Gender analysis

I personally have a real problem with the assignation of behavioural categories on to genders as a whole. I am male, but by nature I tend to dislike interpersonal confrontation. If I make a point in a forum or in a meeting which is countered aggressively or forcefully (by a man or a woman) then my natural instinct is to back down away from the initial point and attempt to find a consensus.

This isn't necessarily a positive thing - if anything I need to learn to be more assertive and confident with the points I make. Yet the debate currently being had seems to revolve around assumptions that 'males' are over-aggressive and too confrontational with their beliefs. I have to say that I don't self-identify with this type of masculinity. I personally don't get involved in over-confrontational online discussions with other people, I don't have any real desire to build up a mountain of theory to show off.

Now I understand that the point being made is that many males behave in this way and not all - I don't have a problem with that. The thing I would like us to stay away from is pidgeonholing certain characteristics into either gender and building classifications en masse. I don't feel that is helpful when dealing with the very complicated issue of gender equality. I definitely don't want to be classified into a 'gender grouping' built of character traits that don't match my own.

For the record I am a very strong supporter of Gender equality. I am very glad SolFed is taking the time to deal with this issue and I think it will have a very positive effect on the organisation as a whole. I'm also not saying that I don't have any socialised/gendered personality traits - just that I don't identify with many of the ones that are being discussed as inherently more male than female.

I took 'immovable rightness' to mean refusing to change an opinion even when your argument has been torn apart or when there is evidence that contradicts it. People of both genders express their authority, as in the belief in their own rightness, whilst remaining open to being proven wrong. So I see no contradiction in what I've said.

So whats the alternative, to talk about our feelings? Exchanging arguments is the best way humans have developed to determine the right course of action. If people are less confident in that mode of expression and its excluding them then we should be helping them to become confident. The idea that ethnic minorities and women somehow can't cope with this is patronising crap. I'm a black anarchist with no university education btw!

I think on an individual level there is too much divergence from one category or the other to call them stable, or for the terms to be useful. Particularly when devising a groups policy. Just today on the list we've had an example - one woman says violence is a turn-off for women's involvement in class struggle, another says direct action/violence is why she is part of it. I think the idea that people are socialised in to one half or the other of your table of behaviours is reductive and even if they are socialised, this doesn't mean they can't override that conditioning with a later intellectual understanding.

Yes way to miss the nuance. If we arn't speaking absolutely rationally, then we must be speaking from the position of emotions. Its difficult, I am highly dubious about feelings ever being able to be fully excluded from a debate, and I actually think it is a bit condescending to presume your view is emotion/feeling free while others just have clouded reasoning .

I don't think anybody is saying that it is as dualistic as this (in fact, JK explicitly rebuffs essentialism). You are creating a massive strawman of this debate. you may be able to 'over-ride' certain social characteristics, but that doesnt mean they do not exist. You can't just bury your head to the differences between people.

How about telling me how reasoned argument excludes minorities and women instead of jumping on a flippant remark? And what you think of my suggestion that we should be helping everyone become more effective and confident instead of deciding who needs help based on their gender or race.

More than likely JK didn't intend it to come across like that, but plz don't accuse me of misrepresenting opinions unless your gonna read the thread properly.

I recognise there are differences between people. What I reject is the idea that the categories of behaviour mapped to gender that are being presented in this thread are anything more than averages, which means they are basically no different to stereotypes. I don't see how 'women are peaceful/caring/whatever' is different from 'blacks are impulsive/lazy/whatever'. I've also given an example from today of two women clashing over the meaning of femininity. So I don't think its unfair to say this way of thinking has problems.

Whilst I agree that conditioning can be overridden (it must have been, since I am the second woman) I don't agree that it's necessarily due to intellectual understanding. That implies that women who have not 'overridden' this conditioning lack understanding, whereas I think it is more likely they often aren't given the space and time needed to work this stuff through.

Yes, your right people should be encouraged. But not so we are all gobby know-it-alls. Rather some need to be more encouraged and some need to slow down a bit.

However, I don't think I said women and ethnic minorities need more help*. I said reason is historically situated. Check out what Kant has to say about minorities for what I was getting at here. I didn't say (or mean to say, just to clarify) that reason necessarily does and always will exclude women etc, etc, what I was trying to get across is how reason has done in the past, and how, ya know, it may not be so infallible now.

Don't get upset man, I can easily quote JK saying something different,

I don't think here JK is saying what you think he is. He is saying there is categories that have social effects.
See, we are both following two different chains of reason(ing) here . I think your totally misrepresenting what JK was saying to make him appear to be saying that women are essentially emotional etc, etc.

Your example of women falling out over the meaning of femininity doesn't exactly blow any argument out of the water either. It is a fallacious category that has no objective meaning, though it has social effects. When we try and objectively define both (masculinity, femininity) we will surely fail, because they are irrational social constructs, but they 'exist' never the less (just look at little boys playing with action men and girls with barbies for a trivial example of a wider argument).

*I could now say please don't misrepresent me and learn to read properly here, but I actually think thats quite a patronising way of dealing with misunderstandings

They exist in the way that stereotypes do, as averages of behaviour filtered through individual experience. And when you apply those stereotype-like concepts of behaviour to actual people the two will often not mesh. I can see no *practical* difference between the more elaborate explanation you have given and basic gender essentialism. Everything you have said boils down to stating 'more often than not' women act like x.

Femininity is either a fallacious category as you say, or it isn't. It can't be both fallacious and a sound basis for SF policy on meeting dynamics.

well, I think we have moved from SF policy, so I won't comment. I don't think just because something doesn't have a water tight definition it doesn't exist? Since at least Mary Wollstonecraft people have been pointing to these contradictions in the definition of gender, but it still seems to have tangible effects? The pay gap, etc, etc.

I believe identity to be constructed dialectically through the social (which, is often stereotypical of course, but none the less there) and individual experience. I think there is a huge difference between the explanation i have elaborated on and so called 'gender essentialism' . I'm starting to feel a little bit like your shooting the messenger here as JK said above. Recognizing that there are differences (historically and contemporary) is not the same as affirming that there should be differences.

Sorry, just to further elaborate. I don't think any policy in any organization should be written to gender its members. However, I think it is a good thing that gender differences of a nimnally gender neutral organization have been bought up. It shows us the persistence of those pesky social prejudice that us radicals sometimes think we have gotten over and therefore do not need to take seriously.

Going to come back to this tmmrw. Interesting stuff.

I wonder - can anyone posting here dance? I mean "a deux" - waltz, lindy, tango, etc? What do you think it takes to make a great dance experience with a woman? I ask because this is the kind of "praxis" I - and many women I know - can understand.

I go to lots of "old style" social dances, where men and women dance together, and I've never seen a woman lead, nor met one that wants to. I have met plenty of women unable to follow (who are too passive and lank, or two active and try to predict what you are doing) and plenty of men unable to lead. In fact its also fair to say that most men are terrible dancers. They try and force their partners, or follow a rigid internal plan, or are too indecisive and weak. They don't understand that they are following too - but in a subtler way - they can't hear the rhythm and let it flow through them. They aren't really sensitive to their delightful gal.

I suppose you'd all say that all of this is down to socially constructed gender role playing and such? That men are subtly educated / conditioned to lead the waltz and women to follow? If so I wonder, do you think a time will come when most men are followers on the dance hall? Would you ever want that to happen? Do you think most women would want that?

They don't, and neither do I.

What we want is to enjoy the dance.

nice post dronboddly. To quote myself from earlier,

I guess that this didnt make too much sense, but if we further elucidate it in the context of the waltz, i think I can express what i meant better. I would hope that the 'leader' role would not switch sides, but just would not become an issue. Some men may lead, some women may. Why pose the question in such all or nothing terms? either all men lead or all women do? I try to escape from this simple dualism, that if you don't think A is primary, then B must become primary.

I also think the waltz example is a little disingenuous. Lets think of another example. I hope if I have a son who wants to go to school wearing a pink shirt and playing hop scotch isn't going to come home crying because all the boys in the playground laughed at him, called him a 'girl', then beat him up. Perhaps while everyone else is doing the waltz he is trying to fit a jive into 5/4 or something....

Frankly it keeps me away from any ballroom dancing, the thought I'd be expected to lead on account of my penis.

Seems to me that a very large part of the debate about gender roles is a way of excusing one's unhappiness, anger, anxiety, fear, boredom, confusion catastrophic love life and, above all, lack of genuine empathy (to each other and to the music). One man is an arrogant uneducated egomaniac - and so he says "I'm a MAN!" Another man is a weak or indecisive intellectual and so he says "gender roles are culturally determined!"

Or. I'm not coming to the dance

a. because I'm a MAN, or

b. because of

wow you are just so insightful, glad you got everyone pegged. The dances you refer to are socially constructed to have gender roles in a gendered world. So no surprise that folks attending these dances are happy to accept these roles in this situation. You really aren't going to keep attending otherwise. So a self selecting situation as the bias for exploring gender constructs would start from the question why?

Is that kind of opening a human way to begin a conversation? I ask because...

I'm afraid I do not have the pleasure of understanding you. Why what? Why are social dances "socially constructed to have gender roles in a gendered world"? My point is that there is something here that participants are appreciating more deeply than "socially constructed" roles. More deeply even than genetic impulses.

....something you could call human.

so...let me get this straight....gendered waltzes are....human? man, this waltz example is crummy....

I am asking what it is to be human. Not what it means, what it is.

If we ask what a waltz, between a man and woman means, we come up with all kinds of ideas, some pretty daft. But is there another way to approach a waltz that is not interpretive, analytical, linguistic, abstract? What is the experience of the waltz, as a man, with a woman? I am suggesting that the experience reveals an entirely different understanding to the theory or even the "praxis" (to the extent that this word means the acting out of a theory or belief or analysis) and this experience - if you really go into it - reveals something more fundamental to man-woman affairs than 'gender roles' or genetic programming.

(Not that you have to dance to see this, but its a nice way to start.)

This.

Dron, I don't think you understand the parameters of the debate and that's coming through in the absurd waltz analogy.

TBF I don't think I've ever felt quite as emasculated as the time I went to a salsa club...

I'm fairly sure I understand the parameters. They are - correct me if I'm wrong - based on the premise that...

This is a perfectly rational view. It is quantifiable and composed of discrete relative units. Viewing anything in exclusively rational terms is insane. I am endeavouring to express, or point towards, a kind of healthy irrational experience, found in a certain kind of communication (or dance) between the sexes.

Naturally if you cannot see anything making sense outside rational 'parameters', you'll find my analogy absurd.

Tbh it's not rationality which I'm finding it difficult to get here, it's that you're being a bit vague - deeper than social or genetic meaning what? Are you alluding to a spiritual construction of gender?

I'm alluding to a non-rational construction of gender.

Ookay, doesn't actually answer what I asked, so let's try again, can you expand on what you mean by a non-rational construction of gender, preferably without analogies as (for me at least) it's confusing rather than clarifying.

Before we do, can you clarify what you mean by "so let's try again"? Its just that I am familiar with this phrase being used to express condescending forbearance, which I register as unpleasant, and as I am not in the habit of doing what I find unpleasant, I'm unwilling to engage. However, I may well be mistaken, so please let me know if your intention was friendly and open-minded.

Thanks.

I don’t know how much sense this post will make as I am not sure what I think about other people’s contributions. The comparatively gentle ridicule which dronboddly’s analogy regarding dancing has provoked seems to evade the point (if I’m interpreting it correctly), which is about the special magic two people can generate when their roles are complementary - synchronised.

This ‘magic’ is not the norm (maybe to some lucky people it is?). Dronboddly’s term ‘a non-rational construction of gender’ appears to me to take us into a metaphysical realm of which we can know nothing. We cannot step ‘outside’ our social conditioning. What we can do is recognise our behaviours and try to change them. Similar to an alcoholic always being an alcoholic, only the behaviour can be modified.

This post has reminded me of Dory Previn’s song, ‘I Dance and Dance and Smile and Smile’

It was expressing mild frustration based on an answer which didn't address the question I asked and which I thus couldn't reasonably reply to.

And while I wasn't trying to be patronising, if you don't wish to be condescended to perhaps you could try extending the same courtesy, rather than trying to rhetorically tie the exclusive use of rational "parameters" to insanity and then suggesting this is what Chili does. Polite language does not make insulting behaviour less irritating.