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[–]mangosplums 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I'm probably the rare woman who agrees with this. I've been trying to explain for a while how using the term "gender" is harmful. Radical feminists and trans theorists use it, and I think it's harmful in both cases. It was Judith Butler, a second wave feminist, who coined the term. There's a reason that her writing is dense, overly academic and hard to parse. Because she made up unnecessary convoluted terms that do more harm than good. What she really meant was "sex roles" and she could have stuck with using that phrase. It's had a real damaging effect to create this imaginary category called "gender", especially when the word gender is often used interchangeably with the word sex. The average lay person doesn't understand there's a difference in meaning between the phrase "gender is a social construct" and "sex is a social construct" because the terms sex and gender have historically been used to mean the same thing. Second wave feminists constantly preaching that "gender is a social construct" or "let's do away with gender" have inadvertently paved the way for people to start believing that sex is a social construct and that we should do away with sex since most people don't understand the difference between gender and sex. I've tried explaining this in gender critical before and most people didn't get what I was saying. Creating the idea that there's this thing called "gender" at all is what has kicked off the whole trans movement and self ID and all that. I think it's a really stupid term and people should say what they actually mean which is that they disagree with sex roles.

Masculinity is toxic/problematic/immoral/otherwise stigmatized

The thing is that "toxic masculinity" is supposed to be mean a certain subtype of masculinity, a subtype where violence is valued over working things out, and where any type of empathy or affection is devalued or seen as bad etc. We should be recognizing this type of masculinity as a bad thing and trying to move away from it as a society. It's not helpful for men or women. The problem is that people haven't differentiated or understood that it's not all masculinity that's bad, it's just one type of masculinity. And I completely see how this has morphed into people viewing masculinity in general as bad, and how this negatively affects men. I also tried to explain this in gender critical awhile ago, but they didn't get it. I tried to explain to them that the words "masculinity" and "femininity" were just defined by "the qualities associated with males" and the "qualities associated with females". As long as men exist, you can't do away with masculinity, because men, by definition, will always be masculine. Just like women will always be, by definition, feminine. Different qualities across time have been associated with different sexes depending on the culture (of course there are always going to be qualities that are tied to one's physical body and those are cross cultural). If you create a culture that socializes men better, provides better examples of what masculinity can be, the toxic type of masculinity can go away or at least lessen, and better qualities can be associated with masculinity. But you can't ever try to eliminate masculinity, the only way to do that is to have no males, hence so many males wanting to become female.

As for Jordan Peterson, of course gender critical women are not going to embrace him, he's said so many things that are extremely misogynistic.

Lastly, many people here are blaming feminism for the bad state of sex relations today and are not looking at the role that porn plays in this. It has drastically negatively affected the way boys develop and the way that men and women relate to each other. And many TIM become that way because they watch too much porn and start focusing on the fantasy of becoming a woman. Of course most men don't want to admit the negative effect porn has had on society, it would be like giving up a drug for you all to give up porn. But it's way way way more to blame than feminism is.

[–]Aureus[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

You make some great points. I totally agree with your stance on gender being a "social construct". It seems like just a few years ago everyone agreed sex and gender were the same thing, and ever since the media started saying they were different everything went crazy.

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

Yes and saying that sex and gender are different paves the way for the whole self ID stance of the trans movement. It used to be called being transsexual because it was about the desire to change one’s sex, one’s body. You couldn’t be trans unless you had changed your sex. With the creation of gender, it no longer has to be about the body, because gender is seen as separate from the body. The entire idea of gender is completely stupid, there’s no such thing, it’s a made up imaginary thing in the sky, just like god or the devil is a made up imaginary thing in the sky. All we are is our bodies. Everything else that people call “gender” is just our individual personality traits.