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um... thanks? i guess? do not really know how to respond to this. except to point out, once more, that people knew what women were before we knew what gametes were. history is not an optional extra. https://twitter.com/aletheia327/status/1355009789911298049
I want to be v clear what I mean, since ppl in the comments are saying reasonable, but different, things about gender. My point is: our understanding of *what sex is* changes over time, as we learn more about gametes, chromosomes, hormones.
It is tempting to believe that scientific knowledge simply shades in a timeless and always-known truth. But it isnât so. Our understanding of sex difference is profoundly culturally determined, historically *and* at present.
All we mean by âculturally determinedâ is that scientific knowledge is a kind of knowledge produced under particular historical conditions. It doesnât mean that sex isnât ârealâ (nor does it mean it âis realâ), or that reproduction is a coincidence.
When sex differences are translated into, for example, a marriage system, or a set of oppressive laws, or a cultural practice of femicide, we refer to that translation as âgender.â We need the term âgenderâ to understand what happens in the name of sexual difference.
The terfs seem to think âgenderâ means something fictional or trivial. No. It is the word feminists use to describe oppression as suchâincluding the oppression of women by means of sex, reproductive capacity, etc. Gender isnât âsex lite.â The opposite. It is sex + meaning.
Likewise, âidentityâ isnât a trivial issue at all (tho terfs reduce it to matters like make-up). âIdentityâ is the word we use to describe the fixity of particular subjects in the law, and in matrices of cultural recognition.
In other words, what this terf says about identity is almost right. She is not a woman bc her name is Allison. She is a woman bc she is identified as a woman in taxonomies of legal, political, and cultural power. She is *identified* as a woman.
Trans people obviously have a strange role in all of this. We say a few things simultaneously: (1) we want to be identified differently; (2) we think we are *already* identified in conflicting ways; (3) we feel profound and necessary attachments to certain identities.
Terfs, hearing these claims, focus solely on the third, and pretend âself-idâ means âselect your own gender.â Rather than âdescribe your own positionââafter all, Allison âself-IDsâ as a woman, and thatâs the only reason any of us know she is one.
For myself, I claim not only that I feel a profound attachment to being a woman, but that in certain important and observable ways, *I was ID-ed as a woman before transition.â Nothing to do with make-up. Iâve written about this lots, I wonât do it again here.
You might want to disagree with me about those experiences and interpretations. But such a disagreement would be about gender, not sex. Nothing about the claim I am making is intrinsically impossible.
GENDER and IDENTITY are useful concepts for feminists bc they help us avoid a trap that terfs seem to run headlong towards: the patriarchal notion that womenâs oppression is inevitable and ubiquitous. It isnât either.
Lastly, Iâve seen people laughing a lot about the phrase âborn in the wrong bodyâ recently. I donât know why. Imagine thinking one had been born in the right body! I love my bodyâas freaky, transsexual, âwoundedâ (according to terfs) as it may be.
