Reclaiming Lesbian Pride

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by CherylNYC

Those who began by investigating the construct of maleness seem to have ended by fetishizing it instead. It's quite clear to me that although the intent may have once been to destabilise the gender binary, gender studies have had great success in promoting it.

Is there something transgressive about a female bodied person claiming that they are male because they resemble traditional males? Isn't that just saying that those who look and act traditionally male must BE male? What happened to dismantling assumptions about traditionally gendered behaviours?

I see a great deal of this. The construct, within gender studies, is that if a woman likes, for instance, trucks, baseball, fishing, beer and power tools that person is 'masculine of center'. If said person then goes ahead and transitions, this is supposed to be transgressive and demolishing the gender binary. How is it though since it appears to recapitulate the existing gender construction of male = trucks, sports, fishing, beer and tools?

I would argue, like you do, Cheryl that I am transgressing gender boundaries/roles because, even though my passions lie in typically 'male' things such as the physical sciences, Linux and the Free/Open Source Software movement generally, skepticism and a certain holding to living my life rationally none of that makes me 'male' or 'masculine'. The problem, in other words, does not lie in my being a woman who is a geek rather, it lies in society defining certain things which are not really gendered as having gender traits. I don't 'think like a man', I think like a scientist.

Originally Posted by Heart

Kobi, feminism never died and there are many many feminists and feminist groups engaged in action across the globe.

Start with Amnesty International, http://www.amnesty.org/en/campaigns/...-against-women, and take a look at the book I have linked in my sig line (by Nick Kristof, a feminist man).

I understand the urge, but I don't think a "pure" form of feminism exists. As has been talked about, feminism as a movement has been guilty of racism, classism, even misogyny. No social movement is without its serious blind spots and drawbacks. None can be glorified.

Heart

This is merely to say that feminism is a movement made of people who came to feminism with their own predilections and cultural baggage intact. Given the time period where NOW was formed, it would have been remarkable if feminism had *not* had a non-trivial amount of racism, certainly, and homophobia. This is not to excuse anything, it is merely to remind that people are products--to some greater or lesser degree--of their time and the movements they spawn are also products of that time.

Cheers
Aj