this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
564 points (96.2% liked)
People Twitter
5268 readers
556 users here now
People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
- Mark NSFW content.
- No doxxing people.
- Must be a tweet or similar
- No bullying or international politcs
- Be excellent to each other.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Controversial take, but please believe I'm making it in good faith:
Obviously this is bad, but I hope people realise that these kinds of attitudes are still incredibly pervasive, sometimes where you would least expect them.
You'll sometimes see people who think of themselves as feminists or progressive, have a superficial(!!!) understanding of identity politics, treat abstract even stereotypical ideas about gender as if they're real things, and reinforce essentialist and binary ideas about gender. They'll shout down those who don't have the same identity based 'lived experiences' and claim they have no right to speak on certain topics.
It ranges from the banal: someone claiming the only reason someone could possibly be criticial of the Barbie movie, is because they're not a woman.
To the outright toxic: progressive women who were assigned female at birth (cis/not trans) who are transphobic against trans women because they're not 'real women' because they haven't had the same 'lived experiences' and therefore don't have the right identity to speak on 'real' women's issues or become part of the women's movement. Of course, trans women aren't cis women, but that doesn't mean both don't have enough in common to both be considered women. Nature's messy.
I suspect this partly explains what happens with people like JK Rowling, who think of themselves as feminists but in practice are increasingly(?) sliding into essentialist, regressive and right wing ideas about what it means to be a woman, thereby helping to foster division among people who share a common cause and inadvertently undermining the women's movement.
More generally, binary essentialist thinking can be incredibly divisive and undermine stuff like class consciousness. I may have been born with a penis and think of myself as a boring man, but that doesn't mean I have nothing in common with a black trans sex worker. We're both getting fucked by the Elon Musk's of this world.
This comment was overly long and stream of thought. I go sleep now.
I agree with most of what you said. There are biological differences between men and women though, and we do tend to have different reactions to similar situations based on our hormonal balances. It's scientific, and not some antiquated ideology. We know the effects estrogen and testosterone have on mood, behavior, physique, and libido. We even know how particular balances of those hormones can impact someone's perceptions and reactions. When men undergo hormonal treatment for transitions they do become more emotional, and when women transition to male they become less emotional. Men and women with lower estrogen levels have a lower libido and men and women with higher estrogen levels demonstrate larger mood swings. Even something as simple as testosterone replacement for injured or older men can trigger emotional differences until the doctor gets the patient's estrogen balance correct.
Perhaps their emotions CHANGE? Humans, regardless of sex or gender, are emotional beings. Estrogen and testosterone have an effect on emotions, but one does not cause less emotions, just different emotions.
Being emotional doesn't mean that you have more emotions, it means that you are more affected by them.
High estrogen levels are associated with greater mood swings, and greater reactivity towards emotions. The infamous Roid Rage is actually caused by elevated estrogen levels as a result of the elevated testosterone levels from steroids. If steroid users don't use estrogen suppressors, then the body attempts to balance the hormonal levels and produces excess estrogen, which causes dramatic mood swings. Women are naturally susceptible to this because of their fluctuating hormonal levels during reproductive cycles.