beccaelizabeth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccaelizabeth) wrote2017-07-21 08:25 am
beccaelizabeth) wrote2017-07-21 08:25 am
Gender arguments
The thing that makes conversations about gender and media difficult to have
is that, in an ideal world, I'd want gender to be a nonbinary system, a gender spectrum, with no particular weight or pressure to so much as pick a position on it, let alone be stuck there.
... but I am aware that this ideal world is based on what would make the world most comfortable for me, and other people want to do their own thing, so okay, I guess, they can play this two sided thing, if they particularly want.
But gender isn't and can't be just two sides, it's always gender-and-class and gender-and-race and gender-and-dis/ability, just for starters, even without bringing geography in, so you can't say men have this rule women have that rule, it doesn't simplify that way. There's no one way of behaviour or expression that's simply masculine or invariably feminine. It just already isn't binary, and gets really stressed around the edges pretending it is.
But! Again, another but. Even with all this complex intersectionality, there are still some super simplified statements you can make that are a start on being true.
Like, There Are Not Enough Women In This Story.
Like, There Are Not Enough Women In Charge.
Because however you divided people up in the first place, if you have two persistent arbitrary groups, and all the good stuff has been going to only one of them?
That needs fixing.
So I'm a feminist who would quite like to bring down the boundaries that section off feminine in the first place. Feminist who wants to queer gender. Feminist who wants to shake up the value sets until you can't force them apart anyway.
But you've got to be feminist, because that's the fight that's happening.
So, that involves having a lot of conversations with people who start out with some very different assumptions, including that there's such a thing as women in the first place, as something other than a social construct, a habit of language, an arbitrary categorisation.
And it's a lot easier to start from there and just push the parity argument. Because surely, surely, if you get equal numbers, it has to help with the noticing we're all fully human with all the options available. In writing especially, if you have to have half the roles be women, surely eventually that means giving women the good meaty story, as they're there.
... yeah this is a thought with many sighs attached, but since we don't even have parity yet, you never know.
But! Again: I much prefer the Imperial Radch approach. Nuke gender from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
We have to start by engaging with the dominant paradigm, but I get so tired of it when it is being a really intolerable paradigm.
There's no room for anyone in this thing, why even prop it up?
So what this adds up to is, the Doctor has potential to be my ideal character. All Time Lords do now. Because they can demonstrate in one continuous person the utter irrelevance of packaging.
But, because they are on the whole written by binary people in a binary system, it seems annoyingly likely they won't.
And yet it's still progress, because parity is at least twelve more Doctors away, so this is a place to start.
It's just kind of wearying knowing that saying this out loud is... pretty likely to start an argument on the fundamentals. Like, gender. What is even up with that?
is that, in an ideal world, I'd want gender to be a nonbinary system, a gender spectrum, with no particular weight or pressure to so much as pick a position on it, let alone be stuck there.
... but I am aware that this ideal world is based on what would make the world most comfortable for me, and other people want to do their own thing, so okay, I guess, they can play this two sided thing, if they particularly want.
But gender isn't and can't be just two sides, it's always gender-and-class and gender-and-race and gender-and-dis/ability, just for starters, even without bringing geography in, so you can't say men have this rule women have that rule, it doesn't simplify that way. There's no one way of behaviour or expression that's simply masculine or invariably feminine. It just already isn't binary, and gets really stressed around the edges pretending it is.
But! Again, another but. Even with all this complex intersectionality, there are still some super simplified statements you can make that are a start on being true.
Like, There Are Not Enough Women In This Story.
Like, There Are Not Enough Women In Charge.
Because however you divided people up in the first place, if you have two persistent arbitrary groups, and all the good stuff has been going to only one of them?
That needs fixing.
So I'm a feminist who would quite like to bring down the boundaries that section off feminine in the first place. Feminist who wants to queer gender. Feminist who wants to shake up the value sets until you can't force them apart anyway.
But you've got to be feminist, because that's the fight that's happening.
So, that involves having a lot of conversations with people who start out with some very different assumptions, including that there's such a thing as women in the first place, as something other than a social construct, a habit of language, an arbitrary categorisation.
And it's a lot easier to start from there and just push the parity argument. Because surely, surely, if you get equal numbers, it has to help with the noticing we're all fully human with all the options available. In writing especially, if you have to have half the roles be women, surely eventually that means giving women the good meaty story, as they're there.
... yeah this is a thought with many sighs attached, but since we don't even have parity yet, you never know.
But! Again: I much prefer the Imperial Radch approach. Nuke gender from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
We have to start by engaging with the dominant paradigm, but I get so tired of it when it is being a really intolerable paradigm.
There's no room for anyone in this thing, why even prop it up?
So what this adds up to is, the Doctor has potential to be my ideal character. All Time Lords do now. Because they can demonstrate in one continuous person the utter irrelevance of packaging.
But, because they are on the whole written by binary people in a binary system, it seems annoyingly likely they won't.
And yet it's still progress, because parity is at least twelve more Doctors away, so this is a place to start.
It's just kind of wearying knowing that saying this out loud is... pretty likely to start an argument on the fundamentals. Like, gender. What is even up with that?
no subject
yeah but a spectrum still has edges, ends
"already isn't binary"
precisely. and humans get into some messed up violent shit to try and make a binary where there isn't one
which fucks over not just trans people, but all people, really. all people get screwed by this
and the "average male is bigger and stronger than average female!" for example which is... nonsense. since there are fully healthy adults of either type at 140cm and at 210cm
but humans, they do not like to see bigger picture as made of smaller pictures
there are a lot of feminists who want gender to be dismantled. but "there are women" just like "there are asphalt roads". it doesn't have to be absolute natural truth to be a reality, and one that needs sorting.
"There's no room for anyone in this thing, why even prop it up?"
there's plenty room for who gets the power and who uses it and how. there's plenty room for people making money off this. plenty room where if all the people feel they are not tall enough / too tall / not smooth enough / not hairy enough etc etc etc etc etc, then they don't have time to think "people in power need to fuck off".
-------
"all the skills moderately" is *not* equality. equality is people with this skill and people with that skill and people with no skill all have a right not to be murdered, and get enough meat of the hunt to not die of starvation.
we do *not* need to be tolerant of people whose view is to kill us. we do not need to be tolerant of *all* views. we do not need to pretend there's argument of semantics when we see reality and how it treats people-currently-defined-as-women.
-----
dismantling gender is a hopeful distant future. helping women is a matter of urgency now.
*nodding a lot*
*nods*
there are women like there are nations, real, because people make it so.
and yep.
People get power, but it seems like they've got to tightrope walk for it.
also thinking one is not something enough drives capitalism, selling solutions to anxieties set up by advertising pressures, as well as the ones that would exist without stories.
---
agreed all have right to life regardless of ability.
very much agreed about tolerance.
and yes, things need to be better starting from current reality.
---
true and true.
Re: *nodding a lot*
Even dimensions have corners :)
In an ideal world, I don't see why anyone would want to play in the corners when they can skip merrily all over the field, but in reality even simple things like "I like mixed pronouns and I like to change my look from day to day" gets so much hate and hurt from outside people, that it's exhausting (and often dangerous); it's easier to say "I'm a guy" and do the rest of who you really want to be when the Other People have gone.
you always gotta walk a tightrope for power. And you always gotta keep other people who want power away from your rope. That's how power and how humans work.
(not you. Power hungry people with the worst of anxieties, the ones that make them hurt other people)