QT, if gender is innate to identity

submitted by HouseplantWomen who disagree with QT are a different sex from self.GCdebatesQT

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[–]MarkTwainiac 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

I don't think that gender is entirely sexual it can also be about other utilitarian biological drives. On average men are going to be more useful in tasks that require strength, for example violence. Where as women on average are going to be better at breast feeding. I don't think natural behaviour would be indifferent to that.

Male brute strength is only required for some kinds of violence that together constitute a minority of all violence, which Oxford defines as behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. Ever since weapons were first invented & men created hierarchies in which rulers & generals commanded other men in armies & gangs, a great deal of violence in the world has been done by & at the behest of men past the prime of life whose own physical strength wasn't impressive & didn't play a role in carrying out the violence they caused.

For example: Hitler & Goebbels. The designers of the atom bomb. Harry Truman. The chemists who invented Napalm & Agent Orange, the executives who manufactured & marketed it, & the military brass who purchased it & issued orders that it be used. Robert McNamara. Henry Kissinger. The people who developed drone warfare, the high-up officials like Barack Obama who have ordered its use, & all the lower-level military personnel tasked with carrying out the orders.

Today, a great deal interpersonal violence is carried out not by brute strength but by using weapons such as guns, knives, fire, acid and explosives. Most of the guys who've committed mass shootings in North America have not been big strapping particularly strong guys who used brawn, fists and kicks to be violent. Similarly, most modern terrorists have committed their acts of mass violence by using explosives, guns & knives, or by weaponizing modes of transport by driving trucks or cars into crowds of people, & by hijacking airplanes & flying them into buildings.

A breastfeeding woman is fulfilling a biological role, not a gender role. All kinds of women who don't buy into gender have breastfed children. Women don't think of BFing as "feminine," but as female.

Gender ideology says that because women are the ones capable of breastfeeding children, then a woman's "natural role" in a heterosexual family is also to do all the tasks required to feed her entire family forevermore. In some settings, this can mean spending hours each day gathering firewood & fetching water; hunting, trapping, fishing & gathering; tending to crops & livestock; milling grain; & serving her male partner & adult male relatives & making sure they are satiated before she & the kids get fed. In other settings, it means making grocery lists; doing the food shopping or arranging for food to be delivered; cooking breakfast & dinner every day; making & packing the kids' school lunches; throwing dinner parties; making sure the cupboards, fridge & liquor cabinet are always full of the food & drinks her male partner likes & always making sure that whenever she & her kids go out, she's got snacks, beverages & a sandwich tucked in her bag in case anyone gets hungry or thirsty.

Also, when you claim that "women on average are going to be better at breast feeding" than men, you are suggesting that men can breastfeed - just not as well as women. This is not true. Men can't breastfeed children at all.

[–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 2 insightful - 6 fun2 insightful - 5 fun3 insightful - 6 fun -  (5 children)

Male brute strength is only required for some kinds of violence that together constitute a minority of all violence, which Oxford defines as behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. Ever since weapons were first invented & men created hierarchies in which rulers & generals commanded other men in armies & gangs, a great deal of violence in the world has been done by & at the behest of men past the prime of life whose own physical strength wasn't impressive & didn't play a role in carrying out the violence they caused.

The disconnect between physical strength and weaponry only arrived with gunpowder. Even so soldiering still requires physical strength that gives males an advantage. I don't see any way round that. Otherwise we could have truly integrated sports. But that wouldn't make sense.

I don't think that aggression is entirely down to socialised advantages of physical strength. I think men are more aggressive on average that's why men on average carry on being more focused on weapons beyond the personal level. They are in an arms race. That does not mean the arms race is a good thing.

A breastfeeding woman is fulfilling a biological role, not a gender role.

Why would nature leave leave it to chance without even a tendancy?

Women don't think of BFing as "feminine," but as female.

I don't think even a majority of women in the West disconnect breastfeeding from femininity. OK it depends how you define it. But the relationship is hard to disconnect. I terms of gender norms it is going to be associated with women.

Gender ideology says that because women are the ones capable of breastfeeding children, then a woman's "natural role" in a heterosexual family is also to do all the tasks required to feed her entire family forevermore.

Well I can't see man's natural role as breast feeding. Even with some trans positions.

The natural position is not the ought but it can't break the tendency. The choice does not end the biology.

In some settings, this can mean spending hours each day gathering firewood & fetching water; hunting, trapping, fishing & gathering; tending to crops & livestock; milling grain; & serving her male partner & adult male relatives & making sure they are satiated before she & the kids get fed. In other settings, it means making grocery lists; doing the food shopping or arranging for food to be delivered; cooking breakfast & dinner every day; making & packing the kids' school lunches; throwing dinner parties; making sure the cupboards, fridge & liquor cabinet are always full of the food & drinks her male partner likes & always making sure that whenever she & her kids go out, she's got snacks, beverages & a sandwich tucked in her bag in case anyone gets hungry or thirsty.

Even in industrial societies women will on average continue to actively care more for children than men.

I think there are some natural behaviour biases, not absolutes, that create that trend. It is not an absolute, it is not a moral demand.

Also, when you claim that "women on average are going to be better at breast feeding" than men, you are suggesting that men can breastfeed - just not as well as women. This is not true. Men can't breastfeed children at all.

Well I agree. That's why I think men, naturally, are going to be on average less child focused, they literally cannot breastfeed and therefore probably naturally have desire in that particular associated role.

Something associated with women is going to be considered feminine. Even if not all women do it, or some men desire to.

[–]MarkTwainiac 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

You said men are better at violence because of their physical strength. Now you are switching terms, speaking of aggression rather than violence. Maybe you're not aware of this, but pretending you were talking about B before when you actually spoke of A is a tactic I've noticed you use a lot. It's an underhanded tactic. I'm not gonna play along.

The disconnect between physical strength and weaponry only arrived with gunpowder.

This is not true. For millennia before the invention of gunpowder, all sorts of violence in war & everyday life was committed using weapons and weaponized objects. Rocks, logs, tree branches, stone flints, arrows, poison, swords, knives, maces, catapults, torture devices like the rack and methods such as inducing mass starvation by salting the earth of one's enemies in order to make it impossible for them to grow crops or for grazing animals to survive. Fire and fire bombs also have been used as weapon to commit human violence for many thousands of years, as in the age-old practice of torching homes, towns, cities & fields and burning people to death.

Long before gun powder was invented, mostly male humans also employed various animals to help them enact violence against other humans. Attack dogs have been around forever. In Asia & Africa, elephants were used to trample. Snakes with lethal venom have been kept by humans in many cultures for the purpose of using them to bite & kill other humans. Humans often used horses to commit common acts of heinous violence, such as when a person would be tied to a horse & dragged as the horse galloped, or in the case of drawing & quartering.

I don't think even a majority of women in the West disconnect breastfeeding from femininity. OK it depends how you define it. But the relationship is hard to disconnect. I terms of gender norms it is going to be associated with women.

Thanks for the mansplaining. You keep equating femaleness with "femininity" & confusing "gender norms" with biological processes. I do not believe that your claim that most women in the West (or anywhere else) connect breastfeeding to "femininity" is true. Women connect BFing to femaleness and to women, but not to "femininity."

I also don't believe you are the voice of authority on this. I'm also not the voice of authority on what all women in the West or the rest of the world believe either. But as a woman who has breastfed, been in breastfeeding support groups, knows a lot of other women from the West as well as other parts of the world who have breastfed & has discussed BFing with them, has read quite a lot about breastfeeding, I think I can speak with more authority about this than you.

You and other men like you who are hung up on "gender" are the principal ones who connect BFing to "femininity." Not women who have actually engaged in BFing.

Something associated with women is going to be considered feminine.

The passive voice is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Why don't you state what you mean more honestly? Which would be to say something along the lines of, "I and others who share a genderist mindset consider things associated with women to be feminine."

[–]theory_of_thisan actual straight crossdresser 2 insightful - 5 fun2 insightful - 4 fun3 insightful - 5 fun -  (1 child)

You said men are better at violence because of their physical strength.

Yes. I've always pointed to the relationship between dimorphic bodies lending themselves to dimorphic behaviours. It's hard to see there would not be a natural relationship.

This is not true. For millennia before the invention of gunpowder, all sorts of violence in war & everyday life was committed using weapons and weaponized objects. Rocks, logs, tree branches, stone flints, arrows, poison, swords, knives, maces, catapults, torture devices like the rack and methods such as inducing mass starvation by salting the earth of one's enemies in order to make it impossible for them to grow crops or for grazing animals to survive. Fire and fire bombs also have been used as weapon to commit human violence for many thousands of years, as in the age-old practice of torching homes, towns, cities & fields and burning people to death.

But physical weapons rely on personal physical strength too. It's hard labour still today.

I'm not sure what we're debating on this.

Thanks for the mansplaining. You keep equating femaleness with "femininity" & confusing "gender norms" with biological processes. I do not believe that your claim that most women in the West (or anywhere else) connect breastfeeding to "femininity" is true. Women connect BFing to femaleness and to women, but not to "femininity."

I would think most people do mix all of them up because there aren't clear boundaries.

Are you arguing for two classifications then "femininity" and "gender norms."

I agree there are different forms of these things. I still think you will have something close to femininity, and masculinity for that matter, that are connected to sexuality that populations will not be indifferent to.

I also don't believe you are the voice of authority on this.

Well it's a debate forum. If the topic wasn't disputed there wouldn't be a debate. If you think men can't comment on any of this then what's the point. I would think any men or women here should be able to comment on men, women, crossdressers, trans people, gay people, whoever. As long as it's kept civil enough. I'm interested to hear from others.

You and other men like you who are hung up on "gender" are the principal ones who connect BFing to "femininity." Not women who have actually engaged in BFing.

Womanhood then? Are you connecting BFing with womanhood and femininity to something else?

I am open to a difference.

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

If you think men can't comment on any of this then what's the point.

Oh c'mon. I never, ever said that. I said I do not think either you or I are the voice of authority on what all women think about BFing either. But I said that I think I have more authority than you on the topic of BFing due to my sex & the fact that I've actually breastfed. To which you huffily respond as though I told you "men can't comment on any of this."

Womanhood then? Are you connecting BFing with womanhood and femininity to something else?

No, for the last time, just as I am not connecting breastfeeding to "femininity, I am also not connecting it "womanhood." Womanhood is a word I eschew coz of historical connotations - & coz it always makes me think of head coverings like hijabs or a nabe where no men or children live, LOL.

I am connecting breastfeeding to femaleness, specifically femaleness in mammals of childbearing age postpartum.

https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/nursing-baby-animals.html

[–]Juniperius 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Otherwise we could have truly integrated sports. But that wouldn't make sense.

This isn't parallel. The point of sports is to push bodies themselves towards their limits of ability, to compete on the basis of inherent strength and ability. The point of most other activities is to accomplish some external goal, which is why we use tools, weapons, etc to extend the body in ways that make strength and so forth less relevant. This is why it's possible to cheat in sports, whereas if you come up with some clever way of making it easier to, say, move large amounts of dirt around a construction site, or conquer your enemies without brute force, people won't say, hey, no fair, that's cheating.

[–]MarkTwainiac 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That remark of Theory's comment about sports was/is a total non sequitur that has nothing to do with what was being discussed.

Theory likes to keep switching the topic from one topic to another: he makes points about violence, then later pretends he was talking about aggression, or about soldiering. Then he pretends soldiering means sports. I used to think he was just a sloppy thinker & writer, but I have come to the conclusion that it's a deliberate tactic he reverts to whenever he is challenged. Rather than respond to the challenge directly, he starts talking about another tangentially related topic. It's tiresome.

I don't think anyone GC would dispute that males & females are physically different in myriad ways that causes males to have enormous advantages over females in the vast majority of sports. Nor would anyone GC dispute that males are better suited to certain kinds of soldiering, such as the infantry or in battles that involve hand to hand combat against males. But even before the invention of gunpowder that sort of soldiering was responsible for only some of the violence men have committed in the world.

Moreover, since the dawn of time, foot soldiers have always been commanded by rulers & officers who are not putting their own bodies on the front lines, or on the line at all, & thus their level or lack of physical strength is immaterial. Many rulers & military commanders have been older or elderly men, some of them with disabilities.

In WW 2, for example, the leaders of the Allied powers were men well past their physical prime whose health problems meant they personally would not have survived long on a battlefield: FDR's legs were paralyzed due to polio; Stalin had limited or no use of his left arm due to an injury sustained when he was 12 & was a very heavy smoker who suffered a stroke at the end of the war; and Churchill, though strong of spirit, was an overweight heavy drinker & cigar smoker with chronic depression & heart disease who suffered a heart attack in 1941 & a bad bout of pneumonia in 1943.

Harry Truman, who became POTUS toward the end of the war after FDR's death, was a slightly-built man who had very poor eyesight since childhood that required him to wear very thick glasses & fit the criteria for "legal blindness;" as a result, he was rejected for West Point & also for military service when he initially applied - he ended up joining the Missouri National Guard, but he only got in because he'd memorized the eye charts. Yet whilst Truman's eyesight & age meant he wouldn't have made it a day as a soldier on the battlefield, nor could he have been a pilot or gunner, neither his age nor this stopped Truman from being able to take the decisive executive actions he did to bring WW2 in the Pacific to a close by dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki, events that caused at least 200,000 deaths.