It’s a complicated problem. We’ve got an epistemological question that’s getting mixed up with medical conditions and psychology and the way that society treats the ways that human bodies can differentiate themselves. Exploring sex and gender is often looking at everything from genetics to anthropology to history to language to societal roles, which is cutting across too many disciplines for anyone to navigate perfectly.
And then we have to look at people. We have to look at the way this uncertainty has been weaponized by the fascist project. This uncertainty is ultimately what transphobic violence is seeking to correct - to force an answer to the question.
It is a scary prospect. We have to consider what it would look like to have a society without mandated gender roles, we have to consider what being “male” or “female” means about us as human beings, we have to figure out what it means to live “as a man” or “as a woman.” Are we really tabula rasa? Is childhood a resolution of the phallic crisis and oedipus complex? Why are some hobbies or professions more dominated by one gender over the other? What about the distribution of household labor?
It’s a Gordian knot - there’s an appeal in just slicing the thing in half.
I admit, I do genuinely love the left wing resolution to the question. “Just give people the freedom to harmlessly be themselves, or else” pretty succinctly cuts through the stochastic terrorism. From the outside, it seems like a complete philosophy with room for future development, edges only apparent when we begin to question what’s human or harmless.
Simply absolving people of the need to care about something is a gloriously tantalizing gesture, and simultaneously collectivizing them through a broader umbrella is powerful. It’s religion for atheists.
It’s a complicated problem. We’ve got an epistemological question that’s getting mixed up with medical conditions and psychology and the way that society treats the ways that human bodies can differentiate themselves. Exploring sex and gender is often looking at everything from genetics to anthropology to history to language to societal roles, which is cutting across too many disciplines for anyone to navigate perfectly.
And then we have to look at people. We have to look at the way this uncertainty has been weaponized by the fascist project. This uncertainty is ultimately what transphobic violence is seeking to correct - to force an answer to the question.
It is a scary prospect. We have to consider what it would look like to have a society without mandated gender roles, we have to consider what being “male” or “female” means about us as human beings, we have to figure out what it means to live “as a man” or “as a woman.” Are we really tabula rasa? Is childhood a resolution of the phallic crisis and oedipus complex? Why are some hobbies or professions more dominated by one gender over the other? What about the distribution of household labor?
It’s a Gordian knot - there’s an appeal in just slicing the thing in half.
I admit, I do genuinely love the left wing resolution to the question. “Just give people the freedom to harmlessly be themselves, or else” pretty succinctly cuts through the stochastic terrorism. From the outside, it seems like a complete philosophy with room for future development, edges only apparent when we begin to question what’s human or harmless.
Simply absolving people of the need to care about something is a gloriously tantalizing gesture, and simultaneously collectivizing them through a broader umbrella is powerful. It’s religion for atheists.