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MarkS's avatar

It was good to see that the comments on the NYT article were overwhelmingly negative on the practice of radical double masectomy on children (I refuse to use the euphemisms like "top surgery" that the gender ideologues want to force on us), and that the Times is now publishing more extreme language. I wrote a comment that began "The mutilation of children is a crime against humanity." This got approved. Not that long ago, I had much milder comments on articles on "trans" issues routinely rejected.

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Steersman's avatar

Great bunch of articles again; particularly enjoyed the one by Lisa Davis. ICYMI, an archive that I had found of her Boston Globe article which that she had linked to in that one:

https://archive.ph/ifcVX

Nice that, as Davis had argued, its publication gives some cause to "celebrate a little opening in the mainstream/left media’s bulwark against nuance and accurate science reporting". However, for all the good points she makes in the Globe article, one can not help but get the impression that she's trying to have her cake and eat it too, that she's engaging in the same sort of "imposition of a belief system" that she justifiably decries.

For examples, she has said:

"... every culture we know of has gender — which I define as ideas about how women and men 'should' behave ....

While some male-typical and female-typical behavior has biological roots, much of gender as I and other feminists define it — culturally based expectations of how men and women should behave — 'is' socially constructed. And gender can indeed be used as an instrument of power. ...."

While it's nice that she acknowledges that "some ... behaviour has biological roots", she then more or less denies that fact and then goes on to insist - somewhat dogmatically, as an article of faith - that "gender IS socially constructed". Which flies in the face of arguments by others that how men (sex) and women (sex) DO behave is largely what they mean by gender. There's a fundamental sticking point there, a contradiction between SHOULD and DO which causes any number of problems - which she is contributing to.

Seems to me that far too many feminists - Davis for example - seem to think that "gender expectations of how people should behave" are cut from whole cloth - the result of the nefarious "Patriarchy!!11!!", that they aren't, to some significant degree, the result of how people DO behave. Which tends to motivate such feminists towards the "abolition of gender" - which is, as Kathleen Stock once pithily put it, "barking (mad)":

https://kathleenstock.substack.com/p/lets-abolish-the-dream-of-gender

Might just as well try commanding the tide to not come in. No doubt there are many such behaviour patterns and tendencies that society might reasonably deprecate or anathematize. But there are many other such tendencies that are rather exemplary and that society would do, and generally does well to promote and endorse.

Failing to understand the biological roots of those "expectations", failing to understand that stereotypes - positive and negative - are often solidly based on brute facts, is probably one of the main reasons why the transgender issue is such a clusterfuck:

https://spsp.org/news-center/character-context-blog/stereotype-accuracy-one-largest-and-most-replicable-effects-all

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