22 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2023
    1. Any reference to the fact that recent attacks are placed in a historical context is considered their justification

      similar to attacks on anyone explaining the context for the war in Ukraine

  2. Sep 2023
    1. These feminists do not trust Western scientific technological paradigms which are apparently based on men’s domination of nature and their vicious association with women. This is further evident from Carolyn Merchant’s (1980) book, The Death of Nature, in which modern science is demonstrated as the essence of man and nature i.e. woman. She explains the way the metaphor of “nature” has moved from nature as a machine in the modern age. She argues that “death of nature” happens with the success of a “mechanistic metaphor” for nature. This shows the victory of science and technology on the one hand and the defeat of “mother nature” in various ways on the other hand (Lam 2015, 44-45). Through these theories, feminists illustrate the “patriarchal technoscientific” idea which is ingrained in throughout western thought processes and still continuing by the tools of new reproductive technologies.Rejecting feminists caution that ARTs are the further extension of a deep-rooted technoscientific patriarchy that works both ways—control of knowledge and use of technological apparatuses. These two dimensions are mutually supportive as science creates cultural framework for the amalgamation of new technologies such as ARTs. In this context, Patricia Spallone (1989) has illustrated how technologies are redefining the meaning of procreation in society at the cost of women’s life by imposing coercive social/ethical rules and norms. These coercive social relations also provide ample ground for the growth of such technology (Spallone 1989, 4). This displacement of authoritative power from women to technology further disembodies women by interrupting women-nature relation in both symbolical and literal ways. Such practices reconceptualise the woman-nature relation by reducing women into merely mechanical body parts calling it “techo-docs” (Lie 2002, 4) and connecting them to motherhood. According to Lie (2002, 82):An implicit new story of procreation is that science has gained insight into the totality of process. Symbolically, woman is no longer ‘the creator of children’ in accordance with the cultural theory of matrigenesis, but rather one of the several participants of the process.It follows that women are deprived of their procreative choices and lose control over their bodies. Men have gained all women’s procreative control and exploiting it for profit and power. Corea claims that these so-called emancipatory technologies cannot be a neutral tool as it is scientific development of male possession, their values, norms and interpretation of reality. Technologies are governed by the patriarchal male authorities in the form of medical practitioners, commercialised manufacturers and state technocrats in which women’s role is decided by male perspective only. Corea (1985, 4) emphasises the status of women in patriarchy:Reproductive technology is a product of male reality. The values expressed in the technology—objectification, domination—are typical of the male culture. The technology is male generated are buttresses male power over women. It is true that some women are now engaged in reproductive technology as physicians, nurses, entrepreneurs. They are accepted in this field because they abide by the rules male values dictate. Their gender is female but the reality from which they operate is male.Furthermore, it is believed that an ART discourse allows feminists to obtain abortion rights. They say that pro-ART and pro-choice are similar. Raymond (1993, 85) points out that “To be pro-choice, however, is not necessarily to be pro-woman… choice is more rhetorical than reality”. Feminists argue that an infertile woman actually does not have a choice but to go for ART as she is identified for her procreative role. In patriarchy, women are forced to seek assistance from ATRs which seems as if they are doing it voluntarily. In this situation, infertility becomes “disease” and women are coerced to embrace ART treatment. Barbara Katz Rothman (1984, 30) argues that “it seems that, in gaining the choice to control the quality of our children, we may be losing the choice not to control the quality, the choice of simply accepting them as they are”. Choices based on historical and socio-cultural conditions enforce the use of ARTs in the name of making “better” or “rational” choices, which is actually less or NO choice for women.Feminists argue that real choice cannot be possible in unequal gendered relations which undermine the autonomy of women. The questions who and what ultimately controls and which choices are available simply end into polarised debates for or against ARTs and not necessarily with the participation of women who are likely to use them. They illustrate the paradoxical situation of women in making her choices (Katz Rothman 1984, 6):Physicians present the new reproductive technologies (NRTs) as boons to women, providing us with new “options” in childbearing. But will women have the option of not using those technologies? Will we be able to refuse them? Or will their use become compulsory as is the tendency with obstetrical technology such as ultrasound scanning.This scenario precludes the deleterious effects of ARTs, which diminish actual question of choice. Highlighting this point, Rebick (1993, 88) states that:In a class and race divided society, freedom of choice for one woman can mean virtual slavery for another, for example, contract motherhood; thus, protecting some women from the exploitation that NRTs will inevitably bring justifies the abrogation of some women’s individual freedom of choice.Additionally, many feminists support contraceptive—but not conceptive—technology on the basis of “choices” rhetoric. Rowland (1992) puts it in this way that “a woman’s right to choose” is actually “a woman’s right to control” and this control comes through abortion which enables them “to control their lives in a less than perfect world”. However, for conceptive choices, she assumes that these choices finally reduce women’s procreative control over their own maternal bodies. Thus, a rejecting feminist opposes ARTs on the basis of its unequal gender treatment.
    1. Yet a group of philosophers purporting feminism slide sloppily from “female sex” through “feminine gender” straight to “women” as if no move has been made,[4] eventually reverting to the dictionary: a woman is an “adult human female.

      To support the suggestion that this “sloppy slide” is a “habitual move” of gender critical thinkers, MacKinnon references 14 pages of Gender Critical Feminism by Holly Lawford-Smith (2022), Alex Byrne’s paper “Are Women Adult Human Females?” (2020) and p. xx of Janice Raymond’s The Transsexual Empire (1979). None of which mention “feminine gender” or suggest that gender should be anywhere near the conceptual definition of “woman”. This is unsurprising given that the fundament of the gender critical position is that sex is a material reality, “woman” is a sex designation, and feminine gender norms should have nothing to do with the definition of “woman”. For many feminists, this is because feminine gender norms are key to the mechanism of the oppression of women, and we think it harmful for women to be defined by them in law or public life. It is hence our conviction that “adult human female” is not only what most English speakers actually mean when they say “woman” – contra the academic dogma that “woman” is a social kind – but that “adult human female” is the only non-sexist definition of the concept.

      Woman as Resource: A Reply to Catharine MacKinnon

  3. Jul 2023
    1. Andrea Long Chu

      Chu has a lengthy history of equating womanhood with his pornography addiction.

      Did Sissy Porn Make Me Trans?

      Almost every night, for at least a year before I transitioned, I would wait till my girlfriend had fallen asleep and slip out of bed for the bathroom with my phone. I was going on Tumblr to look at something called sissy porn. I’d discovered it by accident one night, scrolling lazily down a pornographic rabbit hole.


      Sissy porn did make me trans … At the center of sissy porn lies the asshole, a kind of universal vagina through which femaleness can always be accessed.”

      His musings about the female one half of humanity in his 2019 book Females:

      Pornography is what it feels like when you think you have an object, but really the object has you. It is therefore a quintessential expression of femaleness”.

      Trans-Identifying Male Academic Who Claimed Porn Motivated His Transition Awarded Pulitzer Prize

      When a porn-obsessed writer can be lauded as a feminist prophet for describing the “barest essentials” of “femaleness” as “an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes” we should wonder how on earth we got to this point.

      Louise Perry reviews Females by Andrea Long Chu

    2. So this is where the oppression of women begins

      The gendered hierarchy in sexuality is not where the oppression of women begins

      It is one of the primary sites, and exemplifications, of the mechanism. Because sexual contact is a signature site of dependency across the axis of sex.

      But you are still going to need to explain why a site of mutual vulnerability and dependency is converted into a site of exploitation and hierarchy and control.

      And you won't be able to do that while pretending bodies are irrelevant.

      Dr. Jane Clare Jones

    3. I reckon—the linchpin of the subordination of women, the impetus and structure of women’s gendered status as second class, is sexuality, socially gendered through sexualized misogyny.[9] We are placed on the bottom of the gender hierarchy by the misogynistic meanings that male dominant societies create, project onto us, attribute to us, which, in my observation and analysis, center on women’s sexuality.

      This is not explanatory.

      It is true that the mechanisms of domination and submission as they are enacted through patriarchal heterosexuality are one of the core sites through which the gendered mechanism plays out. But just saying 'male sexual dominance is the linchpin of male dominance' doesn't actually answer the question of why??

      I'm assuming MacKinnon doesn't want to give a 'because male sexuality is naturally like that' answer.

      So, why is sex so central to male dominance? If you don't think it is natural, why has sexuality been constructed in this way???

      And does that sexuality really have nothing to do with bodies at all? At least insofar as men have particular vulnerabilities around their sexual and reproductive needs for women??

      Dr. Jane Clare Joneshttps://twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1664712196582940672)

    4. which simply stole feminism’s critical insights into sex roles, rebranded them “performance,” sucked out their reality, made subordination into a literary text, and claimed a whole new theory.

      When MacKinnon notes that the problem with Butler is that she took feminism's analysis of gender and 'sucked the reality' out of it she is close.

      The reality that was sucked out was the relationship of the system of gendered power to the material exploitation of female bodies.

      Dr. Jane Clare Jones

    5. I also don’t use the term TERF, not because those who are labeled with it are not trans-exclusive; they are. But because I see nothing radical in their feminism and am baffled by their unwillingness to recognize trans feminism as the contribution that it is, and by their willingness to engage in the transmisogyny that they do.

      hmm..is this unwillingness so unfounded? Dear reader, judge for yourself. https://terfisaslur.com/

    6. Women are not, in fact, subordinated or oppressed by our bodies. We do not need to be liberated from our chromosomes or our ovaries. It is core male-dominant ideology that attributes the source of women’s inequality to our nature, our biological sex, which for male dominance makes it inevitable, immutable, unchangeable, on us.

      The mistake here is occasioned by the fact that because male power has used women's bodies or women's nature as an alibi and excuse for oppression, then we have to deny that there is any relationship between bodies and the system of power.

      As MacKinnon says at the end of this piece, the relationship between sex and gender will be understood as 'arbitrary.'

      This is people thinking the only options to explain the relationship between sex, and the system of gendered oppression, is either 'determined' or 'arbitary.'

      However gender is a system of power which developed historically, and is applied by male people to female people, on the basis of sex, in order to turn women into a sexual and reproductive (and also reproductive labour) resource.

      That system is not, therefore, randomly or arbitrarily related to women's bodies. It is not, however, biologically determined either.

      The relationship of sex to gender is historically contingent. But not random.

      Dr. Jane Claire Jones (one of the "so called feminists" referred to at the beginning of this piece.

      The most painful bit for me comes with the argument that thinking patriarchy is related to men's desire to exploit women as a reproductive class is the same as thinking women are "subordinated or oppressed by our bodies". "We do not need to be liberated from our chromosomes or our ovaries," MacKinnon writes, somewhat pointlessly.

      I expect misogynist men to mischaracterise feminist thought, to tell us we believe things we don't believe, to treat women's work as undeserving of recognition and ripe for caricature. I expect misogynist men to pretend not to hear when we speak. For a supposedly feminist thinker to do this, in the name of feminism, is truly dismaying.

      Against "squint a bit" feminism: Catharine Mackinnon can't avoid the obvious by Victoria Smith

    7. My thoughts are provisional and could be subtitled “what I’ve learned so far.”

      MacKinnon has tasked herself with squaring a circle, and squaring this particular circle is hard! Lesser intellects don’t even try, relying instead on a mix of piety and random insult (“just be kind”, “genocidal terfs!”). MacKinnon, though, a second waver of some stature, is attempting to do things properly.

      You have to admire her for it. It’s a bit like watching an avant-garde author commit to producing a 1,000-page novel without ever using the word “the” or the letter “e”. “Produce a radical feminist analysis of sex and gender that dismisses the proposition that women constitute a sex class!”. In both cases, the end product might not be very good, but god, you’ve got to appreciate the ambition. If the latter example weren’t contributing, in a non-avant-garde way, to the erosion of rights for non-avant-garde people, we could declare it a hoot then forget all about it.

      Against “squint a bit” feminism: Catharine Mackinnon can’t avoid the obvious by Victoria Smith

    8. Defining women by biology—adult is biological age, human is biological species, female is biological sex—used to be criticized as biological essentialism.

      This appears to confuse the belief that women, as adult human females, are biologically predisposed to embody certain traits that define their position within a gender hierarchy (which is biological essentialism) and the belief that women are adult human females (which isn’t).

      Against “squint a bit” feminism: Catharine Mackinnon can’t avoid the obvious by Victoria Smith

  4. Jun 2023
    1. Trans people have been illuminating sex and gender in new and insightful ways. And for some time, escalating since 2004 with the proposed revisions in the UK Gender Recognition Act,[1] a substantial cohort of self-identified feminists have opposed trans peoples’ existence as trans.[2]

      Is the problem feminists opposing trans people's existence as trans, or claiming that trans women are not women? It's the latter. This of course, is an important distinction.

      https://twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1664706063969538051

  5. May 2023
    1. There’s also the very strong revulsion many anti-porn radical feminists have for the bodies of porn performers (typically the women) — you most often see comments like “She doesn’t look human!” “Her tits are plastic!” “Sexbot!”, etc. The too-perfect bodies of these women inspire disgust in these other women.

      perfect example of a typical deliberate misrepresentation of radical feminist opposition pornography ..

  6. Mar 2023
    1. But Queer activism, that pernicious postmodernity, has made it not necessary to debate for certain ideas to be implanted arguing that there are indebatable things and that they are what they have found five years ago. Innovations that would have left the entire history of humanity speechless, by their delirium, are presented as so obvious that they cannot even be debated. They cling to the slogan, because it is not an argument, it is a slogan, that Human Rights are not debated. Implying that Eleanor Roosevelt in the 40s received the visit of Moses who gave her Human Rights and extended them to humanity when in fact they were debated for many months, Russia threatened to get up from the table and many countries alike, until a consensus was reached within the United Nations. But in their candor, when these people talk about rights they are not talking about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which are legal constructions subject to debate, but they think that they spring from human nature. Human Rights are interpreted as natural phenomena, the right to exist, the right to be oneself, which are neoliberal metaphysical constructions of yesterday, invented by McDonalds, which can date these campaigns where these stories appear, I teach about them precisely. And now they live it as the manifestation of an indisputable nature, they are "my rights", the right to be "myself". They would not endure a debate, but the problem is that when you raise the debate, the discussion, they invent that you are moved by hatred and not by your way of reasoning and disavow you to opine. Their only argument is the word "transphobia." They remove you from the debate, they tell you that you are not authorized to comment because you hate and here we can only say those we love.
  7. May 2022
    1. The Bourbon Reforms, the package of laws that were designed to bring the Spanish Empire into the Enlightenment did not do away with race; instead they made it more descriptive. People who had felt that their prior caste designation did not really describe them were given a more precise, narrower, more specific racial designation. And because genetic testing was not on the table, it was relatively easy to look at people’s appearance and station in life and “correct” their race so that it became more descriptive. By multiplying and intensifying the number of racial categories, the Bourbon Reforms did not just produce new laws; they produced new ways for people to narrate their desires, their inclinations and their identity.

      multiplication of categories is a strategy to preserve an oppressive social order (eg. race & "gender identity")

  8. Apr 2022
    1. Repeated and intentional misgendering is similar to racial or ethnic slurs, which also don't belong in professional settings and will ideally also get you fired.

      this is an erroneous analogy

    1. An article which appeared several years ago in the American Journal of Nursing, written by a nurse, advised that nurses should serve as feminine role models for transsexuals, and that it may be the demeanor of nurses and their stereotypical interaction with the transsexual patient on the ward that are most important to the future femininity of the postoperative transsexual.Here, of course, we have the ultimate weapon of sex-role oppression. The woman herself once more becomes the channel through which men's ideas of women are perpetuated and reinforced.

    Annotators

    1. In this way, honour-based societies conflate identity with ontology: to be recognized as an honourable person is indistinguishable from personhood itself, from existence itself. To lose one’s honour is to experience social death.
  9. Mar 2022
    1. There is a fascinating psychology to humans and their custom of dominating their enemies. What I find most fascinating is how particular and specific the "end-game" of this domination actually is. More often than not there are two ultimate outcomes: obliteration or assimilation. But first, let's qualify what I mean by this, and some of the reasoning behind this psyche.
    1. Hi talkbirth, in the longer version of the essay I point out that prostitution is a product of the attempt to control and shame women in patriarchy. If sex were freely available there would be no need to pay for it. It is when female sexuality is controlled that sex becomes a commodity and women are separated into those whose sexuallity is under male control (good women) and those whose is not (whores). It is a sad story.