All: If you were put in charge of deciding policies surrounding sex/gender identity in your state/province/country/whatever, what would you implement?

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[–]peakingatthemomentTranssexual (natal male), HSTS 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Amend laws and policies that use the phrase “gender based violence” to something that reflect sexism and misogyny are sex-based.

I have to push back a little bit on the misogyny part. I understand that misogyny is intended to be sex based, and maybe it’s okay to define it that way legally, but if someone is believed to be female, they will experience misogyny (even if it’s misplaced). I’ve experienced extremely overt and less overt misogyny many many times over the years and I feel like it’s just a nonsense belief to say that doesn’t happen because of trait that isn’t visible to the men to perpetuate it. I’ve experience too much in my life to be convinced otherwise. It shapes my life. I do think it’s only stealth transwomen who experience it and declaring yourself a woman isn’t going to make that happen. Visibly or out transwomen are either treated with hostility or (more often where I am) like super special males who everyone changes their language for and showers with compliments to help them feel better.

I agree with most of the other things you said, especially moving to the Nordic model.

[–]BiologyIsReal 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I just really want to move beyond the word "gender" because I think it has only made things more confusing. Not to mention it's a cultural import from English speaking countries, like a good bunch of Spanish "inclusive language". TRAs are constantly talking about being anti-imperialist and against colonization, but I cannot unsee the influences from English speaking countries in Latin American TRA.

[–]peakingatthemomentTranssexual (natal male), HSTS 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Okay, that makes sense! Gender is confusing and I can understand not liking it as part of language, especially if it’s coming from outside. I feel like we need some way to talk about sex stereotypes or roles assigned to people based on sex, but gender is used so many different ways maybe it’s not the best way to do it. I’m a native English speaker so how I think about it is probably shaped by that, but what do you feel like good ways are for discussing those things without words like gender?

[–]BiologyIsReal 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Spanish is a gendered language: nouns, adjectives, articles and some pronouns are either masculine or feminine. When is not linked to sex, the gender of a word is arbitrary. The gender of a word doens't reflect on what society deems as masculinity and femininity either. For example, the noun mesa (the Spanish word for table) is femenine, but that doesn't mean Spanish speakers think tables are inherently feminine. Hopefully I'm making sense here. I know from talking with English speakers learning Spanish that gender is something they find confusing (gender related mistakes are pretty common among them).

Anyway, all this introduction was to say that I grew up thinking about gender as something purely grammatical. I started hearing about gender as related to feminism sometime about mid 2000's and early 2010's (I can't recall an exact date). Though, likely it was started to be used this way earlier than that, just not as widespread. I didn't think much about it at the beginning. After all, there are many Spanish neologisms derived from English.

However, this past year I have become more and more frustrated with the non grammatical meaning of the word, and the way is conflated with biological sex and how TRA say sexism exist because femininity is underappreciated. That is why I'm trying not to use it when talking in the sub. I'm afraid I don't know what would be the best way to replace gender, though. I've been using sex stereotypes and sex roles, but I realize sex role could be interpreted as reproductive roles (e.g. women are the ones who get pregnant) besides what society expect from each sex (e.g. women should be the ones washing the dishes). I wish I had better answers, but sociology is not my fort.