If you want full Human Rights for women, then simply follow the anti-fascist and Universal Human Rights declaration of 1948* (UDHR) which clearly states that sex ought not to be used as a reason for differing Human Rights.
* Fascism is creeping back trying to stab the original UDHR's emphasis on the (negative) rights of the individual no matter of sex etc., by altering and conflating - or in the case of islam just abandoning - UDHR.
Peter Klevius, the world's foremost expert on sex segregation (sad isn't it): Stop using the feminist "gender" for sex! It's sexist*, it's against Human Rights, and it hurts many people, especially girls - and spreads hatred against half of the world's population.
* Feminism is fascistoid sexist politics, i.e. unlike most political parties it doesn't rest on an ideology for whomever happens to like it, but for a particular biological class (i.e. sex) of people. In this sense it's even worse than classic fascism, although both rest on similar (i.e. anti-democratic) use of state power.
Although Google correctly translates the Swedish word 'kön' (from PIE 'gen', but 'kin' in the Swedish creole dialect called English) as 'sex' in a one word search, Google translate anyway keeps translating it as 'gender' (compare Peter Klevius 2000 article Warning for Feminism below).
As a girl in the 1960s and 70s Pia Sundhage had to pretend being a boy to be able to play football - not because she wanted to be a boy but because it happened to be boys (due to historical sex segregation) who taught her to love football. And the rules said no girls in a boys team - and there were no girls teams around.
1. First she learned the skills through opportunity structures in a non-sex segregated environment (i.e. home and neighborhood).
2. These skills later on paved the way through a sex segregated environment (i.e. school).
3. If Peter Klevius had relied on any feminist theory or s.c. "gender studies", then the points above and the role of matriarchal sex segregation would never have been revealed.
Pia Sundhage's parents were completely uninterested in football so she had nothing of it from home. It was the neighbor boys - and lack of girls - that introduced her into the magic world of football.
So the reason she turned footballer was a random opportunity structure, i.e. that the neighbor children happened to be boys who loved football and wanted more players.
This is how Pia got her initial football skills which became the opening code that later on helped her crossing the barrier of sex segregation by at school showing off her kicking skills with a baseboll outside the pitch were the boys - but not the girls - played football and one of them observed her and invited her to join in.
At school unlike at home, sex segregation had already segregated the sexes to an extent that made the boys not even thinking of inviting the girls and vice versa. Except when Pia "behaved like a boy".
A feminist approach would have made it impossible to understand Pia Sundhage's problem with sex segregation about playing football - and for Peter Klevius to make his research based on in depth interviews with real life football women. Feminist theory would have eliminated Pia's experience.
Warning for feminism (published in Hufvudstadsbladet 27 September 2000).
by Peter Klevius
For the English reader it may be noted that the original Swedish text uses 'kön' (compare 'gen', 'kin') for sex. In Swedish 'sex' (except for the number 6) only means something sexual and erotic, but in English it also means biological sex .
Despite the currently popular and frenetic feminine 'gender' marking for (biological) sex, we are facing an inevitable and constantly irresistibly progressing global loosening of traditional sex spheres. The sooner we recognize this the better. The simple and obvious idea that sex in the future could mean as little as e.g. skin color today, however, still scares many.
When the assumed difference between the sexes is questioned through the development of society itself, strong counter-reactions arise. Today, this is reflected e.g. in that girls' and women's appearance attributes once again approach the classic transvestite's pursuit of femininity.
Shame on biologism (essentialism) say some feminists, while still asserting (significant) differences This despite the fact that there is a complete lack of longitudinal evidence that man's relatively weak biological sex dimorphism would be necessarily predestining for cultural behavior. The differences within the sexes are significantly greater than between and what is measured in sex comparisons is usually the result of education/lifestyle. The real difference is only statistical and without a definite point of transition.
Although among sexually reproductive organisms there is an evolutionarily implanted attraction that causes males (read sperm) to be attracted by females (read eggs), this does not apply all the time and does not include all males and females. It therefore does not cover what we normally mean by men/women. Erotica is also a vanishingly small or sometimes even absent part of most people's daily lives.
Erotic versatility
Humans can, however, be erotically versatile and exhibit all combinations within and across sex boundaries (is masturbation homosexuality?). This is in fact an example of the declining sex dimorphism of which the most well-known is that humans within their species group have the least size difference between the sexes. And as far as the practical side of reproduction is concerned, today it is almost as easy for a woman to inject sperm alone as for the man to ejaculate them without erotic extravagances. There are also reasons to prepare for the possibility that with the help of genetic engineering in the future we can reproduce asexually. On the other hand, heterosexual attraction is likely to persist as well as the now so underestimated importance of biological kinship. In feminist/socialist rhetoric, it is openly stated that the goal is the death of the patriarch and the dissolution of the family and (paternal?) kinship.
Feminists often point to the white well-to-do middle-aged man as the "patriarchal" norm. However, Martine (you read that right) Rothblatt fits the label, a successful lawyer and satellite contractor involved in the HUGO project. He lives in a typical nuclear family but is a transvestite. In his book The Apartheid of Sex - a Manifesto on the Freedom of Gender, he points out, among other things, the inadequacy of chromosomes and hormone levels for the determination of social gender. More testosterone not only makes a larger proportion of boys but also a smaller proportion of girls more boisterous etc. than all other boys and girls. And why care at all about these types of differences when we do not care about them within the sexes. Gender glasses within e.g. healthcare would effectively exclude those men and women who do not meet the gender norm.
Women prone to violence
One of the biological "truths" that has since been revised over the years is the claim of the man as more aggressive. .That women are clearly more prone to accidents as drivers (Norwegian Road Safety Research) is another little-talked-about fact, but hardly that it depends on biological differences but rather on scanty motor education in youth. the middle-aged white man ... eh, but he had also had to train the most.
The fact that so many men have joined Ferninism can be attributed to the same chauvinism as feminism itself. Men who rely too much on their masculinity may feel fear of an androgynous and gender-insecure world. Logically, different homosexual theories belong to the same backward-looking little save group. Yet a gender-liberated world would also make sexually based sexuality restrictions / prejudices impossible. Note that homosexuality was classified by psychiatrists as a disease as late as the middle of the 20th century.
Where Jean dArc was burned at the stake for dressing in "men's clothes", today's emancipated girl risks falling victim to the psychoanalytically based letter combination GED (gender identity disorder), which in short means that DSM? Diagnostics can declare a girl sick (but not an adult woman) if her gender identity is unclear (sic). No wonder people eat hormones and undergo surgery to meet expectations of pure gender identity.
Today's unusually strong cultural emphasis on supposed gender differences began more than a decade ago with the so-called "Peculiarity?" Feminism "and is reflected i.a. in a completely unique decline in women's athletics results while men improved theirs. Ben Johnson (who was evidently doped) has long ago seen his best times come from at the same time as no one was even close to little Flo? Jos (who was not doped) 100 and 200 m world records. Flo? Jo had few. entered a good points place in the men's 200 m in this year's FM. In the ladies' long jump, you can today win big competitions without even getting close to the 7? Meter limit? something that would hardly have been enough for a medal place in the 80's. The same tendency is repeated in most branches and reflects the culture's view of power performance and femininity and thus also girls' choice of idols and hobbies. When Flo? Jo ran, however, one could imagine how she too tried to mitigate the effect of her muscular body with a plethora of 'female' attributes, ranging from a long (and probably obstructive) hairline to overlong, tightly colored nails.
Feminism as racism
Of all the defensive reactions to gender segregation, feminism is the foremost. Feminism is both racism, ie. essentialist interpretations based on bodily appearance and chauvinism, ie. that the sexes should stick to theirs. A political movement focused on people with first names based mainly on the appearance of the external genitalia. The success of the movement is ultimately determined by how well it suits the state apparatus. Intervention in the family? and family matters have always been on the agenda of the welfare state, and here feminism has provided it with very new intervention material (cf., for example, incest? hysteria, the law on women's peace, etc.). Real feminism, is thus in practice synonymous with state feminism.
Sweden now has a situation where feminism, with the help of the state, further slows down the dissolution of gender segregation. As a result, a painful historical transition period is extended. This is also the reason why Sweden has the world's highest parliamentary representation of women (although no female leader yet? Credit card? Mona came closest »while being last in the OECD when it comes to women in technology? And science. However, this fact is frantically hidden behind" women can ”? core panics and rhetoric about the inadequate man and boys' poorer school performance.
When they advocated quotas for female professors at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, the only (out of over a hundred!) Female professor flew in the air. And I understand her. She had come there on her own.
Democracy was born in the misogynistic ancient Greece and was refined by the ideal of equality of the revolutions. Women's suffrage was not originally about women but universal suffrage, ie. that all property owners, such as farmhands, workers, etc. was awarded a share in democracy. Finnish women received f.ö. their voting rights three years before Swedish men.
Ultra-reactionary
Feminism is its seemingly progressive appearance, despite being basically an ultra-reactionary. It is the natural reaction of those who, like the GDR residents after the fall of the wall, ended up in a foreign world where previously nurtured skills in an almost totally gender-segregated world were transformed into incompetence in a world where gender no longer guarantees work identity. In contrast to the inhabitants of the GDR, the women in the so-called however, the 'welfare state' has been allocated a sheltered workshop in the public sector.
Wäför e fabor more fun than aunts? ' This authentic and completely spontaneous statement was made by a 4-year-old girl. ? vitamin uptake)? According to the feminist way of looking at it, it is the statistical difference that is interesting. If we further, like feminists, use a so-called qualitative scientific method based on induction, ie. generalization from the small, we need to take the girl seriously and start speculating about the underlying causes.
Do growing up conditions, upbringing and related understandings then remain?
else for the macro? and micro-functions that make up our world. That the number of female students on the lines within the Royal Institute of Technology is the same as the number of girls admitted to closed youth care due to. crime? about 5 out of 100? reflects the development of skills at both ends of the spectrum. Since the boy culture is the most dynamic, it of course also provides more opportunities for cross-border, which explains the higher proportion of criminal boys.
In 1981, I wrote on Hbl / Debatt about the potential for a more resource-efficient society that primarily represented women. Today, feminists no longer demand that men reduce their consumption of resources, but instead that women should have the same consumption of resources.
David vs. Goliath
The image of feminism's Davidic struggle against the patriarch Goliath is today completely misleading. Mention a social science that does not overflow the banks of different and contradictory feminist "perspectives." Like sociobiologists, feminist feminists use cultural traditions to justify their cementing. out them on long-term assignments and life? dangerous wars?
State fernism. is really only a side branch of state socialism. State socialism, through its individual ideology and its bureaucratic self-interest, strengthens the general secularization, which leads to further increased child crime due to diluted parental and family support.
* Why is it that a man seems to be the world's foremost defender of women's rights? The answer is threefold:
1
Only a man can understand biological heterosexual attraction (HSA),
i.e. the only thing that essentially segregates the sexes (see below).
2 Only a man feels safe from inferiority complex as long as sex segregation prevails.
3 Only a man can feel a coming inferiority complex in a de-sex segregated world.
Therefore
men have all reason to stick to Human Rights equality. As Peter Klevius
has always said since his teens: Negative (as opposed to the positive
s.c. "Stalin rights") Human Rights for a positive human future.
Do
realize the difference between folk feminism which is anti segragation
and true feminism which is the very opposite - already from the
beginning when resisting the vote etc.
And do realize that while
Mills wanted emancipation and Freud didn't. No wonder psychoanalysis
became so popular among feminists.
And no feminist seems to be
interested in Mary Woolstonecraft's advice on how to not foster
daughters to "follies". And the s.c. "glamour feminism" did just that.
In
the last chapter in Demand for Resources (1992) called Khoi, San and
Bantu, Peter Klevius notes that hunter-gathering societies where the
least sexist. With civilization came what Peter Klevius calls classical
sex segregation, and with "monotheisms" came religious sexism on top of
the classical.
US
Supreme Court needs to replace at least half* of its 100% religious
members with Atheists so to democratically represent the people
* Even most Jews are Atheists, although orthodox Jew Ruth Bader Ginsburg was certainly not..
Peter Klevius 'Woman' from 1979 Does the Human Right to 'freedom of religion' really mean freedom to violate Human Rights as e.g. islamic sharia (OIC) does?!
Anna-Karin Wyndham is a Swedish example of the female patriarchy 2020Precisly
because Peter Klevius is a defender of the most basic of Human Right,
he is called an "islamophobe" because islam can't stand Human Rights
equality.
Peter Klevius is offended by muslims' extreme injustice (sharia), and asks for more fairness.
Islam's schizophrenia
Islam
resides between the roof of the Saudi dictator family/OIC, and the
floor of Muslim Brotherhood. And the "house of Saud" wants to broom the
floor, while MB wants to take down the roof.
Muslims have an overwhelming problem if they want to follow islam while living in a civilized society based on Human
rights equality.
Peter
Klevius, the world's foremost expert on sex segregation (sad isn't it),
asks for your help because he doesn't see any other biological
difference between men and women than the onesided evolutionary
heterosexual attraction that Peter Klevius seems to be the only one
talking about but everyone knows about. So do you see something that
Peter Klevius doesn't?
But don't fall in the usual trap by
pointing to non-relational differences. Menstruating, delivering and
feeding a baby, etc. are not relational. And although heterosexual
attraction is only implanted in the male's brain, it's directly
dependent on the female. And it affects all women, incl. prepubertal
girls and centenary old ladies, precisely because how it outlines the
future of the former and the history of the latter.
As
Tertullian, "the founder of Western theology" said to women who wanted
to abandon heterosexual attraction by marrying Christ: "It's a sport of
nature."
And if a lesbian woman's body attracts "the male
gaze", i.e. heterosexual attraction, she has no other option than
covering it in a burqa-like package - but without becoming a muslim
because sharia would kill her lesbianism.
However, if we want
to live in a civilized world based on Human Rights equality, i.e. not
segregating between humans, then we need to release us from the
unnesseccary, stupid and destructive gender prison of sex segregation,
and the one sex that lacks sensitivity for heterosexual attraction has
to decide whether or when it wants to have anything to do with it. And
do remember, we healthy men are always there for you - but not for
cheating. So be responsible.
The seemingly seamless connection
between heterosexual attraction and reproduction is the mirage that a
disastrous sex segregation has been built on.
When will start educating children about heterosexual attraction and sex segregation?
Google
seems not to have a clue about heterosexual attractio. This is Google's
first on the subject: There are several types of sexual orientation;
for example: Heterosexual. People who are heterosexual are romantically
and physically attracted to members of the opposite sex: Heterosexual
males are attracted to females, and heterosexual females are attracted
to males. Heterosexuals are sometimes called "straight."
Peter Klevius: No wonder girls are confused when they don't get any adequate sex education at all.
Peter Klevius wrote:
Klevius sex and gender tutorial
Klevius' proposal to bright minded and non-biased readers: Do read
EMAH,
i.e. how continuous integration in Thalamus of complex neural patterns
without the assistance of one or infinite "Homunculus" constitutes the
basis for memory and "consciousness".
Klevius quest of the day: What's the difference between the Pope and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg?
Klevius hint: It's all about 'not sameness' and Human Rights! Human Rights IS 'sameness' stupid!
When God was created he was made like Adam.
When the basic idea of Universal Human Rights was created it was made like Adam AND Eve.
And for you who think heterosexual attraction, i.e. that women are
sexier than men, could be (exc)used as a reason for depriving women of
legal sameness. Please, do think again!And read Klevius Sex and Gender
Tutorial below - if you can!
The Plan of God
A Cardinal, a Pope and a Justice "from medieval times"
Keith O'Brien has reiterated the Catholic Church's continued
opposition to civil partnerships and suggested that there should be no
laws that "facilitate" same-sex relationships, which he claimed were
"harmful", arguing that “The empirical evidence is clear, same-sex
relationships are demonstrably harmful to the medical, emotional and
spiritual wellbeing of those involved, no compassionate society should
ever enact legislation to facilitate or promote such relationships, we
have failed those who struggle with same-sex attraction and wider
society by our actions.”
Four male members of the Scottish Catholic clergy allegedly claim that
Keith O'Brien had abused his position as a member of the church
hierarchy by making unwanted homosexual advances towards them in the
1980s.
Keith O'Brien criticized the concept of same-sex marriage saying it
would shame the United Kingdom and that promoting such things would
degenerate society further.
Pope Francis, aka Jorge Bergoglio: Same-sex is a destructive
pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere
bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to
confuse and deceive the children of God." He has also insisted that
adoption by gay and lesbian people is a form of discrimination against
children. This position received a rebuke from Argentine president
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who said the church's tone was
reminiscent of "medieval times and the Inquisition".
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 'Sex' is a dirty word, so let's use 'gender' instead!
Klevius: Let's not!
As previously and repeatedly pointed out by Klevius, the treacherous use
of 'gender' instead of 'sex' is not only confusing but deliberately so.
So when Jewish Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg proposed gender' as a
synonyme for 'sex' (meaning biological sex) she also helped to shut the
door for many a young girl's/woman's possibilities to climb outside the
gender cage.
The Universal Human Rights declaration clearly states that your
biological sex should not be referred to as an excuse for limiting your
rights.
Islam (now represented by OIC and its Sharia declaration) is the
worst and most dangerous form of sex segregation - no matter in how
modern clothing it's presented!
Klevius Sex and Gender Tutorial
What is 'gender' anyway?
(text randomly extracted from some scientific writings by Klevius)
It might be argued that it is the
developing girl, not the grown up woman, who is the most receptive to
new experience, but yet is also the most vulnerable. Therefore we need to address the analysis of the tyranny of gender before
the point at where it's already too late. I prefer to use
the term ‘female’ instead of ‘woman’, when appropriate in
this discussion. I also prefer not to define women in relation to
men, i.e. in line with the word 'universal' in the Human Rights
Declaration. In short, I propose 'gender blindness' equally as, for
example, 'color blindness'.
According to Connell (2003:184), it is an old and
disreputable habit to define women mainly on the basis of their
relation to men. Moreover, this approach may also constitute a
possible cause of confusion when compared to a definition of ‘gender’
which emphasizes social relations on the basis of ‘reproductive
differences’.
To really grasp the absurdity of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's and
others habit of confusing 'gender' with 'sex' one may consider that
“normal” women live in the same gender trap tyranny as do transsexuals.
The definition of ‘acquired gender’ is described in a guidance for/about transsexuals as:
Transsexual
people have the deep conviction that the gender to which they were
assigned at birth on the basis of their physical anatomy (referred to as
their “birth gender”) is incorrect. That conviction will often lead
them to take steps to present themselves to the world in the opposite
gender. Often, transsexual people will undergo hormonal or surgical
treatment to bring their physical identity into line with their
preferred gender identity.
This evokes the extinction of the
feminine or women as directly dependent on the existence of the
masculine or men. Whereas the feminine cannot be defined without the
masculine, the same applies to women who cannot be defined - only
described - without men.
Female footballers, for example - as
opposed to feminine footballers, both male and female - are, just like
the target group of feminism, by definition distinguished by sex.
Although this classification is a physical segregation – most often
based on a delivery room assessment made official and not at all taking
into account physical size, strength, skills etc. - other aspects of sex
difference, now usually called ‘gender’, seem to be layered on top of
this dichotomy. This review departs from the understanding that there
are two main categories that distinguish females, i.e. the physical sex
belonging, for example, that only biological women may participate in a
certain competition, and the cultural sex determination, for example
that some sports are less ‘feminine’ than others.
‘Gender’, is
synonymous with sex segregation, given that the example of participation
on the ground of one’s biological sex is simply a rule for a certain
agreed activity and hence not sex segregation in the form of stipulated
or assumed separatism. Such sex segregation is still common even in
societies which have prescribed to notions of general human freedom
regardless of sex and in accordance with Human Rights. This is because
of a common consensus that sex segregation is ‘good’ although its
effects are bad.
In Durkheim’s (1984: 142) view such ‘organized
despotism’ is where the individual and the collective consciousness are
almost the same. Then sui generis, a new life may be added on to that of
the main body. As a consequence, this freer and more independent state
progresses and consolidates itself (Durkheim 1984: 284).
However,
consensus may also rest on an imbalance that is upheld and may even
strengthen precisely as an effect of the initial imbalance. In such a
case ‘organized despotism’ becomes the means for conservation. As a
consequence, the only alternative would be to ease restrictions, which
is something fundamentally different from proposing how people should
live their lives. ‘Organized despotism’ in this meaning may apply to
gender and to sex segregation as well.
According to Connell
(2003) whose confused view may be closer to that of Justice Ginsburg,
gender is neither biology, nor a fixed dichotomy, but it has a special
relation to the human body mirrored in a ‘general perception’. Cultural
patterns do not only mirror bodily differences. Gender is ‘a structure’
of social relations/practices concentrated to ‘the reproductive arena’,
and a series of due practices in social processes. That is, gender
describes how society relates to the human body, and has due
consequences for our private life and for the future of wo/mankind
(Connell 2003:21-22).
Gender is neither biology, nor a fixed
dichotomy, but it has a special relation to the human body mirrored in a
“general perception.” What is wrong with this view is the thought that
cultural patterns only mirror bodily differences. Gender is “a
structure” of social relations/practices concentrated to “the
reproductive arena”, and a series of due practices in the social
processes. I.e. it describes how society relates to the human body, and
due consequences to our private life and for the future of wo/mankind
(Connell 2003:21-22). The main problem here involves how to talk without
gender.
... sex should properly refer to the biological aspects
of male and female existence. Sex differences should therefore only be
used to refer to physiology, anatomy, genetics, hormones and so forth.
Gender should properly be used to refer to all the non‑biological
aspects of differences between males and females ‑ clothes, interests,
attitudes, behaviours and aptitudes, for example ‑ which separate
'masculine' from 'feminine' life styles (Delamont 1980: 5 in Hargreaves
1994:146).
The distinction between sex and gender implied in
these quotations, however, does not seem to resolve the issue precisely
because it fails to offer a tool for discriminating biological aspects
of differences from non-biological, i.e. cultural. This is also
reflected in everyday life “folk categories of sex and gender” which
(most?) often appear to be used as if they were the same. Although
'masculine' and 'feminine' are social realities, there is a mystique
about their being predetermined by biology” (ibid). Furthermore the very
relational meaning of ‘gender’ seems to constitute a too an obvious
hiding place for essentialism based on sex. Apart from being
‘structure’, as noted above, gender is, according to Connell, all about
relations (2003:20). However, if there are none, or if the relations are
excluding, the concept of sex segregation may be even more useful.
It
seems that 'masculine' and 'feminine’ in this definition of gender is
confusingly close to the ‘mystique about their being predetermined by
biology’ when compared to the ‘reproductive arena’ and ‘reproductive
differences’ in Connell’s definition of gender. However, although
gender, according to Connell (2003: 96), may also be ‘removed’ the
crucial issue is whether those who are segregated really want to de-sex
segregate? As long as the benefits of a breakout are not clearly
assessable, the possible negative effects may undermine such efforts.
According
to Connell (2003:20) the very key to the understanding of gender is not
to focus on differences, but, instead, to focus on relations. In fact,
this distinction is crucial here because relations, contrary to
differences, are mutually dependent. Whatever difference existing
between the sexes is meaningless unless it is connected via a relation.
On the one hand, big male muscles can hardly be of relational use other
than in cases of domestic violence, and on the other hand, wage gaps
cannot be identified without a comparative relation to the other sex.
Biological
determinism is influential in the general discourse of sports academia
(Hargreaves 1994:8). However, what remains to analyse is whether
‘gender’ is really a successful concept for dealing with biological
determinism?
‘To explain the cultural at the level of the
biological encourages the exaggeration and approval of analyses based on
distinctions between men and women, and masks the complex relationship
between the biological and the cultural’ (Hargreaves 1994:8).
With
another example: to explain the cultural (driver) at the level of the
technical (type of car) encourages the exaggeration and approval of
analyses based on distinctions between cars, and masks the complex
relationship between the car and the driver. However, also the contrary
seems to hold true;. that the cultural (driver/gender) gets tied to the
technical/biological. The ‘complex relationship’ between the car and the
driver is easily avoided by using similar1 cars, hence making the
driver more visible. In a sex/gender setting the ‘complex relationship’
between sex and gender is easily avoided by distinguishing between sex
and culture2, hence making culture more visible. The term ‘culture’,
unlike the term ‘gender’ clearly tries to avoid the ‘complex
relationship’ between biology and gender. The ‘complex relationship’
makes it, in fact, impossible to distinguish between them. On top of
this comes the ‘gender relation’ confusion, which determines people to
have ‘gender relations’, i.e. to be opposite or separate.
This
kind of gender view is popular, perhaps because it may serve as a
convenient way out from directly confronting the biology/culture
distinction, and seems to be the prevalent trend, to the extent that
‘gender’ has conceptually replaced ‘sex’, leading to the consequence
that the latter has become more or less self-evident and thus almost
beyond scrutiny. In other words, by using ‘gender’ as a sign for ‘the
complex relationship between the biological and the cultural’,
biological determinism becomes more difficult to access analytically.
Gender
is neither biology, nor a fixed dichotomy, but it has a special
relation to the human body mirrored in a ‘general perception.’ What is
problematic with this view is the thought that cultural patterns only
mirror bodily differences. Gender is ‘a structure’ of social
relations/practices concentrated to ‘the reproductive arena’, and a
series of due practices in social processes. That is, it describes how
society relates to the human body and has due consequences to our
private life and for the future of wo/mankind (Connell 2003: 21-22). The
main problem here involves how to talk sex without gender:
‘Sex
should properly refer to the biological aspects of male and female
existence. Sex differences should therefore only be used to refer to
physiology, anatomy, genetics, hormones and so forth. Gender should
properly be used to refer to all the nonbiological aspects of
differences between males and females clothes, interests, attitudes,
behaviours and aptitudes, for example which separate 'masculine' from
'feminine' lifestyles’ (Delamont 1980 quoted in Hargreaves 1994: 146).
The
distinction between sex and gender implied in these quotations,
however, does not seem to resolve the issue, precisely because it fails
to offer a tool for discriminating biological aspects of differences
from non-biological ones, i.e. those that are cultural. This is also
reflected in everyday life. ‘Folk’ categories of sex and gender often
appear to be used as if they were the same thing. Although 'masculine'
and 'feminine' are social realities, there is a mystique about their
being predetermined by biology. Furthermore the very relational meaning
of ‘gender’ seems to constitute a too obvious hiding place for a brand
of essentialism based on sex. Apart from being ‘structure’, as noted
above, gender is, according to Connell (2003:20), all about relations.
However, if there are none - or if the relations are excluding - the
concept of sex segregation may be even more useful.
In Connell’s
analysis, however, gender may also be removed (Connell 2003:96). In this
respect and as a consequence, gender equals sex segregation. In fact it
seems that the 'masculine' and 'feminine’, in the definition of gender
above, are confusingly close to the ‘mystique about their being
predetermined by biology’ when compared to the ‘reproductive arena’ and
‘reproductive differences’ in Connell’s (2003:21) definition of gender.
The elusiveness of gender seems to reveal a point of focus rather than a
thorough-going conceptualization. So, for example, in traditional
Engels/Marx thinking the family’s mediating formation between class and
state excludes the politics of gender (Haraway 1991: 131).
What's a Woman?
In
What is a Woman? Moi (1999) attacks the concept of gender while still
emphasizing the importance of the concept of the feminine and a strong
self-conscious (female) subject that combines the personal and the
theoretical within it. Moi (1999: 76), hence, seems to propose a loose
sex/gender axis resting on a rigid womanhood based on women’s context
bound, lived experience outside the realm of men’s experience.
Although
I share Moi’s suggestion for abandoning the category of gender, her
analysis seems to contribute to a certain confusion and to an almost
incalculable theoretical abstraction in the sex/gender distinction
because it keeps maintaining sex segregation without offering a
convincing defence for it. Although gender, for example, is seen as a
nature-culture distinction, something that essentializes non-essential
differences between women and men, the same may be said about Moi’s
approach if we understand her ‘woman’ as, mainly, the mainstream
biological one usually classified (prematurely) in the delivery room. If
the sexes live in separate spheres, as Moi’s analysis seems to imply,
the lived, contextual experience of women appears as less suitable for
pioneering on men’s territory.
This raises the question about
whether the opening up of new frontiers for females may demand the
lessening or even the absence of femininity (and masculinity). In fact,
it is believed here that the ‘liminal state’ where social progression
might best occur, is precisely that. Gender as an educated ‘facticity’
then, from this point of view, will inevitably enter into a state of
world view that adds itself onto the ‘lived body’ as a constraint.
It
is assumed here that we commonly conflate constructs of sex, gender,
and sexuality. When sex is defined as the ‘biological’ aspects of male
and female, then this conceptualization is here understood as purely
descriptive. When gender is said to include social practices organized
in relation to biological sex (Connell 1987), and when gender refers to
context/time-specific and changeable socially constructed relationships
of social attributes and opportunities learned through socialization
processes, between women and men, this is also here understood as
descriptive. However, when description of gender transforms into active
construction of gender, e.g. through secrets about its analytical gain,
it subsequently transforms into a compulsory necessity. Gendering hence
may blindfold gender-blind opportunities.
In conclusion, if
gender is here understood as a social construct, then is not coupled to
sex but to context, and dependent on time. Also it is here understood
that every person may possess not only one but a variety of genders.
Even if we consider gender to be locked together with the life history
of a single individual the above conceptualization makes a single,
personal gender impossible, longitudinally as well as contemporaneously.
Whereas gender is constructive and deterministic, sex is descriptive
and non-deterministic. In this sense, gender as an analytical tool
leaves little room for the Tomboy.
The Tomboy - a threat to "femininity"
Noncompliance
with what is assumed ‘feminine’ threatens established or presumed sex
segregation. What is perceived as ‘masculinity’ or ‘maleness’ in women,
as a consequence, may only in second place, target homosexuality. In
accordance with this line of thought, the Tomboy embodies both the
threat and the possibilities for gendered respectively gender-blind
opportunity structures.
The Tomboy is the loophole out of gender
relations. Desires revealed through sport may have been with females
under the guise of a different identity, such as that of the Tomboy
(Kotarba & Held 2007: 163). Girls throw balls ‘like girls’ and do
not tackle like boys because of a female perception of their bodies as
objects of action (Young 2000:150 cited in Kotarba & Held 2007:
155).
However, when women lacking experience of how to act in an
effective manner in sport are taught about how to do, they have no
problem performing, quite contrary to explaining shortcomings as due to
innate causes (Kotarba & Held 2007: 157). This is also opposite to
the experiences of male-to-female transsexuals who through thorough
exercise learn how to feminisize their movements (Schrock & Boyd
2006:53-55). Although, according to Hargreaves (1994), most separatist
sports philosophies have been a reaction to dominant ideas about the
biological and psychological predispositions of men and women,
supposedly rendering men 'naturally suited to sports, and women, by
comparison, essentially less suited (Hargreaves 1994:29-30), the
opposite may also hold true. Separatism per definition needs to separate
and this separation is often based on biological differences, be it
skin colour, sex or something else.
From this perspective, the
Tomboy would constitute a theoretical anomaly in a feminine separatist
setting. Although her physical body would possibly qualify what makes
her a Tomboy would not.
The observation that in mixed
playgrounds, and in other areas of the school environment, boys
monopolize the physical space (Hargreaves 1994:151) may lack the
additional notion that certain boys dominate and certain boys do not.
Sports feminists have 'politicized' these kinds of experience by drawing
connections between ideas and practice (Hargreaves 1994:3) but because
of a separatist approach may exclude similar experience among parts of
the boys. Moreover, a separatist approach is never waterproof and may
hence leak Tomboy girls without a notion.
Femininity and feminism
Feminism and psychoanalysis as oppressors
According
to Collier and Yanagisako (1987), Henrietta Moore (1994) and other
feminist anthropologists, patriarchal dominance is an inseparable
socially inherited part of the conventional family system. This implicit
suggestion of radical surgery does not, however, count on unwanted
secondary effects neither on the problem with segregated or
non-segregated sex-worlds. If, in other words, oppression is related to
gender segregation rather than patriarchy, or perhaps that patriarchy is
a product of sex segregation, then there seems to be a serious problem
of intellectual survival facing feminists themselves. If feminism1 is to
be understood as an approach and/or analytical tool for separatism2,
those feminists and others who propose not only analytical segregation
but also practical segregation, face the problem of possible oppression
inherent in this very segregation (Klevius 1994, 1996). In this sense
oppression is related to sex segregation in two ways:
1. As a means for naming it (feminism) for an analytical purpose.
2.
As a social consequence or political strategy (e.g. negative bias
against female football or a separatist strategy for female football).
It
is notable that the psychoanalytic movement has not only been
contemporary with feminism, but it has also followed (or led) the same
pattern of concern and proposed warnings and corrections that has marked
the history of ‘feminism’ in the 20th century. According to S. Freud,
the essence of the analytic profession is feminine and the psychoanalyst
‘a woman in love’ (L. Appignanesi & J. Forrester 1992:189). But
psychoanalytically speaking, formalized sex and sex segregation also
seem to have been troublesome components in the lives of female
psychoanalysts struggling under a variety of assumed, but irreconcilable
femininities and professional expectations.
In studying the
history of feminism one inevitably encounters what is called ‘the
women’s movement’. While there is a variety of different feminisms, and
because the borders between them, as well as to what is interpreted as
the women’s rights movement, some historians, incl. Klevius, question
the distinction and/or methods in use for this distinction.
However,
it could also be argued that whereas the women’s right movement may be
distinguished by its lack of active separatism within the proposed
objectives of the movement, feminism ought to be distinguished as a
multifaceted separatist movement based on what is considered feminine
values, i.e. what is implied by the very word ‘feminism’3. From this
perspective the use of the term ‘feminism’ before the last decades of
the 19th century has to be re-evaluated, as has every such usage that
does not take into account the separatist nature underpinning all
feminisms. Here it is understood that the concept ‘feminism’, and its
derivatives, in every usage implies a distinction based on separating
the sexes - e.g. addressing inequality or inequity - between male and
female (see discussion above). So although ’feminism’ and ‘feminisms’
would be meaningless without such a separation, the ‘women’s rights
movement’, seen as based on a distinct aim for equality with men in
certain legal respects, e.g. the right to vote, could be described as
the opposite, i.e. de-segregation, ‘gender blindness’ etc.
As a
consequence the use of the word feminism in a context where it seems
inappropriate is here excepted when the authors referred to have decided
to do so. The feminist movement went back to Mary Wollstonecraft and to
some French revolutionaries of the end of the eighteenth century, but
it had developed slowly. In the period 1880 to 1900, however, the
struggle was taken up again with renewed vigour, even though most
contemporaries viewed it as idealistic and hopeless. Nevertheless, it
resulted in ideological discussions about the natural equality or
non-equality of the sexes, and the psychology of women. (Ellenberger
1970: 291-292).
Not only feminist gynocentrists, but also
anti-feminist misogynists contributed with their own pronouncements on
the woman issue. In 1901, for example, the German psychiatrist Moebius
published a treatise, On the Physiological Imbecility of Woman,
according to which, woman is physically and mentally intermediate
between the child and man (see Ellenberger 1970:292). However, according
to the underlying presumption of this thesis, i.e. that the borders
between gynocentrism and misogyny are not well understood, these two
approaches are seen as more or less synonymous. Such a view also
confirms with a multitude of points in common between psychoanalysis and
feminism. As was argued earlier, the main quality of separatism and
‘complementarism’ is an insurmountable border, sometimes contained under
the titles: love, desire etc.
