In breezing, pretty much, through your posts, Caprica, I find them in many ways fascinating. I've copied them elsewhere and intend to read them more, and hopefully better, after I actually awaken. You have what appears to be much food for thought in them.
I also notice in more than one of your posts you've managed to draw distinctions between ideas and being. In these, the dichotomy between "being a woman" and "having an idea of what a woman is."
You also use Harry Benjamin Syndrome as if it were in some way "real" as opposed, perhaps, to "transsexual," "transgender" which you seem to be arguing are "constructs." (When and if you go to Merriam-Webster for construct any definition will do, as it basically means "to make." But the psychological form of "construct" might be more apt to where I am about to go.)
People are, allegedly, rational. We at least "think" or have so defined ourselves as being thinking. Maybe we ratiocinate & rationalize more than we can be said to be rational.
But, what I do see on cursory reading is that you have a number of ideas about things and you use a number of words, meanings and textures that are also based on and adjuncts to "ideas."
I find myself in agreement with your points until I find words like "misogynistic" creeping into your writing. In the spirit of YMMV that is, of course, allowed and always true of anything any of us write. Another's perspective is always gonna make another's thought about a topic YMMV. Just the nature of perspective: we stand at different places and view the landscapes of our lives and others' lives from different places. Change of place causes immediately a change of perspective.
The topic itself will, for those who aren't afraid to read your musings due to the well-craftedness of them and the adept use of language you bring to them, become a kind of political/social exercise. For, at base, what you, and we all, are dealing with is ideas. Plain and simple, almost no fact there at all: perspective and ideas that shade whatever "reality" lies beyond them.
Identity, for the rationalizing and ratiocinating and maybe for the rational among us is a concept fraught with misunderstanding and personal povs. No way around that.
Is "woman" an identity? For me this morning woman has meant preparing others, one woman and one male child, to go out into the world by feeding them and making sure that what they were required to carry with them was available. Then it meant coming here and reading. Was that an identity, or simply a set of things that my body did?
Could I have done those things as a "male" or as a "transsexual" or as a "transgender." I imagine that I could have. Can I walk through this world being seen as, responded to, regarded as and living as "a woman?" Yes, I believe I not only can, but do.
Was I raised as a "girl" and indoctrinated into social constructions that were regarded as "girl-ish.?" No, but the constructions I was indoctrinated into were their own set of difficulties that pressed against and onto who I was. That biological sex you wrote of.
What is my biological sex? I haven't a clue actually, never had a karotyping done nor do I expect to do so. But within me there has always been this ... resistance to entering and partaking of the construct of "man." The construct labelled "woman" or "girl" were of more comfort to me: I felt I fit there.
TBH, anymore I think that man and woman are every bit as constructed as transsexual or transgender or gay or lesbian. They are all a conglomeration of assumtions, mores, rules, ideas and are as a part of human being totally political, in the sense that what we do and do together is innately what we refer to as political: having to do with the ways in which we organize our polises, our communities, our cultures our societies.
Your musings in that regard are no different than anyone else's.
I do tend to agree with Windrider that the "sticking point" isn't the various designations and categories people feel individual comfort with when it comes to acceptance and understanding. I think, that like most human community it has not just more to do with "othering" and "us-ing" but has everything to do with that.
I can live my woman's life because when I am seen and experienced by others that is how they categorize me, that initial 6 or 2 second gendering and with that come a host of qualities and ideas about me that no one would have any way to "know" about me within 2-6 seconds. My life, my experience, yours either, cannot be boiled so pure that its entirity can be discovered in that space of time.
Instead what comes are those presumptions: accepted ideas.
No doubt what you say about life on boards and life (in life?) is absolutely spot-on. Anyone: you, me, Windrider and Mina can sign into an internet forum and declare and try to "act-out" roles we derive from our cultural experience to that point.
I'll try to make a better response later: but for now that "real world" begs for my attention.
This is a nice topic, but seems to be perhaps more philosophical than day-to-day. More political and social than "how-to" so to speak. I've enjoyed, though, watching by proxy the workings of your mind. Quite fascinating. Thank you.
Nichole
