, should be trampled into dust beneath the shiny march of the jackbooted, and ideologically pure. Only once the corruption is completely obliterated and my version of the world emerges amidst the steaming rubble will we see the shining light of emancipation etc ) |
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Except that last bit, because ferrous. |
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And maybe that first bit, because reducing a meaningful problem into a fruit/vegetable analogy probably isn't necessarily helping either. |
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Are good intentions enough? |
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Okay, we all know that the dictionary definition of feminism is equality for women. The thing is there's a different word that means the same thing: egalitarianism. Some would reply that feminism is different because it seeks to create equality with a focus on improving the lot of women. And this is where they start the cognitive dissonance. |
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Men are much more likely to die on the job, be murdered, be homeless, have shorter lifespans, and go to war. Men work and work hard, as is expected. They pay more taxes, work their way up to high positions, and along the way they have treated women like queens. |
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But that wasn't good enough. No, when a feminist demands equality she isn't demanding equal numbers of nurses, equal numbers of desk jobs in the same career, equal numbers of graduates, or adjusting schools to fit boys better. She's demanding that all of that stay the same, but she also wants more pay for less experience, chivalry when it suits her, that having a vagina be sufficient reason to elect a president, even more biased courts, and an enshrined legal status. |
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And when called on this she will inevitably insist that whoever actually wants equality is a misogynist who want to keep women down. Feminism. Is. Female. Supremacy. I've heard every argument. I've seen every statistic and I'm FUCKING sick of the lies. You are not oppressed. You've had equal legal standing with men for a very long time and before that you had special protections that went along with your "repression". So get some historical perspective and shut the fuck up until you have something sane to say. |
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<knocks on blast shelter. Meekly asks [8th] if he can be let in> |
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" < You might also want to ask yourself whether a blast shelter is designed to keep the blast out, or in.> " |
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We could discuss guns instead, that always seems to calm everybody down. Or, to keep it on topic, I always make certain that the women I keep company with learn to shoot. |
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// I always make certain that the women I keep company with learn to shoot. // |
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That would in some circumstances be considered "giving a hostage to fortune" ... |
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// Meekly asks [8th] if he can be let in // |
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You're the one with the door lock remote, remember ? |
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We've decided it's the red wire. Yes, definitely. The red wire. So we're going to cut the red wire, because we're sure that's the right one. Unless it's the blue wire... it could be the blue wire... |
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Are you sure it's not a red pill / blue pill you're thinking of? |
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[8th], you're making some very foolish assumptions. You might want to wait a while before deciding. |
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Errr. why not just cut both of the wires at the same time? |
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<retreats into the smaller blast shelter. inside the blast shelter, puts cheese in ears> |
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[8th], I can't just stand by watch you make a complete salad of yourself like this. I'll pop down the pub. |
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I've been avoiding this for a couple of days, but anyway... |
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It's not physical equipment but perception. If in some
Orwellian nightmare family a child had been born with
what their parent considered to be the wrong genitalia
and had been treated as and told throughout their
childhood that they were a different biological sex by
everyone they came into contact with than they in fact
were, they would be that gender, whether or not they
were gender dysphoric. If social services were to come
along and rescue that child, and I hope they would, and
then tell them that their gender corresponded to their
genitals, and the child came to agree, both that child and
social services would be incorrect. Even if that child was
gender dysphoric and wanted to be the gender their
biological sex indicated, they would still not be that
gender. |
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Another example: some people have female fetuses
aborted because they're female. If a test mistakenly
reported the karyotype of the fetus as female and the
fetus was XY with normal physiological potential, and
that fetus was aborted due to that mistake, that fetus
would be female. |
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Oddly enough, for those who have seen Ring (the Japanese version) is the minor plot hole of why does the doctor go loopy and toss Sadako down the well? Answer is.....in the book she's intersex, of the Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome variety. |
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Not a lot of people know that... |
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Really? I am one of those not a lot of people. Interesting,
thanks. Actually, being CAIS must be quite trying because of
being used as examples in people's arguments all the time.
Germaine Greer has certain views of course. |
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// If a test mistakenly reported the karyotype of the fetus as female and the fetus was XY with normal physiological potential, and that fetus was aborted due to that mistake, that fetus would be female. // |
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Sorry, no, can't let that one past ... |
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If a lab did a blind DNA test it would identify the tissue as XY and therefore male. |
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You are confusing perception and reality. |
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You go to buy a car. The salesman shows you two identical indistinguishable cars, and tells you one uses petrol and the other diesel. |
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You buy the diesel car because you want a diesel. |
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The other car has a diesel engine too, and even though you were told it was petrol and rejected it on those grounds alone, it still has a diesel engine. |
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We know {MB] will back us up on this. |
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C'mon, [MB], back us up on this ? |
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What I meant by my example was this: if there was a
mix-up at the lab that led to the parents believing the
fetus to have female chromosomes and that fetus was
then aborted because it was female and nobody was ever
any the wiser, that would mean the only social
significance that fetus had would be as female, because
that would be the end of her "life". If something else
happened, like a future child turning out to be a gay man
because of the predisposition for men with older brothers
to be gay, and that was biologically mediated rather than
to do with the experience of having an older brother,
then the matter would become more ambiguous, but only
if the belief was established within that man's
interactions with society that that was so. |
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Gender is socially constructed, but also inflicted on
people. It's usually connected causally to karyotype but
not always. It's just class. There are blurred lines
nowadays because of similar processes which have led to
people in traditional working class occupations to own
shares, which makes them mixed and partially bourgeois.
But, gender identity is not gender. It's more like
biological sex than gender is. |
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Put it this way. If "perfect" transition was possible to the
extent that I needed to use sanitary towels and
successfully bore a child, was physically indistinguishable
from a woman's, and even if every cell in my body was XX
or X, my gender would still be male, because gender only
correlates imperfectly to such things. |
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//C'mon, [MB], back us up on this ?// |
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I am on the wrong side of a transatlantic flight and, quite possibly on the wrong side of the atlantic, and potentially on the wrong side of any trans atlantic people who may be around. |
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So, in lieu of actually reading and figuring out what is going on here, I will simply point out that it's the third Tuesday of the month, so [8th] is right. |
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[looks at calendar] - um, yeah. |
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Sex and gender - boy oh boy, aren't we having lots of fun? |
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Anyone can be a proponent of equality. The resolution
starts to break down when you ask people to define a)
what the existing problem is, b) what to do about it, and
c) what the desired outcome is. Suddenly we have a very
broad spectrum of definition. |
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Excluding people on the basis of their gender (or sex) is
one of the things we originally planned to get rid of, no? |
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It would be societally interesting to just do away with gender tags in public. |
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Something wrong with the centuries old usage of "man" to mean "person" ? iirc the prefixes were "wer" and "wyf" for plumbing-specific. |
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So, still "postman" (not "postwoman", nor the horribly cold sounding "postperson"); "engineer" is already covered, though "enginerette" is nifty sounding; "witch", outside of Disney films, is already non-specific; etc. |
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//third Tuesday of the month |
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Hmm, on calendar it's down as 14th of Gnarth, traditionally a festival day celebrating the first screening of Space: 1999* where "resistance is futile" was used by Maya responding to "The Dorcons"... |
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*series 2, episode 24, 1976, according to wikipedia. |
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Unfortunately for [nineteenthly], the definition of gender they are using is not one that is familiar to the vast majority of people, who tend to (but alas, do not always) operate more on the "if it looks, acts, and quacks like a duck..." method of classifying objects, creature, and people. |
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Which is a good deal better than relying on history, because otherwise we'd be referring to our sun as a giant molecular cloud and talking about the zygotes we met in town, whilst we were on our way to purchase a piglet to eat. |
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//the definition of gender they are using is not one that is familiar to the vast majority of people, |
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Well, if I was offered a salary which is 'fantastic', should I take the job? |
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Where to begin? Problem is, the old world had a very black/white perspective, up to and including surgery on intersex babies to sort out the issues. Anyone who has any connection to gender issues will be wondering exactly why we still have this Mr/Miss/Mrs/Ms malarky? It just takes up space on forms... |
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For example, a person went to a job interview on Wednesday, and after having to hand over their ID card, which showed information that the person was transgender, they were - very politely - escorted off the premises. |
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It was a case of two perspectives, the recruiter felt "why has this person concealed this information, are they lying about something else as well?" whereas the applicant felt "this is private information, why do I have to tell you?" If we could just drop the Mr/Miss/Mrs/Ms bit, none of this would have happened.. |
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//a person went to a job interview on Wednesday, and after having to hand over their ID card, which showed information that the person was transgender, they were - very politely - escorted off the premises// |
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^I just edited it, to give more information. |
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I'm with [not]. In a hundred years there will be no need for gender pronouns and we'll look back on this era and laugh. The only reason to present oneself as male or female is in a relationship or at the doctor's office. It needn't come up anywhere else. |
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I'd like to agree with [voice], but I can't. We need ways to identify specific people, even if we don't know their names - that's a basic requirement of language. It follows that anything that distinguishes one person from another is likely to be useful in language. "Tall" and "short" are good (if imprecise) examples; "caucasian" and "asian" can be useful; and "male" and "female" are also useful distinguishers. None of those distinguishors is perfect or applicable in all cases. But if I say "look at the tall asian woman over there", that makes it fairly precise in most cases. |
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I guess I don't get what the big deal is about. The overwhelming majority of people can be identified as male or female based on their appearance, so it seems stupid not to use that as a descriptor. If someone with a Y chromosome looks like a female, then it makes sense to refer to them as such in most contexts where a label is needed. If they need surgery in their nether regions, then it makes more sense to identify someone with male accoutrements as male. |
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Fundamentally, I think it would all be a lot simpler if people quit agonizing over labels, and recognized the fact that labels are simply convenient and potentially variable identifiers. |
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Oddly enough most Caucasians are not Caucasian. |
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I think from this side of the table, it seems odd that we need labels for divvying up the whole race into one or another category. If we are all equal these days, what's the point? |
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"In December, the first US birth certificate reading “intersex” in the gender field was issued in New York. The city’s department of health and mental hygiene corrected the original birth certificate of Sara Kelly Keenan, born in Brooklyn 55 years ago." |
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//it seems odd that we need labels for divvying up the whole race into one or another category// As I indicated, it's not necessarily a case of dividing, but of convenient identification. "Male/Female" is a label which, in almost 50% of situations, can be used to distinguish one individual from another. "Tall/Short" is less useful as a label, because such a large percentage of people are intermediate in height. |
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Using "male/female" as an often-handy distinguisher differs from, and does not justify, discrimination built on that distinction. |
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I don't know about this. Isn't the entire point of language to fully express meaning in the fewest words? |
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Anything which requires more words to say what used to be said with one word seems like a step backwards to me. |
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<quickly charges up that Morton's Fork I got off ebay> |
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//the entire point of language to fully express meaning in the fewest words |
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Erm, possibly yes, or no... I had to break this word up into blocks of 30 chars, it is all one word.. |
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Rindfleischetikettierungsüber |
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it has finally vanished from the German dictionaries. |
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Not to mention 'Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit', or 'Bangkok' as we pesky foreigners call it. |
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Anyway, this idea has quite enough annos on it, so I'm not going to be adding any more... |
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How about obfuscating the definition of gender to the
point
where it becomes a highly technical term used only by
specialists? Abandon the use of the word "gender" in
everyday conversation and turn it into a word like the
botanical terms "nut" and "berry", where there's a
colloquial
"incorrect" use and a "correct" technical use of very little
utility to most people? |
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Oh, and reading that again, and here many people who
disagree with me on other things about this might agree
with me, "feminist men" looks like an oxymoron. It has
the same kind of pedantic offensiveness as a
greengrocer's apostrophe. |
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IBM's, M16's, etc. (etc's) |
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So, what's a "feminist man" ? |
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Isn't it possible to be a conservationist without actually being a conservatory? |
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Well, actually there can be feminist men but they would
also be trans men because they have the lived formative
experience of being constructed socially as female. So
that's what a feminist man would be. |
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Incidentally. if conservative is to conservatory as labour is
to laboratory, what exactly is that relation? |
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Well, our PM claims to be a feminist, so the "trans" bit may come as a shock to his wife at some point. |
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Shirley, to be consistent with the use of "-ist" as a suffix in words like "conservationist", "environmentalist" and "impressionist", a "feminist" is simply someone who is in favour of or supports women? |
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A woman might have a clearer perspective on feminism than a man, but I don't see how that stops a man being a feminist, any more than a straight man can't be an advocate for the rights of gay men or gay women. |
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I don't trust cis men who claim to be feminist. They can
be pro-feminist. When women tell me men can be
feminist, they always turn out to be liberal rather than
radical feminists, and my interpretation of liberal in that
context is that they probably have a simplistic view of
gender politics, although I could be wrong. |
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But there's nothing stopping men from being in favour of
feminism. It's important to bear that in mind. |
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It's like the Marxist idea of economic determinism. The
bourgeois act in their class interests regardless of their
character or intent as individuals. Likewise, men and
trans women always act in their gender interests
regardless of our character or intent. It's out of our
control because gender is passively defined by others. A
man who is rich because he's been promoted to a higher
paying job over an equally competent woman is not
about to give away that wealth and if he lost it would
probably still have the confidence and advantage of being
perceived as male, meaning that other things being
equal, he would be able to regain a better paid position
than a woman would. Or, in the domestic sphere, a
woman is more likely to clean and tidy a home than a
man is because they've been expected and conditioned
into doing so at an early age. |
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There are also problems with how men communicate
compared to women.
If you imagine a mixed group attempting to pursue
feminist aims, the men will tend to speak more and
dominate the conversation, and are more likely to push
their own ideas successfully. They also hoard knowledge
by using specialised vocabulary and tend to use language
to assert superiority. This means that in such a group,
the men will either tend to dominate or energy will be
wasted in preventing that domination. That means that
unless there is cis women only space, there's a danger of
men coming to dominate women's movements. It's not
even that women are unable to win in those
circumstances, but that the process is a waste of energy.
The men lack authentic experience of being perceived as
female from birth. |
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All of this stuff is external to consciousness and the will.
There's no escape from it, but it's nobody's fault, and it
means men and trans women can't be feminist. |
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//the men will tend to speak more and dominate the conversation// tsssk. Stereotyping. |
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[19] Since you won't or can't define "feminism", I fail to see the issue you're having with people who, in your mind, are using it to also mean "in support of". |
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I wish it was stereotyping. Subjectively my experience of such
meetings has been that I often feel an urge to speak which was very
hard to resist and my verbosity is well-known. Also, last year we
received a number of emails purporting to be from a woman which
were clearly from a man, as could be told by analysing features in their
content, and this was later confirmed. It was the features I mention
that enabled us to identify them. |
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It has to be initiated by women. I can't define it because I'm trans and
therefore I would be initiating the definition from a pro-patriarchal
perspective. All I can do is repeat definitions given me by cis women
and you may as well just Google those. |
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Well, when you get down to it, I guess women have the right to define what feminism is, otherwise it's a bit self-defeating. So, fair enough. |
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// I guess women have the right to define what feminism is // |
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Bias ! Prejudice ! Discrimination !! |
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Send for the political correctness police ! Women have the right to define what feminism is, certainly, but everyone else must have their opinions heard and respected too. And if they don't have an opinion, they must be severely punished for heresy, and made to have one. |
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Well I'm exceedingly gratified and surprised to find you agreeing with
me [MB]! |
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There's a problem though. Should women define what women are and
if so what are they? |
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//surprised to find you agreeing with me [MB]! // |
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It's bound to happen from time to time, according to Dr Venn. I prefer to think of it as you agreeing with me, pre-emptively. |
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//There's a problem though. Should women define what women are []?// |
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Well, why not? Humans define what humans are, and would not accept, for instance, a gorilla's definition. |
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<completely off topic> By the way, a copy of your rather good book is now nestling in my library. Admittedly, it's on the shelf labelled "other" alongide Sturton's "Fruitbats of the Arctic - Vol 5 [T-J]", but it's there.<\cot> |
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That's a pretty silly: it's circular reasoning. "I'm a woman because I say I'm a woman, and I know because I'm a woman" |
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Yes, but arguably no sillier than saying "I'm a human because I say I'm a human". |
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I don't necessarily agree with it, from a lexicographal point of view, but if women want to say "we define a 'feminist' as being a woman in favour of women's rights", then that's OK. |
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Of course, it does leave us short of a word for a non-female who is in favour of equal rights for women or against the oppression of women. But I'm sure we'll think of something. |
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// would not accept, for instance, a gorilla's definition. // |
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We consider it likely that if, for example, you found yourself trapped in a small enclosed space with an adult gorilla, you would be inclined to accept just about anything said gorilla cared to propose. |
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I think I'll keep my own definition, stated above. Equality doesn't mean special favors. |
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So, presumably you're philosophically opposed to affirmative action ? And insurance companies setting different rates depending on self-defined gender? |
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Glad you like it, [MB]. Yes, it is a bit "other". |
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It is more other than most other things I've seen. |
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Gorillas probably define humans as odd-looking members of their own
species. They probably do the same with other apes too, come to
think of it. |
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[MB], I could've brought it into the fold a bit more if I hadn't decided to
stick rigidly to a self-imposed deadline as a motivator. Would you give
it a Dewey number? |
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// They probably do the same with other apes too // |
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Now, there's a nice Ph.D. project ... bring up baby primates in groups of different species- a baby gorilla with orangs, a baby orang with chimps, a baby chimp in Paris*. |
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When adult, how much of their behaviour would be intrinsic, and how much learned from the group ? |
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*There are obviously ethical issues involved in exposing intelligent, self-aware life forms to primitive, violent groups, particularly those who speak french. |
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//Would you give it a Dewey number?// I'm pretty sure that its Dewey classification is some multiple or fraction of i. |
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I know someone who has similar objections to all book
classification and reckons they should all be more like
coordinates than real numbers to do them justice. She'd
probably think they should be hypercomplex numbers but
she's an English graduate. |
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[of], to do that properly there would also have to be a
number of human babies brought up by chimps. |
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//It's like the Marxist idea of economic determinism.// |
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... which always was over the top. I mean, yes, on the one hand, collections of people (classes, tribes, whatever) can work towards outcomes none of them consciously intended, but on the other hand, no, that's not all there is to it. |
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My hunch, which would be hard either to prove or disprove, is that preoccupation with gender is largely just a displacement of general-purpose existential angst. |
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Part of the problem recently is that there is a rather
dismissive and lazily-thought through set of ideological
commitments which makes it hard to discuss. It's also
linked, I think, to an individualistic perspective and seen as
part of identity. There needs to be more nuanced
discussion of this, and there also needs to be less attention
paid to it, at least in terms of the GSM-related issues. |
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Just noticed the story on sexual harassment in UK universities,
with one pundit suggesting a "hands-on, zero-tolerance policy to sexual assault on campus". |
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Cis man (whose gender isn't really important to him)
here. Also, in case they might be found relevant, I have
Asperger syndrome (though it's hardly noticeable these
days) and I'm left-handed. |
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The idea of gender behavior formation is a new one to
me. My understanding of the argument presented so far
is: |
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1. That one's formed behavioral gender is a set of
involuntary social habits/behaviors, and is a result of the
integration over time of other people's behavior and
expectations toward one (and one's trained/conditioned
response to that). (Those, in turn, are most likely a result
of one's gender presentation, which is a result of one's
gender identity, one's expectation of one's
parents'/friends' reaction to one coming out as trans,
etc.) |
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2. That one's formed behavioral gender is something that
affects one's interaction with others in a way that does
not change (immediately/quickly, at least, because it's an
integration) when one transitions, so participating in a
discussion or collaboration mainly between cis
women/men when one is a trans woman/man (who spent
significant time in society before transitioning, anyway) is
similar in how their interactions will go to a cis
man/woman participating. (Note the orders around the
slashes.) |
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3. That the result of 2 would be a bad thing, so trans
women/men as well as cis men/women should avoid
participating directly in women's/men's gender-specific
important discussions, or even should be actively
excluded. |
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4. That 3 is similar to the affirmative action program
intended to increase the participation and self-
actualization/mobility of black people in a mainly white
society, and that for this reason it is advisable. |
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I agree up until partway through point 3. I offer the
following opposition (numbers uncorrelated with the
above): |
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1. Affirmative action intended to support black people
has backfired to a large extent (though I don't know if it's
been good or bad overall). |
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2. Affirmative action was instituted by white people to
attempt to improve the lives of black people—a
(dominant) group trying to help a (non-dominant) group
by actively including them—while this proposed exclusion
from gender-specific discussions of people who haven't
spent their whole lives living that gender is a group or
groups attempting to improve their own situation by
actively excluding another group or asking said other
group to exclude themselves. |
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3. I strongly dislike being silenced, and I suspect I am far
from unique in this. I don't often say much in serious
discussions, but when I do, I think what I say is
worthwhile, and usually nobody tells me otherwise
(though that's far from conclusive). Therefore, I think I
could participate productively in a discussion about the
issues of people who have had different life experiences
than I have. (Of course, I'm biased in my own favor, so I
might be wrong about that.) On the other hand, this may
indeed not be typical for most men (or even true for me),
so maybe something does need to be done to counteract
men's discussional dominance. Still, this is likely to be
seen as silencing/oppression, which they will object to,
which will result in more anti-feminism. Therefore, if
something is done, it needs to be done very carefully.
Also therefore, I would suggest finding a different
approach to solving the problem that doesn't involve
keeping anyone away from the table. |
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(As an aside, my experience described near the beginning
of my point 3 seems at odds with the claimed typical
discussional behavior of men. Can you link to some
reading material related to those claims of stereotypical
male/female discussional behaviors?) |
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// I have Asperger syndrome (though it's hardly noticeable these days) // |
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That's sad, you should revel in you time. Just don't do any questionable things, nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you in heaven for. |
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// and I'm left-handed. // |
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Ah, well, that's different. |
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// intended to support black people has backfired to a large extent // |
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It's usually white cops doing the firing... |
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Some very good and fair points, there. It looks like the only way to make progress is for everyone with an opinion to explain their stance to an intrinsically gender-free AI. Of course, the answers still wouldn't please some participants. Then again, that's true for just about everything. |
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We understand (this may be incorrect) that some deaf people with deaf children have objected to cochlear implants for their offspring as despite the overall benefit, it would exclude them from a perceived "deaf community". They want the children to wait until they are old enough to make an informed choice, whereas the medics say that this is a mistake as the sooner the device is installed, the better the outcome, as the juvenile brain is more plastic. |
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This is another self-identified group with perceptions different from the mainstream. The analogy may or may not be relevant. |
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Just want to say that a traffic signal showing an outline of a
person with a "skirt" is not a traffic signal of a woman. It
could be a bloke in a kilt, for instance. |
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<for once, not a facetious question> |
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So is a woman wearing a kilt technically a transvestite ? |
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</for once, not a facetious question> |
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// So is a woman wearing a kilt technically a transvestite |
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So is a woman wearing trousers...NB headline Feb 4, 2013 "After 213 years, it’s official – women in Paris can legally wear trousers." See link. |
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Anyway, back to more serious issues. Seeing as a pregnant woman should have to buy two (or more) tickets to get on the train seems a little one-sided, I vote that more cash gets spent on the technology for male pregnancy to avoid this sexist bias. |
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Yes, male pregnancy would be good. I had a go at that. |
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I'm in two minds about the concept of
transvestism/crossdressing. On the one hand I feel very
much in accord with Eddie Izzard's "they're not women's
clothes, they're mine" except that I think more in terms
of this: if you selected a random set of clothes, it's much
more likely that they would be considered apt for women
more than men simply because there are more of them.
On the other, I feel some people may enjoy the sense of
transgression and forbiddenness and it would be a shame
to take that away from them by defining the concept out
of existence. |
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It's not easy to design entirely gender-neutral clothing simply because of the fundamental variations in size and body shape. |
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Things can be done about the body that goes into them and
the clothes themselves. I'm sure that a Borg will appreciate
that the layer separating external and internal modification
is relatively arbitrary. |
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