User:Bridenh/sandbox

Gender
"The introduction to Radfem 2013 about gender: Radical feminists believe gender roles are harmful to women. We seek freedom from “femininity” and “masculinity”. Gender only exists for the benefit of men, as a class, at the expense of women, as a class. "We want a radical alternative to both right wing, biological determinist and post modern versions of “genderism”. In other words, we oppose the promotion of gender roles as “natural”, inevitable, desirable, innate, or exaggerated performances of “femininity” and “masculinity”. We believe that gender is a destructive hierarchy, which harms women and needs to be abolished. We also oppose the the multi-billion pound sex industry. We disagree with “identity politics” which is counter to our goal of abolishing gender and male domination. The language of identity politics re-enforces patriarchy, even though sometimes people use the language of revolution to push these male centered ideologies." - "Radical feminists reject the notion of a “female brain.” They believe that if women think and act differently from men it’s because society forces them to, requiring them to be sexually attractive, nurturing, and deferential. In the words of Lierre Keith, a speaker at Radfems Respond, femininity is “ritualized submission.” In this view, gender is less an identity than a caste position. D.G.R. is defiantly militant, refusing to condemn the use of violence in the service of goals it considers just. In radical circles, though, what makes the group truly controversial is its stance on gender. As members see it, a person born with male privilege can no more shed it through surgery than a white person can claim an African-American identity simply by darkening his or her skin." - "In 2013, DGR members were attacked because their book contained feminist critique of gender. The disagreement is that queer/trans activists believe gender is a binary, and we believe it’s a hierarchy. We see nothing in the creation of gender to celebrate or embrace. As feminists, we are abolitionists. Patriarchy is a corrupt and brutal arrangement of power, and we want to see it dismantled so that the category of gender no longer exists. The genderists claim that this is all natural, eternal, basic to the structure of the universe. A typical comment: “There is a distinct, substantive, immutable feminine gender, and it can not be transcended.” This is what systems of power always have to imprint on our psyches: not only is this state of affairs natural, resistance is futile. We beg to disagree. Some of us are living proof that feminine gender can be transcended—and the feminist movement is even larger proof that it can be fought." - Julia Long: "The whole premise of transgender politics and transgender movement is a view of gender is antithetical to radical feminists’ view of gender. As far as I am concerned, gender is harmful to everybody because gender is the cultural wing of patriarchy. It maintains all the codes of male supremacy and female subordination, so that’s what masculinity is and what femininity is. I think we have to get rid of it and the way to that is through radical feminist projects of ending patriarchy." - "Gender critical feminists raise very serious and legitimate concerns about essentializing gender roles as innate parts of ourselves."

On the term "cisgender": "“Cisgender privilege,” is a misnomer. Gender-conforming males are rewarded for masculine conformity. Masculine men are never oppressed on the basis of gender; or to say it another way: “cisgender” men are never oppressed on the basis of gender. The same does not hold true for women; it is the opposite. Women’s gender conformity does not protect us from oppression on the basis of gender. “Cisgendered” women are still routinely targeted for sexist treatment, harassment, and discrimination. The concept of “cisgender privilege” falsely posits men and women as social equals in regard to gendered oppression. It is an inaccurate explanation of how gender norms operate as a sex-based social hierarchy that devalues women. Talking about “cisgender privilege” simply does not make sense in the context of women’s relationship to gender and oppression." - "Most radical feminists believe liberation is achieved through a political project that transcends patriarchal gender, rather than accepting those gender roles and merely seeking to allow people to move between the categories. In patriarchy, gender is a category that functions to establish and reinforce inequality. Males and females are far more similar than different. Transgenderism is a liberal, individualist, medicalized response to the problem of patriarchy’s rigid, repressive, and reactionary gender norms. Radical feminism is a radical, structural, politicized response." - "Many persons, especially feminists, have faced gender dissatisfaction. However, feminists have raised questions and given answers to gender dissatisfaction that go far beyond the transgender context—questions of bodily mutilation and integrity, medical research priorities, definitions of maleness and femaleness and the boundaries of such. Any woman who has experienced the agony of not fitting into a society where gender is defined by rigid roles is hardly insensitive to the suffering that transgender persons experience. Like transgender persons, many women have felt dissatisfied with their bodies and found themselves in a psychically disjointed state because they could not accept their roles."

"The transgender phenomenon seeks not to transcend gender but to incorporate it, whether through medical treatment or self-identification. In my view, it is a form of gender illusion. It depends, as the postmodernists would say, on the gender performance. It preserves gender by exhibiting and incorporating the behavior and conventions of the opposite sex and often by mixing them with the behavior and conventions of one’s biological and historical sex. It’s a repackaging of gender expectations but not a transcending of them. When one moves into hormones and surgery, these confer further rigidification of gender."

"I hope that more people will come to see gender dissatisfaction not as a dis-ease requiring treatment, or as simply a matter of subjectivity and self-identification, but as an issue that will only be fundamentally addressed if we challenge the gender-defined culture that perpetuates these gender identities."

"Some have held that it would be preferable to modify society’s sex role expectations of men and women than to modify either the body or the mind of individuals to fit these expectations."

" There is a current of misogyny that runs through many transgender media, as indicated in the term TERF’s (trans exclusionary radical feminists), or worse, the term “radfem scum” used on some transgender sites. In contrast to transgender advocates, feminist critics of transgender don’t try to exclude transgender advocates from speaking in public. The term exclusionary applies par excellence to transgender advocates who engage in campaigns to silence feminist speech, even when the topic is not transgender."

"The pro-sex work folks castigate abolitionists for placing too much emphasis on what they call the “myth of the woman as victim.” They like to tell us how women in prostitution use their agency to subvert the sex industry. The kind of agency they champion is the accommodations that prostituted women make, which keep them in the sex industry, and they call this self-determination. Interestingly, they do not locate women’s agency in their resistance to the sex industry and definitely not in their exit from the industry. Instead, they minimize the sexual objectification, men’s use of women’s bodies as commodities for pleasure and profit, and claim that if women are shrewd and savvy operators, they can use the sex of prostitution to be empowered." (<---For the sex industry section.) - Andrea Dworkin stated her "commitment to destroying male dominance and gender itself" while stating her belief in radical feminism. - "Stopped as attribute of a person, sex inequality takes the form of gender [...] Gender emerges as the congealed form of the sexualization of inequaltiy between men and women." - "There is little, if any, feminist critique of men's cross-dressing, but in Beauty And Misogyny Jeffreys provides a unique analysis of what she describes as "men adopting the behaviours of a subordinate group in order to enjoy the sexual satisfaction of masochism". She says we need look no further than transvestite pornography, with titles such as Enforced Femininity and Forced To Grow Breasts, to understand how femininity and womanhood have been developed to ensure that women are seen as different and less powerful.

Jeffreys maintains that transsexual surgery is an extension of the beauty industry offering cosmetic solutions to deeper rooted problems. She argues that in a society in which there was no such thing as gender, there would be no need to undergo such surgery." (<---ref could also be used in radfem critiques of beauty (industry) section)

Socialization
"Men are made by socialization to masculinity. Being a man requires a psychology based on emotional numbness and a dichotomy of self and other. This is also the psychology required by soldiers, which is why we don’t think you can be a peace activist without being a feminist.

Female socialization is a process of psychologically constraining and breaking girls—otherwise known as “grooming”—to create a class of compliant victims. Femininity is a set of behaviors that are, in essence, ritualized submission." <-(from third source)

More links
http://sarahditum.com/2014/08/01/be-that-you-are-on-gender-as-class/ - http://www.deepgreenresistance.org/en/who-we-are/radical-feminism-faqs - http://thefederalist.com/2014/08/27/radfems-versus-trans-a-different-breed-of-catfight/ http://thefederalist.com/2015/06/03/how-the-hypersexual-trans-movement-hurts-feminism/ http://thefederalist.com/2014/11/11/trouble-in-transtopia-murmurs-of-sex-change-regret/

Истражувања
Во 2005 година, Џенет Хајд од Висконсинскиот Универзитет воведе хипотеза за полови сличности, која укажува на тоа дека мажите и жените се слични во повеќето психолошки области. Истражувањето се фокусираше на когнитивните функции, комуникацијата, личноста, психолошката благосостојба и моторното однесување. Користејќи ги резултатите од прегледот на 46 мета-анализи, таа покажа дека 78% од половите разлики се мали или блиску до нула. Неколку исклучоци беа некои моторни однесувања (како што се фрлањето во далечина) и некои аспекти од сексуалноста (како ставовите за секс со непознат), каде што се најголеми половите разлики. Таа заклучува на крајот од написот дека: "Време е да се признаат штетите на преувеличените тврдења за полови разлики. Тие предизвикуваат штета во голем број области, вклучувајќи ги можностите за жените на работното место, конфликти и комуникација меѓу партнери, и анализа на проблемите со самопочитувањето кај адолесцентите."

Delusions of Gender од Корделија Фајн е критички поглед кон верувањето дека машките и женските мозоци се суштински различни, и критички анализира стотици студии на оваа тема. "Со толку различни контексти и услови за мажите и жените, едноставно не е можно да се споредат изборите кои ги прават и да се направат уверени заклучоци за различни внатрешни природи на половите". Бен Барес, професор по невробиологија на Универзитетот Стенфорд, напиша во еден преглед на книгата: "овие податоци треба да бидат задолжително читање за секој студент по невробиологија, ако не и секое човечко суштество."

Salon
Its former editor admitted its "tabloid-like" - to quote him. The specific article which has bought me here is The hate group masquerading as feminists, it could be determined by the very title that this is a biased opinion piece