Peter Klevius, the world's foremost expert on sex segregation (sad, isn't it): Why not the original truly anti-fascist and anti-sexist Human Rights (1948) instead of feminism?!
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.
Who is Peter Klevius? What has he achieved?
Anthropology:
'Out-of-Africa' evolution is a similar hoax as 'Piltdown man'. 1) A
continent could never achieve human evolution. Africa has no fossil
evidence - Homo erectus just suddenly popped up without predecessors -
which fact may delight creationists. Moreover, the only Homos
(floresiensis, luzoniensis) that bridge the gap are almost as far you
can get from Africa. 2) No ancient genetic evidence points to Africa,
but rather the opposite, i.e. that the oldest DNA in modern populations
in Africa belong to a mongoloid (i.e. cold-adapted) phenotype.
Sex
segregation: Violates the original Universat anti-fascist Human Rights of 1948 by classifying humans in categories with differing rights.
Consciousness:
Peter Klevius' evolution formula (1981) and 'stone example' (1992) set
the foundation for EMAH (1994) which explains how the brain works with
Thalamus as the 'awareness display'.
Social anthropology: In 1981
Peter Klevius introduced the concept 'expanded demand for resources' as
an analytical tool for a new classification of human societies which
later on was elaborated on in 1992. In this process Peter Klevius was
"supervised" by Georg Henrik von Wright (Wittgenstein's personally
chosen successor at Cambridge).
Some comparison of feminism with classic fascism:
Feminism's
origins are complex and include many contradictory viewpoints,
ultimately centered around a mythos of feminine (matriarchal) rebirth
from oppressive patriarchy.
Feminism is a form of political
behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with victimhood and by
compensatory cults of unity, energy, and difference from masculinism, in
which a mass-based movement of committed essentialists, working in
uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites (e.g.
universities, religion, state institutions etc.), abandons democratic
liberties such as e.g. the views of men and women who don't fit the
feminist agenda against what it assigns as "patriarchy".
Although
feminism flirts with populism in an attempt to generate mass support,
it may also be seen as an elitist ideology (Judith Butler & Co).
Feminism seeks strength through unity.
Like
fascism, feminism often manifests a belief in racial (i.e. "womanhood")
"purity" or a "master sex", usually synthesized with some variant of
sexism or bigotry of a demonized other (the "patriarch"), and the idea
of "sex ("gender") purity" (compare Butler's "gender repetitions")
against a perceived other.
Regardless of whether negative or
positive policies are used, they are susceptible to abuse because the
genetic (i.e. gender, which means opposite something else) selection
criteria are determined by whichever group has political power at the
time.
Like fascism, feminist ideology inevitably opens up for the
violatation of basic human rights of the other, i.e. what Peter Klevius
calls the lack of an emrgency brake at the point of equality.
Because
feminism is about a biological* class of people (with varying
definitions from fullblown biological women to "assigned" almost
transvestites) it differs entirely from other political ideologies but
has a lot in common with oldfashioned racism.
* "Gendered women" occupy a contested borderline.
Just
like islam, feminism can't stand Human Rights, so where islam went for
"islamic human rights" (Saudi based and steered OIC) feminism wants
"women's human rights".
Why all feminists, but not Peter Klevius, are sexist and some are transphobic
Naomi
Cunningham (2020): 'Butler sets up an opposition between
“trans-exclusionary feminists” and “a feminist position opposing
transphobia.” But that assumes – without troubling to prove – a
proposition that neither I nor any other gender critical feminist I’ve
ever spoken to would accept: that not accepting that trans women are
literally women is necessarily transphobic. All the GC feminists I know
oppose transphobia. We don’t want to exclude trans women from the
spaces where we are undressed and vulnerable because they are trans, but
because they are biologically male. They are members of the half of
humanity that poses a far greater threat to women than the other half.
We are taught from early childhood that men are a source of danger. We
are told it is our responsibility to keep ourselves safe from the
ever-present risk of male violence; with the barely-concealed message
that it’s our fault if we fail. We learn to limit our freedoms. We try
not to be out alone late at night. We learn to be alert to the
possibility of being followed; not to make eye contact; to shut down
drunken attempts to chat us up without provoking male rage; to walk in
the middle of the road so that it’s harder to ambush us from the
shadows; to conduct a lightning risk assessment of every other passenger
on the night bus; to clutch our keys in one hand in case we need a
weapon; to carry a pepper spray, or a personal alarm. And we learn the
hard way that these fears that have been deliberately inculcated in us
are justified. We are followed, leered at, flashed, groped, cat-called;
and that’s those of us who get off lightly. Every woman has stories of
male abuse.'
Peter Klevius, the world's foremost authority on sex
segregation (sad, isn't it): Heterosexual attraction is the trigger,
and Human Rights is the safety lock. However, neither of these are
seriously considered but rather avoided - despite the fact that there is
no other logical tools for analyzing and assessing sex segregation. Use
the same logic that Butler uses to blur the concept of 'sex' with
"gender", to clarify it. I.e. why should it be necessary to call a
person with a functioning penis a woman just because the person wants to
do "women stuff" if, according to Human Rights, sex shouldn't matter?!
Btw, some 30 years ago, after having read 'Gender Trouble', Peter
Klevius asked: "Why do you call yourself a feminist, Judith Butler?" OK,
she slowly changed her views and became a real feminist. So Peter
Klevius now asks Naomi Cunningham and her pals: Why do you call yourself
feminist, instead of Humanist (in the meaning every Humans' Rights)?!
If we should only have freed "blacks" from slavery, then nothing would
have stopped "blacks" from keeping slaves (compare e.g. Haiti), right!
Finlayson
et al., 2018: There is clearly a difference between the experience of a
child who is treated by others in way that are characteristic of boys
and
also feels like a boy, and a child who is treated by others in ways
that are characteristic of boys whilst feeling that they are really a
girl.
Peter Klevius, the world's foremost authority on sex
segregation (sad, isn't it): "Treated by others"?! You mean by Human
Rightsphobics, right! Just like homophobics and other -phobics directed
towards individuals.
Take the example of the world's number one football woman, Pia Sundhage* from Sweden:
*
Pia Sundhage is a Swedish football coach and former professional
player. She is the current head coach of the Brazil women's national
football team. As a player, Sundhage played most of her career as a
forward and retired as the top scorer for her national team, but she
also had stints playing as a midfielder and a sweeper. Sundhage was the
head coach of the United States women's national team from 2008 to 2012
and led the team to two Olympic gold medals and a silver medal at the
World Cup. Pia Sundhage also served as a scout for the United States
gold winning football team during the 2004 Olympics. Her success led to
her winning the 2012 FIFA World Coach of the Year. Sundhage later became
the head coach of her native Sweden women's national football team from
2012 to 2017, winning an Olympic silver medal in 2016. She was voted
6th best player ever in the world so together with her couching career
it may be safe to declare her the modern football queen where Lily Parr
was the queen of the past.
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.
Peter Klevius wrote:
Sunday, September 20, 2020
Peter Klevius*, the world's foremost expert on sex segregation (sad isn't it), obituary over a Jewish female patriarch.
* 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..
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 2020
Precisly
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:
Thursday, March 14, 2013
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)
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’.
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.
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