Quote:
Originally Posted by Heart
And there you have it. "Behavior and role appropriate for one's sex" reeks of patriarchal assumptions.
And as far as body dysmorphia: again, it's impossible to be female in a patriarchal culture and not have body dysmorphia, considering the objectification and violence routinely done to women's bodies.
Odd, how gender-studies terminology has managed to side-step the historical realities of living as a woman (whether born that way or not), in favor of a very narrow focus on trans vs non-trans. I get awfully tired of the rareified Ivory Tower approach to gender and "North American gender politics," as HB so aptly put it.
Women transgress rigid and limited gender definitions all the time in order to survive. I'm not talking just about queers, I'm talking globally, about women. Read the book in my sig line. As for young activists -- the book in my sig line should be required reading.
Heart
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"What is required for the hegemony of heteronormative
[patriarchal] standards to maintain power is our continual repetition of such gender acts in the most mundane of daily activities (the way we walk, talk, gesticulate, etc.).... That style
[of gender performance] has no relation to essential "truths" about the body but is strictly ideological. It has a history that exists beyond the subject who enacts those conventions...." Dino Felluga