Tuesday, August 5, 2014

The Politics Of Gender? Plus, Cookies.

When the boys are here I usually stick a magazine in my back pocket to pull out and read whenever I get a minute or two and some days, I can get most of the way through a New Yorker.
I read an article today that sort of upset me. Sort of freaked me out a little, sort of made me realize that I don't even begin to know the depths of the politics of gender and identity and radical feminism. And I wouldn't even give any of this a second thought but I have a lot of friends who are transgendered or transgendering so it's a subject I have thought about a lot myself over the years but I truly did not realize that there are women who are so far left of me, politically, that they can't accept a transgendered woman as a woman because she is, to them, still essentially and eternally a man which, I have to say, they seem to view as the enemy. And that's a horrible summation of the article but it's part of it, at least.
The article is entitled, "What Is A Woman? The dispute between radical feminism and transgenderism."
It was written by Michelle Goldberg.

You can read the article HERE. 

If this is a subject which interests you and you have read or want to read the article, I would appreciate your thoughts. I don't think the article is going to change my view of transgendering which is basically that every human has the right to live as whatever gender they feel they are, heart and soul.

Well. That's basically it.
The boys were wonderful. We made cookies.

Here's Owen helping to make them.


Supposedly they are birds and chickens but the boy squished the bird cutter so that it resembled (to him, at least) a shark.

Here's Gibson, eating them.


Bird, shark, made no difference to him.
He's walking really well on that leg. 

Time to put supper on the table.

Love...Ms. Moon


11 comments:

  1. I read that piece too. A LOT TO THINK ABOUT. Autogynephilia??? I JUST DON'T KNOW.
    What I do know is that the whole gender discussion seems narrow, divisive, and intent on putting people into boxes.

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  2. Very, very glad to hear he is walking good!!

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  3. I believe you know my thoughts on the matter.

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  4. Denise- Read the link on the addendum if you want. Yeah, that autogynephilia thing is bullshit.

    SJ- Me too!

    Mr. Downtown- Probably about the same as mine.

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  5. I haven't read the article, yet, but the word "radical" makes me immediately suspicious -- and sometimes even bored. That being said, I'm grateful for the fringe elements of any issue/debate -- either right or left or conservative or liberal because they often get stuff going -- particularly change.

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  6. OK, I read the article and my main feeling is exhaustion. Why? Not why am I exhausted, but why does everything have to be made so fucking hard? Can't we all just get along?

    Good lord. The whole notion of spending a period of time with hundreds and hundreds of women in a commune makes me want to stick ice-picks through my eyeballs, for starters.

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  7. The kid's wrong--they look like dolphins. Leaping ones. Sharks don't have a monopoly on the dorsal fin thing.

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  8. Elizabeth- The more the push, the more the push-back. This is just a simple fact, right?
    And why can't we just all get along? My compassionate heart tells me that those women were incredibly hurt by men. My less-compassionate heart feels much the same as you do about spending that much time with radfems.

    Anonymous- Well, he said they were sharks and I'm going to go with that. They look no more like dolphins than they do sharks or flattened birds. So. Whatever.

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  9. This article is every bit as appalling and one-sided as I was afraid of. It's not balanced, it's not about free speech; it's an editorial based on pseudo-science. I was lucky enough to read Helen Boyd's commentary and then linked to Julia Serrano's letter to the Times first so my blood pressure didn't go as high as it might have. The MichFest bigotry has been going on for years, but the idea that new and younger TERFs have picked up that banner is just scary. Besides, it amounts to defining people by their genitalia (or genitalia they don't have any more, even) - which you know damned well they wouldn't stand for as regards themselves. Damn fool stupid hypocrites.

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  10. You know, I don't care what people want to do with their bodies. I don't care if their pierce, tattoo, change sex, or do anything. It's none of my business what others do. I wish that the world would be more tolerant of those who aren't the "norm" whatever that is.

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  11. How did I miss this post the first time around?! Ah, I was in Florida. That's why. At any rate, I was glad to come back and find it, prompted by your comment on MY post. I would think that an experience with discrimination would soften people to the discrimination that affects others. Interesting that in this case, that apparently doesn't follow.

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.