The Feminine Perspective against the Manosphere

[mixed_biscuits]

No, I allow for a changing definition of male bodies. Anti-essentialism doesn't mean we can't identify sexual differences in the anatomy. It just means that biological interpretations of the body are just that, one more way of interpreting the body.

So someone who's living in a male body might also be living in a female body?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

If you want to abstract the terms 'masculine' and 'feminine' from actual men and actual women, but still want to signify things you consider 'bad' and 'good' respectively, the alternative is just to use the words 'bad' and 'good.'

Exactly, @malelesbian just wants more behaviours he likes and less he doesn't, which would make the ad campaign even easier to write.

 

[malelesbian]

So someone who's living in a male body might also be living in a female body?

That's for the person themselves to decide whether they live in a male or female body. But no one has said your body can have two sexes at the same time.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

That's for the person themselves to decide whether they live in a male or female body.

I thought you said it was up to a wider 'community' when it came to settling socially constructed definitions? Don't you need more than one person for something to be 'social'?

What if the person says they live in a male body but literally every other person acts and talks as if they live in a female body? Are they not 'outvoted' social-constructionwise?

What if the person says at time t that they live in a male body and at time t+1 that they were living in a female body at time t; was their body male or female at time t?

 

[malelesbian]

err.. the people who originally lived in the "land of the free" "might have":

Two-spirit - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I thought "two-spirit" was more like a third gender rather than the idea that a person has multiple genders at once? Either way, sure, I'll revise my previous statement, no one can have two genders at the same time unless they are two spirit or some other special category.

I thought you said it was up to a wider 'community' when it came to settling socially constructed definitions? Don't you need more than one person for something to be 'social'?

True. They also need a community to accept them as male or female.

What if the person says they live in a male body but literally every other person acts and talks as if they live in a female body? Are they not 'outvoted' social-constructionwise?

That just means society has failed them. They have culturally unintelligible identities. People fail to understand who they are. People who communities fail to recognize exist at the margins of society. But they still exist. They're just waiting for people to accept their identities. But their identities are still real.

What if the person says at time t that they live in a male body and at time t+1 that they were living in a female body at time t; was their body male or female at time t?

Having a male or female body isn't just something you can assert. Your identification as a particular sex has to agree with social norms. There are rules for what counts as a man or a woman and if an individual breaks those rules, people will fail to understand them as the gender or sex they identify as.

 

[william_kent]

I thought "two-spirit" was more like a third gender rather than the idea that a person has multiple genders at once? Either way, sure, I'll revise my previous statement, no one can have two genders at the same time unless they are two spirit or some other special category.

that's the second time tonight you've spotted posts that I've deleted within seconds of posting

but I also mentioned the I in LGBTQI2S

"intersex"

I've known at least two

and they have to live with the knowledge that they have both male and female components

talk to a midwife, you'll be surprised how many babies are indeterminate at birth

 

[malelesbian]

that's the second time tonight you've spotted posts that I've deleted within seconds of posting

but I also mentioned the I in LGBTQI2

"intersex"

I've known at least two

and they have to live with the knowledge that they have male and female components

talk to a midwife, you're be surprised how many babies are indeterminate at birth

That's a good point, but again, intersex is more like a third category. I was saying you can't have two categories apply to yourself at the same time. So an intersex person would identify as an intersex person rather than identifying as a male and a female at the same time. But yes, I've never denied the existence of intersex people.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Exactly, @malelesbian just wants more behaviours he likes and less he doesn't, which would make the ad campaign even easier to write.

Stop agreeing with me! This is a terrible look for both our brands.

 

[sus]

Board of masochistic perverts

 

[sus]

Eating pussy without asking

 

[sus]

Male lesbian isn't all this arguing terribly unfeminine of you. Shouldn't you just admit you're a silly girl and the nasty boys know best

 

[malelesbian]

Male lesbian isn't all this arguing terribly unfeminine of you. Shouldn't you just admit you're a silly girl and the nasty boys know best

Well see that would be phallic of me to defer to men as more knowledgeable. I'm interested in promoting feminine knowledge of femininity to counteract masculine ignorance of femininity. But yes, argument is hypermasculine. I'd much rather write some poetry.

 

[ghost]

Look, a key claim of essentialism is that men have to be masculine and women have to be feminine.

Essentialism is a descriptive, not a prescriptive framework. This is a very weird statement to make.

But see, I've repeatedly maintained that both feminine and masculine qualities can be bad and good. It's just a bad masculine quality to hide the good feminine qualities. But there are bad feminine qualities and good masculine qualities too.

Can you please make an exhaustive list of bad feminine qualities? I can't think of any unfortunately.

 

[malelesbian]

Essentialism is a descriptive, not a prescriptive framework. This is a very weird statement to make.

This isn't even remotely correct. A key element of Butler's theory is that the gender binary's regulations are normative. For trads, it doesn't even make sense for men to act feminine. Too many feminine men are seen as failed men by mainstream society. Essentialists have to conform to the gender binary. And the gender binary only accepts feminine females and masculine males. So we can't understand any feminine male through the lense of the gender binary. Thus the feminine man subverts the gender binary. So yes, the gender binary does say that men should act masculine. Essentialists have to act according to the gender binary, thus essentialism is both a descriptive and prescriptive framework.

For essentialists, men are understood as always and only masculine. Therefore, essentialism claims men should act masculine. Because otherwise you're defying your essence and going against nature.

Can you please make an exhaustive list of bad feminine qualities? I can't think of any unfortunately.

Pusilanimity and weak-willedness would be bad feminine qualities.

 

[ghost]

For essentialists, men are understood as always and only masculine. Therefore, essentialism claims men should act masculine. Because otherwise you're defying your essence and going against nature.

This isn't internally coherent—if men are understood as always and only masculine, then it doesn't matter if they "act masculine," because their actions are inherently masculine, regardless of their content.

Essentialism leads intellectually towards the kind of discourse you're describing, but it's not the same thing as it.

Society makes them feminine values. Communities accept certain qualities as feminine.

Second, as I have said many times before, "feminine" just means non-phallic, in other words, related to the other person rather than one's own selfish desires

All theories of gender say that some behaviors are masculine and some feminine. This is unavoidable. Again, to say that anti-essentialism forbids classifying any behaviors as gendered is just to deny the existence of gender.

I don't understand how you square "the community accepting certain qualities as feminine" is what creates gender with your straightforward assertion that "feminine" has a simple meaning that is Lacanian and that nobody else here will agree with. Isn't it clear that the community is not accepting this quality as feminine?

Your assertion that there are such things as feminine values is also being rejected by this community. It's unclear why you're of the opinion that rejecting opinions held by none present (other than that despicable biscuit troll) is some sort of destabilizing act, rather a recentering of an extinguished ideology.

 

[malelesbian]

This isn't internally coherent—if men are understood as always and only masculine, then it doesn't matter if they "act masculine," because their actions are inherently masculine, regardless of their content.

Essentialists accept that men can act feminine, one just can't understand their behavior in essentialist terms. For essentialists, people who defy gender conventions still exist, but when the essentialist witnesses them he doesn't know what he's seeing. I don't think any essentialist would say that it's literally impossible, on an ontological level, for men to act any way other than masculine. An essentialist would just say that male femininity makes no sense.

I don't understand how you square "the community accepting certain qualities as feminine" is what creates gender with your straightforward assertion that "feminine" has a simple meaning that is Lacanian and that nobody else here will agree with. Isn't it clear that the community is not accepting this quality as feminine?

When I discuss femininity, I mean feminine culture, not the literal qualities that define a woman. With this in mind, it's fair to say we should just talk about phallic and non-phallic qualities rather than masculine and femininity qualities. My mistake for not clarifying this earlier.

Phallic culture dominates pretty much all communities, whether they accept it or not. Name one community in which phallic and non-phallic culture is equally represented. Name one community in which non-phallic culture is better represented than phallic culture. The phallus is not a gender quality. It is a system of representation. And on this system, everything non-phallic is marginalized. Truly non-phallic women are not recognized by society. Women are expected to always serve male desires. In this way, most women are phallic. Can you even name a women in mainstream culture who doesn't cater to the male gaze? The point I'm trying to make is that there is a second representation-system alternative to the phallus, a second system that does more to help women. In short, the feminine (or if you prefer, non-phallic) experience is not well-represented in our mainstream culture, and I want to change that, so we can approach gender-equal representation. Do you really want to deny that feminine, non-phallic culture exists and is underrepresented? If there is no feminine culture, how do we even do feminism?

 

[ghost]

In this way, most women are phallic.

the internet—where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are FBI agents

 

[malelesbian]

the internet—where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are FBI agents

But again, the phallus is not a gender category, so phallic qualities do not define women as men.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

I thought "two-spirit" was more like a third gender rather than the idea that a person has multiple genders at once? Either way, sure, I'll revise my previous statement, no one can have two genders at the same time unless they are two spirit or some other special category.


True. They also need a community to accept them as male or female.


That just means society has failed them. They have culturally unintelligible identities. People fail to understand who they are. People who communities fail to recognize exist at the margins of society. But they still exist. They're just waiting for people to accept their identities. But their identities are still real.




Having a male or female body isn't just something you can assert. Your identification as a particular sex has to agree with social norms. There are rules for what counts as a man or a woman and if an individual breaks those rules, people will fail to understand them as the gender or sex they identify as.

This talk of reality, rules and things that can be unilaterally asserted to be true...it all sounds very essentialist!

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Name one community in which non-phallic culture is better represented than phallic culture.

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