A contradiction in the liberal view of gender

[paulpablo]

How I basically understand it is that gender is defined by what someone identifies as, basically how they feel.

Transgender people therefore don't believe they have the wrong gender, they believe they're in the wrong biological body.

A separate issue from that seems to be gender roles.
Extreme "liberals" think it's all imposed by a patriarchal society, logical people think that people with different biological realities have different tendencies in relation to their behaviour, along with peer pressure and things like that in society.

I'm still stuck on where the contradiction is though.

[emjay]

Stereotypes are a strange kind of self-reinforcing phenomenon; they start a statistical tool of the brain to identify and categorise the common features of something. But then on top of that, you get the social effect of people conforming to stereotypes, which reinforces them but kind of distorts the data set that they work on. So like a snowballing or gravity well effect they get stronger, at first relatively accurately, but later, less accurately as a result of this distortion.

When I first came out I played into the gay stereotypes big time. I don't know exactly why I wanted to pigeonhole myself like that but I did; I think it was probably to do with wanting to belong/fit in and to do with having solid and clear expectations. But as I've got older I don't do that any more... now I don't pigeonhole myself at all... I'm just me.

Good post!

That's something to seriously consider: that once a stereotype's in place, people may consciously strengthen it.  Or, even more insidiously, they may fall into step with that stereotype just because that's how people work.  They say if you tell a kid he's bad, he'll almost certainly act badly.  I guess if you tell a young man he's super-gay, he'll act super-gayly.

I wondered about that when I was young, actually.  Some of the gay guys in Vancouver were way too la-dee-daaaaa for my comfort (I mean, they really seemed to be going for maximum swish!), and I wasn't sure if that was just a social thing (like valley girls talking the way they did), or if something about being gay makes you lisp (I mean, I can imagine what might do that, but zomg it would have to be a LOT of that), or if it was a social cue so they could more easily identify each other at a glance, or what.  But to me, the degree of drama they (I mean this particular kind of gay man that I was familiar with in the 90s) exhibited didn't seem to have anything to do with gender or sexuality.  It seemed like Hollywood drama rehearsal 24/7

Since then, I've met some gay soldiers, teachers, and so on, and some of them are WAY more masculine than I am, and almost all of them are smarter than I am.  If I knew that when I was in my teens, I think I would have benefited from that knowledge.

There's also a flip side to that stereotype-distorting conformity that Khemikal has touched upon; rebelling against a stereotype... eg accentuating the opposites/differences to the stereotype. I'd say that's just as distorting of the actual picture, because by accentuating those opposite/different aspects, it creates new stereotypes that probably would not have been extracted by the passive stereotyping process of the brain on their own. Personally I'd guess that that sort of effect is in play a lot in the gay world, both for gay men and lesbians, because there are uber-masculine and uber-feminine stereotypes in both camps eg 'camp' and 'butch'. So if we assume that the original gay (male) stereotype was camp... after all, that's how it's always portrayed in old TV... limp wrists and mincing etc... uber-feminine... then the now existence of uber-masculine gay stereotypes might have spawned in rebellion against that.

[TheBeardedDude]

I see no contradiction in what you think is a contradiction. As Lotsy stated early on, there is a difference between a gender as defined by one's chromosomes, and the gender roles constructed by society.

[Catholic_Lady]

I think men and women are inherently different in more ways than purely physical. I don't agree at all with people who say otherwise.

[shadow]

@Khemikal, I see what you are saying now.

I do as well, we all do, even when those ideas don;t jive with what we know, intellectually.  Such is the compelling nature of social programming. 

I think it's one of those situations in which given that society does not share one's ideals, it is impossible to act upon them fully without becoming a pariah. So we choose to compromise, and it becomes an inconsistency that is rightly a part of our nature. I don't think it's morally wrong at all; it's the constraints of society making someone compromise on what is idealistically the most logical answer.

[The Grand Nudger]

An acceptance of how things are as opposed to how we wish them to be isn't an inconsistency.  I wish that everyone had food to eat.  They don't.  My plan to then get food to those I can does not, somehow, express an inconsistency in my stated ideology of "everyone should have food" by fiat of the fact that I cannot and do not even try to get food to everyone.

You're looking for a way, in this, to preserve your initial opinion of a contradiction - which was simply and flatly wrong. The "liberal view" of gender you stated was that gender is arbitrary. It is - not that gender was invalid, it simply isn't. It;s not that people are supporting invalid genders, they are supporting a persons right to choose between arbitrary genders. Theres a reason that people view gender in whatever way they view it. It;s cultural, and variable. Thusly, juxtaposed against biological sex - it is arbitrary. The gender that like musicals and is afraid of spiders may be..depending on the cultural referant, male -or- female. In one culture it's women..in another, men. Some people identify with the gender construct to which..in thir culture, members of the opposite biological sex are generally born.

Get it?

The "most logical answer" is that gender is a construct, and I have no reason to prevent a person from living as and being seen as whatever construct it is they identify with. Further, I have ethical reason -not- to prevent them from doing so. After all....no one;s preventing me from living as a male - whatever that means to me...right? It's a right that I take for myself - and so one I extend to others.

[shadow]

There's also a flip side to that stereotype-distorting conformity that Khemikal has touched upon; rebelling against a stereotype... eg accentuating the opposites/differences to the stereotype. I'd say that's just as distorting of the actual picture, because by accentuating those opposite/different aspects, it creates new stereotypes that probably would not have been extracted by the passive stereotyping process of the brain on their own. Personally I'd guess that that sort of effect is in play a lot in the gay world, both for gay men and lesbians, because there are uber-masculine and uber-feminine stereotypes in both camps eg 'camp' and 'butch'. So if we assume that the original gay (male) stereotype was camp... after all, that's how it's always portrayed in old TV... limp wrists and mincing etc... uber-feminine... then the now existence of uber-masculine gay stereotypes might have spawned in rebellion against that.

That's really true. It's what bothers me about some affirmative action things like 'Women in STEM' awards. If you put false incentives on something (like women pursuing STEM) you're not going to have a natural proportion of people pursuing it. I think it can be different if one group is clearly disadvantaged, but for something like science it's not like girls have fewer opportunities to study it than guys (at least in Canada, I'm sure its different elsewhere).

---

An acceptance of how things are as opposed to how we wish them to be isn't an inconsistency.  I wish that everyone had food to eat.  They don't.  My plan to then get food to those I can does not, somehow, express an inconsistency in my stated ideology of "everyone should have food" by fiat of the fact that I cannot and do not even try to get food to everyone.

You're looking for a way, in this, to preserve your initial opinion of a contradiction - which was simply and flatly wrong.

I don't think that's an accurate parallel to draw. Adopting one of two extreme gender roles does not bridge the gap between them, as bringing food to those who don't have it bridges the gap between those who have food and those who don't. One is actively solving the problem, one is more of a compromise.

[The Grand Nudger]

That's really true. It's what bothers me about some affirmative action things like 'Women in STEM' awards. If you put false incentives on something (like women pursuing STEM) you're not going to have a natural proportion of people pursuing it. I think it can be different if one group is clearly disadvantaged, but for something like science it's not like girls have fewer opportunities to study it than guys (at least in Canada, I'm sure its different elsewhere).

-and the other foot finally falls.  Something else bothers you.  

I don't think that's an accurate parallel to draw. Adopting one of two extreme gender roles does not bridge the gap between them, as bringing food to those who don't have it bridges the gap between those who have food and those who don't. One is actively solving the problem, one is more of a compromise.

Who's looking to bridge any gap in either statement?  What gap? What compromise is being made in either statement?

[shadow]

It is -  not that gender was invalid, it simply isn't. 

The people who hold the view I am talking about believe this. I had an explicit discussion in class with my prof about this and got heckled by the other students. I argued that there are some actual differences between men and women, like that women are physically not as strong on average. Scientifically. The class got furious. Then I was like, screw it, I'm not throwing away my grade in this class for this. Otherwise I would have raised the issue with my class instead of here (it would have been a better group of people to address because clearly they hold this view more extremely, but it was a very dangerous environment to do so in and I have a habit). So the belief that gender is completely invalid is something that people hold while simultaneously while supporting transgender people, yes.

[The Grand Nudger]

No, they believe that they are arbitrary.  You're the one that chose to take the statement that they were arbitrary and then launch into something about them being invalid.

Sure, there are differences between the sexes in the averages - but those differences don't actually determine our gender constructs. This is the manner in which statement a contends them to be arbitrary.