The importance of an event is what people make of it. Although I’m pretty sure that the transformation of Caitlyn Jenner has nothing to do with the state of people who are born as, live as, and identify as women, a sufficient number of people recognize the superficialities of femininity–clothes, hair, makeup, lipstick–as woman-ness. But that may be because many, if not most people are superficial to begin with.
But when I think about what, to me, would constitute an appropriate agenda for women: independence, self-determination, room to grow and succeed and for advancement, shared responsibility for happiness of those around you and of their responsibility to your happiness, freedom from harm or tyranny, that is really a human agenda moreso than an exclusively feminist agenda.
What should never be on the menu for personal fulfillment is the ability to exert control or a sort of sociological sadism on an individual or group of people because they are a woman. Or a man. Or employees, or whomsoever you should care to list. I would like to be able to agree with feminist academia, but so much of it seems geared toward offensiveness, reveling in awkwardness, quite a lot of weird puritanical anti-sexuality, and hidebound rulemaking conformity enforcement the likes of which resembles nothing so much as the obverse of a patriarchal orthodoxy. Rules for communicating, rules for thinking, rules for everything, no deviation allowed, and nothing is rewarded except ever more extreme measures. The undertone seems to be one of screechy bleakness; thinly-disguised hatred. Frustration. Hostility. Narcissism. It isn’t helping women in places like Texas or Alabama to attain control over their own bodies, freedom from authoritarian male bullies.
I think we would be well advised to study and adopt the practices of Scandinavian countries, where differences between men and women are acknowledged, but women’s needs are better identified and addressed. There is time there for both parents to nurture children. Daily routines are shared. Public policy is more attuned to the needs of humans (women and children), rather than dictated by corporations or their associations like ALEC. Subsequently, those public policies resemble what a lot of (what I identify as) mainstream feminists have been calling for lo these many years. And it makes for well-educated, socially adjusted, cohesive societies.
I like the link. Someone needed to say it, and as a male, I probably would have got read to filth for expressing similar thoughts.
I remember way back in the day when trans people first showed up on Phil Donahue or Oprah’s shows, or the like. They would get the inevitable questions and then they would ask the audience to imagine waking up tomorrow with a woman’s body if they were men, men’s bodies for the women. And almost everyone’s response was “Oh, how horrible, now I get it!”. And I was always left thinking, “So what? I’m sure it would suck to be a woman, or have a big butt and floppy things on my chest and periods. But I’d still be me, for better or worse, and it wouldn’t be an identity crisis. And at least I could probably get more hot guys than I do now as a gay guy”. I don’t look at my body and think, “this is a pretty good representation of who I am.” What’s the inner aspect of me that is expressed by all this body hair I got at age 14? It all seems pretty arbitrary to me.
I mean, if that’s what people want to do with their bodies, that’s their business. Nobody cares what I think of their lame-ass tatts and “body art” either, and that’s fine too.
But it seems like the self appointed spokespersons for the trans movement spend a whole lot of time trying to control everyone else’s perceptions of them. It’s not enough to be as butch or femme as they wanna be, they have to control everyone’s pronoun use not only for themselves, but for the rest of us too (those of us who are not trans are now “cis” whether we strongly identify with our “assigned” at birth genitals or if we’re just making do with how nature made us). 99% of trans folks are never going to look like the real deal. No matter how much surgery they get, the best they can hope for is to look as female as Ann Coulter, right down to the overly sexualized little black cocktail dresses worn 24/7. But someone out there probably thinks it’s hot, because no matter how ugly or unusual you are, either by nature or artifice, there is always someone out there who will think that is hot.
Do what you need to do to be yourself, but if being yourself means everyone else has to pretend to see you as you want yourself to be seen, that way lies madness.
The importance of an event is what people make of it. Although I’m pretty sure that the transformation of Caitlyn Jenner has nothing to do with the state of people who are born as, live as, and identify as women, a sufficient number of people recognize the superficialities of femininity–clothes, hair, makeup, lipstick–as woman-ness. But that may be because many, if not most people are superficial to begin with.
But when I think about what, to me, would constitute an appropriate agenda for women: independence, self-determination, room to grow and succeed and for advancement, shared responsibility for happiness of those around you and of their responsibility to your happiness, freedom from harm or tyranny, that is really a human agenda moreso than an exclusively feminist agenda.
What should never be on the menu for personal fulfillment is the ability to exert control or a sort of sociological sadism on an individual or group of people because they are a woman. Or a man. Or employees, or whomsoever you should care to list. I would like to be able to agree with feminist academia, but so much of it seems geared toward offensiveness, reveling in awkwardness, quite a lot of weird puritanical anti-sexuality, and hidebound rulemaking conformity enforcement the likes of which resembles nothing so much as the obverse of a patriarchal orthodoxy. Rules for communicating, rules for thinking, rules for everything, no deviation allowed, and nothing is rewarded except ever more extreme measures. The undertone seems to be one of screechy bleakness; thinly-disguised hatred. Frustration. Hostility. Narcissism. It isn’t helping women in places like Texas or Alabama to attain control over their own bodies, freedom from authoritarian male bullies.
I think we would be well advised to study and adopt the practices of Scandinavian countries, where differences between men and women are acknowledged, but women’s needs are better identified and addressed. There is time there for both parents to nurture children. Daily routines are shared. Public policy is more attuned to the needs of humans (women and children), rather than dictated by corporations or their associations like ALEC. Subsequently, those public policies resemble what a lot of (what I identify as) mainstream feminists have been calling for lo these many years. And it makes for well-educated, socially adjusted, cohesive societies.
I like the link. Someone needed to say it, and as a male, I probably would have got read to filth for expressing similar thoughts.
I remember way back in the day when trans people first showed up on Phil Donahue or Oprah’s shows, or the like. They would get the inevitable questions and then they would ask the audience to imagine waking up tomorrow with a woman’s body if they were men, men’s bodies for the women. And almost everyone’s response was “Oh, how horrible, now I get it!”. And I was always left thinking, “So what? I’m sure it would suck to be a woman, or have a big butt and floppy things on my chest and periods. But I’d still be me, for better or worse, and it wouldn’t be an identity crisis. And at least I could probably get more hot guys than I do now as a gay guy”. I don’t look at my body and think, “this is a pretty good representation of who I am.” What’s the inner aspect of me that is expressed by all this body hair I got at age 14? It all seems pretty arbitrary to me.
I mean, if that’s what people want to do with their bodies, that’s their business. Nobody cares what I think of their lame-ass tatts and “body art” either, and that’s fine too.
But it seems like the self appointed spokespersons for the trans movement spend a whole lot of time trying to control everyone else’s perceptions of them. It’s not enough to be as butch or femme as they wanna be, they have to control everyone’s pronoun use not only for themselves, but for the rest of us too (those of us who are not trans are now “cis” whether we strongly identify with our “assigned” at birth genitals or if we’re just making do with how nature made us). 99% of trans folks are never going to look like the real deal. No matter how much surgery they get, the best they can hope for is to look as female as Ann Coulter, right down to the overly sexualized little black cocktail dresses worn 24/7. But someone out there probably thinks it’s hot, because no matter how ugly or unusual you are, either by nature or artifice, there is always someone out there who will think that is hot.
Do what you need to do to be yourself, but if being yourself means everyone else has to pretend to see you as you want yourself to be seen, that way lies madness.