News and Events => Opinions & Editorials => Topic started by: Shana A on December 12, 2009, 06:58:34 AM Return to Full Version
Title: A note on the Bilerico controversy.
Post by: Shana A on December 12, 2009, 06:58:34 AM
Post by: Shana A on December 12, 2009, 06:58:34 AM
Friday, December 11, 2009
A note on the Bilerico controversy.
Posted by Sonia at 10:12 PM
http://soniaadeline.blogspot.com/2009/12/note-on-bilerico-controversy.html (http://soniaadeline.blogspot.com/2009/12/note-on-bilerico-controversy.html)
I remember the profound discomfort I experienced in a college Women's Studies course that, for the period of several weeks, attempted to instill in me the hypothesis that gender is a social construct. It's a common assertion found in feminist and queer theories—and in many ways it is an accurate notion; much of how people negotiate their internal senses of gender are dependent in some degree on their culture, and individual cultures surely have distinct and institutional means of restricting what is and is not acceptable for any given gender. That said these arguments inevitably pissed me off in a lot of different ways. First of these was my knowledge that, as a trans woman, my society had no role in constructing my gender identity. This is really a problem of semantics, in many ways, as any assertion that gender—as a whole—is a construct of any one force (be that social, biological, or otherwise) is bound to be an incorrect and dangerously over-simplifies analysis of the real dynamic situation. For instance, there is considerable confusion about including "gender identity" (thought to be one's self-identification as a member of any given gender, or a self-identification outside of those terms), but given the inclusion of the term "gender" in "gender identity," you could reasonably argue that gender identity is a function of gender. I know very few trans people who would agree that their gender identities were socially constructed, however, as our society would rather relegate trans identity to the realm of mental disorders—something to be fixed.
A note on the Bilerico controversy.
Posted by Sonia at 10:12 PM
http://soniaadeline.blogspot.com/2009/12/note-on-bilerico-controversy.html (http://soniaadeline.blogspot.com/2009/12/note-on-bilerico-controversy.html)
I remember the profound discomfort I experienced in a college Women's Studies course that, for the period of several weeks, attempted to instill in me the hypothesis that gender is a social construct. It's a common assertion found in feminist and queer theories—and in many ways it is an accurate notion; much of how people negotiate their internal senses of gender are dependent in some degree on their culture, and individual cultures surely have distinct and institutional means of restricting what is and is not acceptable for any given gender. That said these arguments inevitably pissed me off in a lot of different ways. First of these was my knowledge that, as a trans woman, my society had no role in constructing my gender identity. This is really a problem of semantics, in many ways, as any assertion that gender—as a whole—is a construct of any one force (be that social, biological, or otherwise) is bound to be an incorrect and dangerously over-simplifies analysis of the real dynamic situation. For instance, there is considerable confusion about including "gender identity" (thought to be one's self-identification as a member of any given gender, or a self-identification outside of those terms), but given the inclusion of the term "gender" in "gender identity," you could reasonably argue that gender identity is a function of gender. I know very few trans people who would agree that their gender identities were socially constructed, however, as our society would rather relegate trans identity to the realm of mental disorders—something to be fixed.