Prismattic comments on Can the Chain Still Hold You? - Less Wrong
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This is a really bizarre desire for a feminist to express -- not saying it didn't happen, just that whatever feminist said it didn't think too far ahead.
I guess a feminist that imagines a perfect continent inhabited only by women, does not imagine it inhabited by heterosexual women.
All my information about this topic is second-hand, but it seems to me that a few feminists were promoting female homosexuality as a weapon against "patriarchy".
Some were, and some were promoting something they called "lesbianism" but that didn't involve any actual sex. More like an asexual society that encouraged sort-of-romantic relationships between women.
Ok but these are the radical minority, and an outdated radical minority at that. Feminism at its core is adopting a dialectic of gender/sex and becoming more aware of the power structures in both these social constructions. Feminists, at least any you would work under in a legitimate research program today, would never support ridiculous claims about getting rid of 90% of men or weaponizing lesbianism to combat patriarchy. Quite frankly these ideas are somewhat offensive to the field of feminism both as a humanistic pursuit and a branch of academia.
I support studying law even though trial by combat used to exist, I don't support claiming that "Some judges liked trials by combat" is offensive to modern judges.
You seem to think I am arguing to hold the past to the modern standard, I am not. I am arguing the necessity of distinction between antiquated and current practices. It is commonly understood that within the sphere of law death matches and blood sport in general are antiquated practices and do not represent the normative thoughts and actions of "law". On the other hand, from reading the comments on this essay it does not seem so clear that the practices and ideas that are discussed are antiquated forms of feminism that have been obsolete for several decades. All I did was point out that the ideas being represented as feminism in this discussion are a gross misrepresentation of it, and I don't see what is negative about that.
I thought the point of the gender/sex distinction was to separate the social-constructedness of being a woman or man from the biological facts. That men want to pee standing up is socially constructed, that it is easier for them to do so is just a fact about biology and physics.
Also, I agree with your persepctive and think it is sorely lacking here, but you are using a fair amount of technical jargon ("dialectic", "power structure"). Technical jargon inherently excludes, and I think your message would benefit from avoiding that dynamic. Additionally, it helps ensure that there is a meeting of the minds about the content of the disagreement. In other words, labels inhibit communication.
Anyway, welcome to LessWrong.
Fair enough,
Well, let me start by saying there are 3 waves of feminism. The first wave is vaguely classified as pre 1960s feminism, and is largely wrong. The ideas that were listed above all come from that era and even for that era are considered radical positions.
This is the idea of 2nd-wave feminism. That gender is socially constructed, but sex is a biological fact. Presently this idea has been disproven. Among 3rd wave feminists (which is the most advanced form of the discipline) it is accepted that BOTH gender AND sex are socially constructed. How could that be you might be wondering? Well, biologically the human species is capable of producing 5 sexes: Male, Female, Hermaphrodite, Mermaphrodite, and Fermaphrodite. Hermaphrodites have both male and female genitalia that are capable of sexual reproduction. Fermaphrodites have functioning male genital, but the female genitalia are not capable of sexual reproduction. Mermaphrodite is the opposite. Each has of these sexes is anatomically different. You may be thinking "well how come I never hear about 5 sexes?" Well because for thousands of years in western, as well as many cultures, hermaphrodites, mermaphrodites, and fermaphrodites have been eugenically diminished. Up until the 1990s American and European doctors would tell parents their child was born with a deficiency and perform an "urgent surgery" to make them either more male or more female. These operations were potentially lethal; many places still perform such operations, only now instead saying they are mandatory, doctors socially pressure parents into opting for them. Using such methods as telling parents "think about the life your child would lead," don't you want them to be normal?" There is nothing biologically threatening about being born a hermaphrodites, merm, or ferm. The only dangerous thing about it is the social stigmas it burdens a person with. Anyway, the point is that a perception of what is normal (the male-female dichotomy) has resulted in the intentional out breeding of more sexes, thus making sex a social construction. If you would like to read more about this, or third wave feminism in general, I would suggest starting with Judith Butler. She is pretty much the matriarch of modern feminist thought. Her writing is highly influenced by Derrida. It has a post-modern air to it that at times is pretentious, but beneath that her ideas are really brilliant.
Sorry, but why are you telling us all this? Yeah, feminism is pretty interesting (at least it interests me) but why are you giving a lecture on it? It would seem that most people interested in a spontaneous intro to feminism have already received it, and are currently picking nits with the five-sex model of intersexed people or post-third-wave developments.
(...plus, c'm'on, second-wavers totally sucked at telling gender from sex. Just ask Bindel or Daly about trans women.)
That may have been familiar to you, but some of it was new to me.
I apologize if I offended you. You stated something you believed to be true that I knew to not be true. I thought you would want to know that you were wrong since I assumed the goals of this cite is to become "less wrong." I did not mean to lecture; I just thought a more detailed explanation was what you wanted rather than just a jargon packed sentence or two. Jargon is used because it condenses a huge amount of ideas and intellectual data into a few words. I did not realize that it would be offensive to explain it in this way. Honestly I thought I was responding to you not the general body, and I was really excited to share this idea with you because I find it fascinating. Like you said I am new, I will try to adjust quickly to the norms here.
Nah, we agree on the facts. You just posted a reminder that the thing I said had happened wasn't happening anymore. Maybe you mean TimS, not me? That's still not really wrong - Tim said "sex is the biological bits, gender is the construct around the social bits" and you said "sex is more like the construct around the biological bits".
Correcting people is still a good idea in general.
Ah sorry I did mix you two up.
Correct, except the construct is not only built around the biological bits, the construct transforms the biological bits. We actively weed out sexes that are not male or female, and in doing this over time we breed humans to meet our desired dichotomy.
That is a lot to respond to. Yes, I'm mostly second-wave feminist. But I don't think that commits me to ignoring things like how feminism is a different issue for blacks and whites, or accepting any idiocy from Mary Daly. Nor does it require me to support doctors who pressure parents into unnecessary "sex correction" surgery.
I accept that science is socially constructed. That doesn't commit me to believing that there are no physical facts. I suspect that the five categories you listed will turn out to be misleading simplifications, and the truth will turn out to be closer to a continuum (cf. Kinsey). More generally, I think it is useful to distinguish between social constructions that are strongly tied to the physical world (sex) and social constructions that have low or no ties to the physical facts (gender roles).
More broadly, I think that the suffering caused by the social constructions of gender are much greater than the suffering caused by social constructions of sex. Further, I think improving the construction of gender will have the effect of improving the experience of people who have problems from the social construction of sex. For example, once gender role construction is improved, I think that people who desire sex-change surgeries will have a better life, even if nothing about the social construction of sex changes.
Finally, I like post-modernism - to the extent it is grounded in fact. Foucault is interesting because he was an excellent historian. By contrast, I once read a feminist paper on mutually assured destruction that was profoundly misguided. It attacked speakers at a conference on MAD for failing to explicitly note that megadeathes were a bad thing (as if everyone there didn't know that and assume it implicitly in the conversation). Can't find it online, or I'd give the cite.
Sure. Accepting feminism is a different issue for black women and white women is the major distinction between first and second wave feminists. I don't think there is anything wrong if you have a stronger affinity to 2nd wave rather than 3rd. I mean, personally, I do think 3rd wave feminism is a more sophisticated level of analysis, but just as quantum mechanics does not necessarily make classical mechanics obsolete , I don't think aligning yourself with the second wave is particularly detrimental. I do think aligning with the first-wave is detrimental, which is where a lot discussed above decreasing the population of men come from.
I don't know if I would agree that the suffering caused by social constructions of gender is more damaging than that caused by social constructions of sex, let me think about it. I tend to think gender originates only after a construction of sex is created. For example, the NuGuo people in china accept hermaphrodites. Since they except them the develop gender roles for hermaphrodites.
Foucault is interesting.
I'd like to try to convince you that gender construction causes more harm than sex construction. Basically, gender construction affects everyone that doesn't fit well within ordinary gender expectations: nerdish boys who don't do sports, girls who are discouraged from various careers or women prevented from advancing, women suffering from body image issues. (I'm omitting more contentious examples and historical problems for which substantial progress has been made). Even if you think that these harms are much smaller than the harms from sex construction, there are overwhelmingly more people who suffer from them. This justified a focus on those issues over sex issues.
Also, there is value in highlighting which social constructions are based on physical facts of some kind and those that are not. I think gender falls entirely in that later - if it turns out that something I'd been calling gender had a physical basis, I would acknowledge error in my classification.
Finally, I think that fixing gender constructs would be beneficial to transgendered and other sex-construct sufferers. For example, the social rules about men using women's restrooms (and vice versa) are gendered, not sex constructed. But if we removed those social rules, transgender men using the "wrong" restroom would also suffer much less stigma (ideally, no stigma at all). Although this isn't a point about relative harms, I think it is useful in deciding the tactics of advocacy.
Huh? I remember an Italian female senator making a big fuss when a male-to-female transsexual senator (who hadn't undergone SRS yet at that time, IIRC) used the women's toilet in the senate.
Sorry for the late response, I have been really busy with work.
The variety of gender constructions in our society is the result of a societal objective to perserve a strict dichtomy of sex. Therefore while I would agree that more people are directly assualted with gender constructions, I would add that it is in protection of cultural beliefs about the construction of sex that a wide range of gender constructions are created and implemented. Or in other words, Gender constructions are the means by which constructions of sex are legitimized. Without importance on the later, the former would diminish into obscurity.
To illustrate this I would ask you to think about constructions of age in American society. As of late, there is not nearly as strict a dichotomy between "old" and "young" in American society as there is between "male" and "female." Of course there is still a clearly defined dichotomy (one set by law). But America does not have a multitude of age related norms and customs that would equal the concept of gender for sex. We are not trained to strictly categorize the way old or young people dress. Perhaps 30 years ago there were many hobbies and professions that were normatively bracketed to either old or young (A young person might be ridiculed for drinking prune juice? An old person might be looked down on for being too adamant about video games). However, I feel current American society has become even more accepting of occupational and recreational deviations from these normative age construction. It is generally acceptable for a man in his 40s to like video games, and while a child may be labeled "weird" for drinking prune juice, they are by no means subject to persecution because of it.
A comparative analysis of Mammalia shows this to be extremely doubtful, unless you think that only humans have these extra sexes. In all mammals the vast bulk of individuals can be cleanly assigned to male or female without ambiguity, and no such intentional elimination was required. [Note "outbreeding" means something else.]
You have to look at quite distantly related species before hermaphrodites show up at interesting frequencies. Certainly some fish can be hermaphrodite.
I don't think only humans have these extra sexes. Could you direct me to the comparative analysis of Mammalian reproductive systems that discusses hermaphrodites in other species? I am sure most gonochronistic animals have cases of hermaphrodites or other genetic mutations.
You are right, outbreeding is not what I meant. That is why I split the word up, hoping to convey my point. Intentional elimination is a good way to say it. If Hermaphrodites were not so stigmatized they would not be abandoned/killed/maimed as children; if they were not on average abandoned/killed/maimed as children then there would be a decent size population of hermaphrodites able to develop a stable social station; if there were a stable hermaphrodite community their genes would spread; if there genes spread their would be more hermaphrodites. I think the intentional elimination of hermaphrodites has made a huge impact on the demographic of humanity, do you disagree?
Also I don't think you can use the fact other gonochronistic mammals have not developed more sexes as a reason why humans would not.
What I meant was that we can think about other mammals ourselves, and note that no other mammal species has hermaphrodites at significant frequencies. I had no specific research in mind.
This depends both on a genetic cause, and also on hermaphrodites having equal fitness to males and females.
Yes, I disagree, for the reasons I've stated. Other mammals have had no "intentional elimination", yet hermaphrodites remain at very low levels. So "intentional elimination" isn't the reason for the very low levels.
Of course I can; humans aren't particularly special, at least not in relevant ways.
Humans are incredibly special. Humans are the only single species mammal. In that sense given the diversity of human ethnicities, humans are the most specialized-unspecialized species in the world (specialized in the sense that the species allows for the vast degrees of ethnic traits to be completely compatible with any human; unspecialized in the sense that we remain neutral enough to adapt to almost any environment and have not biologically chained ourselves to a particular habitat). Humans are the only species that we know of that creates a shared reality of perception (meaning that if I point at something, you know not to look at my finger but look for what I am pointing too; we are able to see our goals, victories, and aspirations as shared with a larger social entity). Humans are the only creature with a cultural paradox (A cultural paradox is where what is prescribed by their tribe often times is detrimental to their survival, but to go against the tribe is equally if not more detrimental.).
Biological classification is useful for organizational purposes, but the categories created are often times severely lacking. In this case, I think humans are so different from most other mammals that it is not useful to use them as an insight into human nature/ the development of the human species.
It's not clear to me why you're presuming social effects are the primary selection pressure pushing against hermaphroditism. I don't know the genetics / biology / embryology involved, but my prior is that deviation from normalcy decreases the chances of fertility for that individual, and possibly more importantly, their children.
[Although I am not proud of this, reflecting on your question "why you're presuming social effects are the primary selection pressure," the conclusion I came to was] Because it is the political position I was indoctrinated into. in undergrad anthropology we covered feminism and the idea of sex as a social construct is pretty much the big idea of third wave feminism. It was such a unique and interesting idea that I accepted it into my own ideology pretty readily. However honestly, the counter-arguement that there there are other genetic factors that are more primary is potentially acceptable.
As to your prior
I would respond that what is normal depends on the in-group of the individual/community defining normalcy. Since people to some degree define their in-group based on the people, symbols, media, and cultures they interact with, I would argue that the process of labeling what is normal is a social construction.
That distinction gravely understates the amount of physical variation in humans.
Sex does not refer blanketly to physical varation, sex refers to varying reproductive functions. If 5 greatly underestimates the number of unique reproductive systems in the human species, please tell me some of the ones I am missing.
You only listed 3 different sorts of reproductive functions. Two others were only distinguished by non-functional genitalia.
If you were looking for different variation in the sorts of things that are normally clustered with "sex", then there are a lot more expressions. There are for instance ambiguous genitalia, unusual chromosonal sex, Aphallia, and especially human protandry.
Saying "there are exactly 5 sexes" is roughly as bad as saying "there are exactly 2 sexes" - there is great potential for variation on multiple factors. It's not even a spectrum, it's a space.
Sorry if I was too ambiguous with my language. I highlighted the non-functioning genitalia because it is how I remember the distinction; but both ferms and merms have genital structures unique from hermaphrodites in that they are synthesized with quasi male/female structures. The processes of sex, birth, waste defecation, urination, ejaculation and menstruation are all somewhat different.
You are right, I am not an expert on all this stuff and I should not have said “five” in such a definitive way. In general, I have developed the bad habit of writing with too much authority. I apologize for that it is a byproduct of my time debating. I shouldn’t have said “five” in such a definitive way. That said, the point I was trying to make is that the concept of sex is socially constructed, which what you are arguing does not change right?