Strength and Honor

[Gabriela]

Maybe that sounded a little creepier than intended...

Maybe, yeah.

I'm calling a double-standard here.

Yeah, those exist. But I initially thought it was an aggressive sexual advance, which is what shocked me. Then I realized CrossCut is female and it just seemed rude. Which is better than an aggressive sexual advance. Hence the "Okay".

[Anomaly]

I sure have gotten some super weird suggestions on phatmass. I mean between this and Norseman's idea that I offer myself up as a bride to a gay man.

everyone on phatmass leave my panties alone O.K.

 

Well played.  Ten points for Ravenclaw. 

[MarysLittleFlower]

I'm not a conservative. I am a radical feminist (albeit an unusual one, as I'm Catholic), and I wrote 'critique of gender', not 'critique of transgenderism'. I know people who are transgender, I respect that I can't understand their experiences, and I don't want to make harsh judgments on them as people for trying to make themselves feel more at home in their bodies. But I do have a critical view of the concept of gender itself, viewing it as primarily a tool of control, and the thing that frustrates me about most liberal feminists is that they will also say that gender is narrow, constricting, harmful - but then when someone turns round and says he has always known he was a girl because he liked to play with dolls as a child and he was emotionally sensitive, they accept this reasoning unquestioningly. They accept it even though it's harmful to women, reinforcing as it does the idea that female = pink and fluffy. I don't think I'm rejecting people's individuality when I state that boys can enjoy playing with dolls and it's OK for them to show emotion - if anything, I'm encouraging it. But is it fostering individuality to suggest that these things are inherently 'girly', and that a boy who plays will dolls may really be a girl? Isn't this just a way of categorising and sorting people on the same restrictive gender lines?

Radical feminists and others influenced by second-wave thinking argue that gender is something people are socialised into based on their physical sex. For example, when I was fifteen years old my school nurse made a disgusted comment about my hairy legs, shaming me into shaving for them for the first time in my life. She did that because I was female, and her expectation was that I should want to remove my hair because, in her reply to my objection, "it's a girly thing to do". People who suggest that gender is something you can simply opt out of are ignoring this whole socialisation process. If I stood up and declared myself to be a man, this wouldn't prevent people from making all kinds of assumptions about me (emotional, bad at reading maps, should shave legs...) based on my female body. Supporting the idea that gender is innate instead of externally imposed does not help women who are trying to break free of these assumptions.

i don't consider myself any type of feminist, liberal or radical, and my views on gender are different than theirs, but I don't agree with some things that women are told to do to be "girly". Forexample makeup and shaving legs. I think those things came more from fashions than any femininity. In fact women in the West did not shave legs until it was advertised to do so last century. However I wouldn't be classified as a feminist in thinking this way because my view of gender is different and some things I do see as more applicable to a gender. But I think other things are just fashions that don't mean anything. I just tend to look at Our Lady for an example of femininity perfectly applied and balanced. So this makes my views different from both feminism and the worldly views of being a woman.  

[Socrates]

I hold to the common-sense, but un-pc notion that a certain amount of traditional sex roles and difference between the sexes is good and natural.

I'll just say that there's a lot more to being a man or being a woman than simply having certain body parts, but neither are those body parts irrelevant (contrary to the assertions of certain moronic but fashionable current ideologies.)