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[–]joogabahGay shows the way 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Always nice to see a defense of JK Rowling, but this Akkad dude still doesn't get it right. All males have always been and always will be 100% male. All females have always been and will always be female. Intersex conditions are not relevant to the trans debate, since trans people are not intersex. And even intersex are not both or neither, they are interesting abnormalities that underscore and reveal the relationship between genotype and phenotype, and the processes that work in concert to produce human males and females, and what happens when some part of that is absent. Gender is completely socially constructed. There are plenty of masculine women and feminine men. The POLITICAL refusal (that is often unconscious) to not follow the typical sex role stereotype is what it means to be gay; that is, it very often leads to a gay sexual orientation. It's not the only route to gayness (there are other forms and causes of homosexuality), but it is a major one, and that deviation is what people notice when their gaydar pings. I think it is easier to understand with lesbians, perhaps, that they would not develop erotic attachments to men, if they do not (for whatever reason unique to each person) develop a submissive femininity that would lend itself to that. I also think (like Freud) that homosexual desire is primary due to childhood sex segregation and the fact of being one's own sex, so that one's own form cannot be alien in the way that the opposite form can be, particularly if sex segregation is extended. It is quite possible to not even see the opposite sex in the nude for the first couple of decades of one's life, while routinely interacting in the nude with the same sex (this is typical in many societies). So a lack of attraction to the opposite sex that gay people feel is not exactly symmetrical to the lack of attraction that straight people (at least claim to) feel. Finally, homosexuality is verboten, so engaging in it is a form of rebellion, whereas heterosexuality is conformist. Living in a patriarchy that oppresses women and demands heterosexuality is the context in which this all plays out. And just because it feels like one was born that way, does not mean that one was. I didn't choose to speak English, and yet, I do. And that runs in families too, but it is not biological. Humans have the greatest capacity to learn of any species. Sexual desire is learned in people, without them realizing they are learning it, and it is bound up with gender which is imposed by patriarchy, to facilitate the production of human beings and their two most vital roles for the nation: soldiers and mothers. THAT, is old school radical feminism and gay liberation and makes the most sense to me.

[–]Chipit 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

their two most vital roles for the nation: soldiers and mothers.

Conscription was created in 1798 and abolished in 1975. That's a mere 177 years. Try again.

[–]TheBeefBenson 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Surely you acknowledge there were civilisations that existed before the US? And that is still conscription for the majority of the US history as a formal nation. Conscription of men to fight has existed for ever...it was just conscription with a lower case c, It didn't exist in a legal framework because there was no legal framework for serfs.

[–]Chipit 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Nope, conscription was introduced in 1795 in France. Before that, nations could not mobilize their entire male populations. They just had armies of 10-20,000 or so and that was it. But with conscription, France had a much more powerful army and almost unified Europe 200 years before the EU Maastrict treaty.

If you mean peasant levies, those were scraped up from the nearest villages and were of negligible military worth. They changed the result of no battle ever, and if you know of one I'm intensely curious to investigate.

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

I was indeed referring to any kind of situation whereby men were enlisted to fight against their will. But I don't see how the military worth of peasant levies is relevant to the discussion at all.

[–]fuck_reddit 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Not entirely true, militias of the adult male population existed in England as early as the 1500s if I remember correctly. And all the way back in the 1300s, King Edward III required all adult men to regularly practice the use of the welsh longbow, because English peasants would be conscripted for service on the Continent. This came into effect BECAUSE of the need to circumvent the feudal prohibition on vassal levies serving in the military for more than two months at a time. What the French did was universal conscription. That accompanied a sort of total-war and nationalization of warfare that also came about at the time. Armies of over a hundred thousand were put to the field for years on end a century before Napoleon (especially in the war of Spanish Succession).