Gender Studies - what is taught in gender studies courses?

Post Reply
User avatar
laklak
Posts: 20981
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2010 1:07 pm
About me: My preferred pronoun is "Massah"
Location: Tannhauser Gate
Contact:

Re: Gender Studies - what is taught in gender studies course

Post by laklak » Wed Jan 03, 2018 4:34 pm

OK, that makes sense, but what about "other" genders? I get that somebody in a male body might want to wear feminine clothes (or vice versa), but male/female is a binary choice. So what is "non-binary"? Is that just someone who sometimes dresses (or acts, or whatever) as a male and sometimes a female? Is this mainly a problem for biological males? I mean, women can pretty much wear whatever they want without censure, but I'd raise a few eyebrows if I showed up in a little black dress and heels. Though it would certainly help my calves. There's also genderqueer, pangender, bigender, and a host of others. Are these simply a more nuanced expression of one or the other or a combination of male and female role expressions?

Is this much of a problem in our current zeitgeist? I go to the grocery store and see all sorts of people dressing in all sorts of ways, and nobody seems to give a shit. IOW is this a solution in search of a problem?
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

User avatar
Forty Two
Posts: 14978
Joined: Tue Jun 16, 2015 2:01 pm
About me: I am the grammar snob about whom your mother warned you.
Location: The Of Color Side of the Moon
Contact:

Re: Gender Studies - what is taught in gender studies course

Post by Forty Two » Wed Jan 03, 2018 4:46 pm

It does seem to boil down to fashion.

But, to me, it's extreme navel-gazing, coupled with a need to demand others' approval. It can be heard in some of the language used, where folks like Nathan Rambukkana (infamous in the Lindsey Shepherd incident) will say that you are transphobic and engaging in behavior tantamount to violence because you are "questioning" the basic humanity of trans people just by comparing being trans to mere cross-dressing and "not knowing" what genders are. It's not for you to "understand" lak -- you just need to accept and approve of whatever they tell you they are and want to be called.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar

User avatar
NineBerry
Tame Wolf
Posts: 8950
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 1:35 pm
Location: nSk
Contact:

Re: Gender Studies - what is taught in gender studies course

Post by NineBerry » Wed Jan 03, 2018 4:50 pm

What a lot of uninformed bullocks.

"Hardware" and "software" are interlinked in humans. This is a biological fact.

Our inherited behaviour that is based on the dna has gaps that are filled by social stuff. For example, there are inherited behaviours that control how we go seek mating partners. But these behaviours use cost functions that are influenced by social knowledge. For example, whether fat or thin people are considered to be attractive changes over time based on the cultural reality of how being fat or thin is associated by society with being wealthy and being healthy.

There must be some genes (Let's call them gender genes) that create a behaviour pattern of "You are male(female), go seek out what is considered male(female) behaviour and this is who you are". Now, who says that this inherited mechanism works perfect in all people. A lot goes wrong in genes.

Take for example some genes (Let's call them sex genes) that define how a person's genitals look like after birth and after puberty. Usually, these genes will make male or female genitals. But they can fail. And they are people with mixed anatomical features or anatomical features that do not correspond to the sexual category of the rest of the genome.

Take for example homosexuality and bisexuality. There are obviously genes (Let's call them love genes) that control who we fall in love with. Usually, these genes will make males fall in love with females and females fall in love with males, but there are a lot of people where these genes do not work as intended and we have males falling in love with males and females falling in love with females or anyone falling in love with anyone.


So, when the sex genes go wrong for some people and the love genes go wrong for some people, why shouldn't it also be the case that the gender genes go wrong for some people? When this results in a permanent, consistent behaviour of identifying with the gender of the opposite sex, we call this transsexualism. When this results in the identification with a certain gender being not so strong, we call it gender-fluid.

User avatar
pErvinalia
On the good stuff
Posts: 59293
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2010 11:08 pm
About me: Spelling 'were' 'where'
Location: dystopia
Contact:

Re: Gender Studies - what is taught in gender studies course

Post by pErvinalia » Wed Jan 03, 2018 4:55 pm

NineBerry wrote: Take for example homosexuality and bisexuality. There are obviously genes (Let's call them love genes) that control who we fall in love with. Usually, these genes will make males fall in love with females and females fall in love with males, but there are a lot of people where these genes do not work as intended and we have males falling in love with males and females falling in love with females or Lak falling in love with anyone.
:whistle:
Sent from my penis using wankertalk.
"The Western world is fucking awesome because of mostly white men" - DaveDodo007.
"Socialized medicine is just exactly as morally defensible as gassing and cooking Jews" - Seth. Yes, he really did say that..
"Seth you are a boon to this community" - Cunt.
"I am seriously thinking of going on a spree killing" - Svartalf.

User avatar
NineBerry
Tame Wolf
Posts: 8950
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 1:35 pm
Location: nSk
Contact:

Re: Gender Studies - what is taught in gender studies course

Post by NineBerry » Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:01 pm

Forty Two wrote:It does seem to boil down to fashion.

But, to me, it's extreme navel-gazing, coupled with a need to demand others' approval. It can be heard in some of the language used, where folks like Nathan Rambukkana (infamous in the Lindsey Shepherd incident) will say that you are transphobic and engaging in behavior tantamount to violence because you are "questioning" the basic humanity of trans people just by comparing being trans to mere cross-dressing and "not knowing" what genders are. It's not for you to "understand" lak -- you just need to accept and approve of whatever they tell you they are and want to be called.
This is exactly like when in the past people were saying that "homosexuality is just a phase" or maybe "bad influence" from Satanists or whatever. Today, we have clear scientific proof that homosexuality does exist. Because if you think about this from a purely technological/scientific point of view, it would be very unlikely for it not to exist.

Mate choice is a very important thing for humans, because of the high cost of raising human children which requires support of a social group. So, it must be regulated by genes. There must be inherited behavioural patterns. And those patterns must exist in a male and a female version. And because humans are a product of evolution and a very complex system, it is very unlikely that there are no cases of these patterns getting mixed up.

The same for gender: The social distinction between males and females goes back quite a lot of time, so it would be absurd to think that social aspects of gender are not also part of inherited behavioural patterns and that then therefore these patterns also can go wrong in some individuals. (Note how this is actually the opposite of the fake understanding of queer theory which is sometimes said to mean that humans do not have a gender at birth)

So, yes, you are homophobic when you say that homosexuality does not exist and you are transphobic when you say that transsexualism does not exist.
Last edited by NineBerry on Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
laklak
Posts: 20981
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2010 1:07 pm
About me: My preferred pronoun is "Massah"
Location: Tannhauser Gate
Contact:

Re: Gender Studies - what is taught in gender studies course

Post by laklak » Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:04 pm

NineBerry wrote: ... or Lak falling in love with anyone.
I'm an equal opportunity employer. Why should any percentage of the population be denied Lak-Love?

I figure that whatever people want to think or wear is their own business. Or how they act, within realistic legal constraints. My nephew is a cis-gendered gay male with a penchant for Calvin Klein. Our neighbors are a lesbian couple whose fashion sense doesn't extend beyond Harley Davidsons and lumberjack shirts. My cousin is a transsexual who could never afford the surgery (in older, less PC parlance a "bull dyke"). I wear socks with flip flops in the winter. It's all good. It does seem there's a certain shrill militancy about it all, though. A sort of in-your-face attitude from some, particularly amongst the university students that infest my neighborhood. Maybe it's just callow youth, eh?
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

User avatar
pErvinalia
On the good stuff
Posts: 59293
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2010 11:08 pm
About me: Spelling 'were' 'where'
Location: dystopia
Contact:

Re: Gender Studies - what is taught in gender studies course

Post by pErvinalia » Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:15 pm

laklak wrote:I wear socks with flip flops in the winter.
You're a German? :{D
Sent from my penis using wankertalk.
"The Western world is fucking awesome because of mostly white men" - DaveDodo007.
"Socialized medicine is just exactly as morally defensible as gassing and cooking Jews" - Seth. Yes, he really did say that..
"Seth you are a boon to this community" - Cunt.
"I am seriously thinking of going on a spree killing" - Svartalf.

User avatar
Forty Two
Posts: 14978
Joined: Tue Jun 16, 2015 2:01 pm
About me: I am the grammar snob about whom your mother warned you.
Location: The Of Color Side of the Moon
Contact:

Re: Gender Studies - what is taught in gender studies course

Post by Forty Two » Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:17 pm

NineBerry wrote:What a lot of uninformed bullocks.

"Hardware" and "software" are interlinked in humans. This is a biological fact.
I know that, and you know that, but somebody around here is bucking for a promotion. It's probably that pederast, Hanrahan.
NineBerry wrote:
So, when the sex genes go wrong for some people and the love genes go wrong for some people, why shouldn't it also be the case that the gender genes go wrong for some people? When this results in a permanent, consistent behaviour of identifying with the gender of the opposite sex, we call this transsexualism. When this results in the identification with a certain gender being not so strong, we call it gender-fluid.
There aren't gender or love genes.

I don't disagree with you in genderal that sex and gender are linked. However this issue of identification with certain genders being strong or weak -- I mean, nobody has a frame of reference as to how "strong" one's identification with a gender is. We are who we are. Do we call that male or female? In the real world whether we're male or female is not a purely subjective pursuit - however, in the intersectional feminist world or the world of gender politics, it's all subjective, and even biological sex is a social construct. There is no such thing as biological sex - that's the cutting edge of trans and gender politics thought. That's the cutting edge of academia now, and it's spreading. http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016 ... _body.html

That slate article emblematic of the muddy, internally inconsistent thinking here. Take the aspect about the bathrooms. The article says that people were concerned about men being able to access the bathrooms. The article poo poos that by saying that well, if a trans woman is in the bathroom, then there are still zero men in the bathroom. What the article leaves out, though, is that in those situations, nobody knows if the trans woman is actually a trans woman or just "some guy" who likes to sneak into women's restrooms. And, they ignore the fact that the trans woman is a man who TRANSITIONED or is transitioning from male to female so it's not biologically incorrect to say that the person is male and trans-ing to a woman. But, they conclude there that there is no such thing as a male body, and there lies the internal inconsistency. If there is no such thing as a male body, then the person is not trans. The trans woman was always a woman, and the "male" body didn't change that because a person with cock and balls and a hairy back and male chromosomes is not necessarily a male in the first place. There is no biological sex, they are saying...
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar

User avatar
NineBerry
Tame Wolf
Posts: 8950
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 1:35 pm
Location: nSk
Contact:

Re: Gender Studies - what is taught in gender studies course

Post by NineBerry » Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:17 pm

laklak wrote:OK, that makes sense, but what about "other" genders? I get that somebody in a male body might want to wear feminine clothes (or vice versa), but male/female is a binary choice. So what is "non-binary"? Is that just someone who sometimes dresses (or acts, or whatever) as a male and sometimes a female? Is this mainly a problem for biological males? I mean, women can pretty much wear whatever they want without censure, but I'd raise a few eyebrows if I showed up in a little black dress and heels. Though it would certainly help my calves. There's also genderqueer, pangender, bigender, and a host of others. Are these simply a more nuanced expression of one or the other or a combination of male and female role expressions?

There are currently a lot of names for the same concepts because we are in the infancy of understanding this issue. Everyone is still creating their own terms. Also, reality is complex. So, it is not always easy to describe reality with a few complex terms. The term "homosexual" may for example be too simple to describe the phenomenon, because we have to differentiate between erotic attraction and romantic attraction. There are people for whom erotic attraction is strong towards the own sex but romantic attraction is strong towards the opposite gender (or vice versa).

In general, non-binary is a general term for people that are gender-fluid or feel that they assume different gender roles at the same time or feel they belong to a third gender or no gender at all. So, a very broad category. It is also sometimes used by people that are not actually non-binary but consciously choose to try to not submit to gender roles in society.

User avatar
Forty Two
Posts: 14978
Joined: Tue Jun 16, 2015 2:01 pm
About me: I am the grammar snob about whom your mother warned you.
Location: The Of Color Side of the Moon
Contact:

Re: Gender Studies - what is taught in gender studies course

Post by Forty Two » Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:20 pm

pErvinalia wrote:
laklak wrote:I wear socks with flip flops in the winter.
You're a German? :{D
He's trans-German, which means he can wear the socky-flip-flops, drink beer out of steins, and have a penchant for rather off-putting porn without being accused of cultural appropriation.... :rimshot:
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar

User avatar
laklak
Posts: 20981
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2010 1:07 pm
About me: My preferred pronoun is "Massah"
Location: Tannhauser Gate
Contact:

Re: Gender Studies - what is taught in gender studies course

Post by laklak » Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:25 pm

pErvinalia wrote:
laklak wrote:I wear socks with flip flops in the winter.
You're a German? :{D
Sometimes. At other times I'm Irish or Scandanavian. I tried Jamaican but couldn't pull off the dreads. I'm ethno-fluid.
Last edited by laklak on Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

User avatar
NineBerry
Tame Wolf
Posts: 8950
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 1:35 pm
Location: nSk
Contact:

Re: Gender Studies - what is taught in gender studies course

Post by NineBerry » Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:26 pm

Forty Two wrote: There aren't [...] love genes.
So, you are a homophobe. And you are and obviously choose to remain ignorant of the current scientific knowledge on homosexuality.

Forty Two wrote: I don't disagree with you in genderal that sex and gender are linked. However this issue of identification with certain genders being strong or weak -- I mean, nobody has a frame of reference as to how "strong" one's identification with a gender is. We are who we are. Do we call that male or female? In the real world whether we're male or female is not a purely subjective pursuit - however, in the intersectional feminist world or the world of gender politics, it's all subjective, and even biological sex is a social construct. There is no such thing as biological sex - that's the cutting edge of trans and gender politics thought. That's the cutting edge of academia now, and it's spreading. http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016 ... _body.html

That slate article emblematic of the muddy, internally inconsistent thinking here. Take the aspect about the bathrooms. The article says that people were concerned about men being able to access the bathrooms. The article poo poos that by saying that well, if a trans woman is in the bathroom, then there are still zero men in the bathroom. What the article leaves out, though, is that in those situations, nobody knows if the trans woman is actually a trans woman or just "some guy" who likes to sneak into women's restrooms. And, they ignore the fact that the trans woman is a man who TRANSITIONED or is transitioning from male to female so it's not biologically incorrect to say that the person is male and trans-ing to a woman. But, they conclude there that there is no such thing as a male body, and there lies the internal inconsistency. If there is no such thing as a male body, then the person is not trans. The trans woman was always a woman, and the "male" body didn't change that because a person with cock and balls and a hairy back and male chromosomes is not necessarily a male in the first place. There is no biological sex, they are saying...

The problem is that you try to explain a complex issue to fit into a simple statement that a two year old could understand. Reality is complex. That's why describing reality sometimes takes a lot of explaining and might be very difficult and sometimes outright impossible when using a language that has thousand years history of misrepresenting reality.

It's like trying to explain evolution only using bible quotes.

There is no way to define what a male body is so that everyone would agree. And you yourself have failed at giving a definition on another thread some months ago. So, yes you cannot say that every body is either male or female. (unless you reference a specific definition first)
Last edited by NineBerry on Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
NineBerry
Tame Wolf
Posts: 8950
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 1:35 pm
Location: nSk
Contact:

Re: Gender Studies - what is taught in gender studies course

Post by NineBerry » Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:33 pm

Forty Two wrote:However this issue of identification with certain genders being strong or weak -- I mean, nobody has a frame of reference as to how "strong" one's identification with a gender is. We are who we are. Do we call that male or female? In the real world whether we're male or female is not a purely subjective pursuit - however, in the intersectional feminist world or the world of gender politics, it's all subjective
Appetite is a biological reality. People feel hungry and they do often feel hungry for a certain type of food. At some times we may favour sugar, at other times we favour proteins or fat.

When I say "I have an appetite for potatoe crisps", will you say that this is irrelevant because it is only my subjective feeling? When I fall in love with someone, will you say that this is only a subjective feeling and therefore irrelevant for any discussion on whom I should marry?
Forty Two wrote:and even biological sex is a social construct.
Biological Sex as a category to group humans is an over-simplification of reality that is only there because social mechanisms needs it.

User avatar
laklak
Posts: 20981
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2010 1:07 pm
About me: My preferred pronoun is "Massah"
Location: Tannhauser Gate
Contact:

Re: Gender Studies - what is taught in gender studies course

Post by laklak » Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:36 pm

To be fair, you can't really define anything without allowing exceptions. In general heterogametic gonosomes are male, homogametic are female. There are rare exceptions, XX males and XY females, but those are outliers. Then there are XYY, XXY, and XXYY. Apparently there's no YY because that mother's body rejects it and either spontaneously aborts or reabsorbs the fetus.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

User avatar
NineBerry
Tame Wolf
Posts: 8950
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 1:35 pm
Location: nSk
Contact:

Re: Gender Studies - what is taught in gender studies course

Post by NineBerry » Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:37 pm

laklak wrote: I figure that whatever people want to think or wear is their own business. Or how they act, within realistic legal constraints.
Great, but this is not social or even legal reality at this point in time. People who don't fall into the expected gender role assigned to them, will have lots of disadvantages.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 8 guests