Both: How do you feel about this interpretation of gender?

submitted by BrNated from self.GCdebatesQT

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[–]SnowAssMan 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Masculinity has never been as narrowly defined as femininity, that's why there are way more female non-binary people than male ones, because you're already kind of non-binary if you're male. You can be analytical, artsy, a leader, a follower, brainy, brauny, & none of it ever compromises your gender identity as a man. The trouble comes when someone male conforms to femininity in some way. That's so taboo it's easier for society to view them as literal women than it is to accept them the way they are. Everything seems to be "masculine", or neutral if practised by men, except for a few things that are feminine.

I'd argue that it's not actually a masculinity vs. femininity issue, but rather a norm vs. other one. In which case there is only 1 gender: femininity. Our society values size, power, strength, competition, hierarchy etc. just because the cultural other is excluded from this & associated with things society doesn't value doesn't make everything society values "masculine".

So in a way, yes, all these other genders including completely neutral ones that aren't genders, like agender are just "masculinity" (if that's what you mean by "male gender").

I think saying "masculinity & femininity" or equivalent, is confusing, because it sounds like 50/50. Norm vs. other has much more clarity. Regarding gender, "masculine" should be replaced by normative, while understanding that 'feminine' is just the gendered word for other. Other is deviance from the norm.

To be a woman is to be other. Female is an othered sex, where male is considered the default, & femininity is the othered gender. When you combine both of these others: female & femininity, you get a normative woman, or a normative other. If a woman does not conform to femininity then she is an othered woman, or an othered other.

So if the normative other tries to behave like the normative norm (man), instead of becoming more normative she becomes more othered for deviating from the norms of her other class.

[–]BrNated[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Thank you for your reply. This is an interpretation I've never heard put this way before - I'll have to look more into it.

This kind of reminds me of like the Roman interpretation of gender where it's thought there is the "normative male" gender and then everything else beneath it where women are typically forced to the bottom.

[–]SnowAssMan 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I believe Simone de Beauvoir made the observation before I did. In her work she said that man represents what our culture regards as neutral & positive while women represent what our culture regards as negative. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_(philosophy)

I'd heard a lot about binaries & how they are always mysteriously hierarchical, but this didn't satisfy me, so I went in search of an explanation that made more sense to me, until I found the norm vs. other thing. It's related to 'marked vs. unmarked' too.

Man was just a word for all humans, but 'woman' came about as possibly the earliest example of a phenomenon known as: language feminisation.

You can see language feminisation happen in real time. If a mixed group of people are referred to using one label, someone will inevitably create a second label for the women. If the label is "leaders" for instance, someone will invariably say "leaders & leadettes" or something equally ludicrous. If this catches on no one will be able to say 'leader' without immediately following it up with "...& leadettes" or else be considered non-inclusive.

'Woman' is essentially a euphemism, or formal slur. It's also distancing language (which is the first step to dehumanising language), I'd even argue that it matches the definition of what Anita Sarkeesian calls a 'feminising gender indicator'.

'Man', by contrast, is used similarly to 'normal' – almost never, except in order to further distinguish 'woman' from the norm. 'Woman' is pretty much just a synonym for 'abnormal', just as all the negative halves of every "binary" (which aren't truly binaries, just as 'normal vs. abnormal' isn't a true binary, or truly hierarchical): dark, night, black, wet – their opposites just refer to a lack, the default, & therefore can't be as easily defined.

Give someone or something a name & a definition & it becomes easy to other, which is why I try avoiding using the word 'feminist' as a noun. It's important to label patriarchists/conformists/misogynsts & not label feminists, so that people feel abnormal/othered for being conformists to ideologies like traditionalism/patriarchy/andorcentrism.

I suspect it was an anti-feminist who coined 'feminist' as a noun, just as it was an anti-feminist who described feminism as an ideology even though it isn't one, androcentrism is an ideology, feminism is a counterculture. Unfortunately feminist as a noun & feminism as an ideology have caught on, even among feminist women. I think it's harder for women to notice the othering quality of being labelled. "Cis, straight, white men" hate being referred to that way, because all their iives they have viewed themselves & have been viewed by society as individuals, making them hyper-sensitive to the othering qualities that labels endow.

Anyway, this comment is too long.

[–]Spikygrasspod 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Huh. I never heard that feminism was coined by an anti-feminist. That's interesting.

[–]SnowAssMan 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I only suspect as much. In any case, not 'feminism', but 'feminist' as a noun/label to describe a person (as opposed to the adjective 'feminist'). It's the labelling of people we have to be wary of. Back in the day feminism was referred to as Women's Lib. "Women's Libbers" quickly became a disparaging way of referring to any woman who wasn't behaving the way a man wanted her to.

I'm much more sure about the fact that is was anti-feminists who perpetuated the false notion that feminism is an ideology, thereby shifting the focus from the ideology that feminism attempts to analyse & dismantle. Ideologies are specific recipes for how life ought to be lead, like heteronormativity or natalism. Feminism is just critical of these & doesn't offer counter-ideologies in their place. Feminism, like any counter-culture is about freedom from ideology. But this has been twisted in the general discourse & even feminist women repeat it, not realising the implications of what they are saying.

(when I say ideology, I am referring to the Marxist definition (Weltanschauung), synonyms of which include: Engels' false consciousness, Plato's noble lie, Gramsci's cultural hegemony, Orwell's orthodoxy of ideas, Chomsky's manufactured consent, Bernay's propaganda, Schlüssler Florenza's kyriarchy & the social science's socialisation or culture, basically: the status quo).

[–]BrNated[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I don’t think your comment is too long - I’ve always thought that gendered words like that were just characteristic of a lot of languages (I.e. language gender such as in German). This is a new perspective I’d like to look into. Thank you for introducing me to it.