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[Grimlocke]

I think that even if we don't move all the way to a genderless society, there is value in making the boxes as vague and permissive as possible, a process that has been going on.

And yet there is an even stronger push right now to make gender even more strict and restrictive as possible... And not for reasons you are thinking of.

I am not sure what you're referring to.

Well who are the worst kind of people in the universe?

Boyband managers?

[Reelya]

Maybe refering to TERFs, Neo?

But there's also another issue, say we do away with gender then we might delude ourselves into thinking that we're being non-discriminatory, when in fact our "gender neutral" wonderland is even more discriminatory by not taking biological differences into account.

e.g. a lot of data suggests that it's when women have kids that their earnings are really impacted. Data that only includes single no-kids women doesn't show much of any "wage gap" (and they actually out-earn equivalent-aged men in 147/150 of the biggest cities in the USA). And of course that means the wage gap is twice as concentrated among women with kids as the "raw" wage gap. The real wage gap isn't 77 cents to the dollar, it's women-with-kids earning around 60 cents to the dollar, as compared to all other men and women included.

By focusing only on the social-gender aspect of the wage gap (which only directly explains maybe 1% of the gap), and demanding that a complete breakdown of the gender system is the answer to everything,  we might be turning a blind eye to the women who are really in need, who actually have a much higher wage gap than the usually-cited data suggests. And what to articles normally say to those women as the solution? Don't spend so much time with your kids (one way or another).

[Grimlocke]

That is a good point actually, refusing to acknowledge the source of a problem will just shift blame somewhere else, in the example you mention it would probably just end in Liberal statements like 'If they make less money, then its their own fault for being bad at making money'. That kind of statement gets applied to just about every kind of societal inequity already, but a 'Genders officially don't exist' policy would probably make things worse.

Also, obscure reference gets answered with obscure acronym. I'm sure there are plenty of loonies Neovinek could be referring to, though I certainly hope its not any kind of widespread sentiment.

[Antioch]

Maybe refering to TERFs, Neo?

But there's also another issue, say we do away with gender then we might delude ourselves into thinking that we're being non-discriminatory, when in fact our "gender neutral" wonderland is even more discriminatory by not taking biological difference into account.

e.g. a lot of data suggests that it's when women have kids that their earnings are really impacted. Data that only includes single no-kids women doesn't show much of any "wage gap". Being completely gender neutral and pretending this isn't a difference isn't going to help those women, in fact it will probably hurt them.

This is the reason why both fathers and mothers should get parental leave and in the same amount.

[Reelya]

They won't take it in equal amounts unless you literally force them to. Most advanced nations already have gender-neutral parental leave. Even in Sweden, where they have massive carrot-and-stick incentives to try and get dad's staying home, mothers account for 75+% of all parental leave taken.

In fact, there's a strong correlation between generous family leave packages and a rising wage gap. Countries with a "screw you" attitude to new mothers actually tend to have the lowest wage gaps. Because women literally can't afford to take time off in those countries, so they foist babby off to grandma and keep working! This makes that woman a more cost-effective employee for the employer, and that makes all women more cost-effective to hire on average, driving up wages.

In fact, look at Sweden in this PDF. Note that Sweden tops the OECD for wage gap, and this is "despite" their massive parental leave scheme that's tax-payer funded (which should mean it doesn't affect company bottom-lines). Note that the "no-children" women in Sweden have a particularly high wage gap, almost twice what similar women in the USA face. The paid parental scheme therefore incentives mothers, but at a cost to single women more so than men.

So what's the mechanism here? There's the fact that women taking time off costs their employer's money. Through lost productivity, replacement labor, and/or direct payments. That means the total costs-per-employee is higher for a woman who takes time off to have a kid, compared to other workers. The company can be non-discriminatory, and just eat the costs but act like they didn't. The problem is that those costs have to be paid for somewhere: they drive up costs in that company, which drives up prices, drives down demand, and means less pay rises. A company that's 2/3rds women is going to be offsetting a lot more of those childcare/parental-leave costs than a company that's only 1/3rd women, which would cause a pay gap between both companies, all else being equal. So you can see a way in which companies trying to be non-discriminatory to parents-vs-nonparents can actually feed the wage gap.

Parental leave is like free Ferraris for men. If the law said every man had to be offered a free Ferrari by his employer, it might be fucking great for dudes who get their free Ferrari, but it also means it now costs a lot more to hire men. So we pass a law that says you can't discriminate against men - especially not asking them about their views on Ferraris - you need to pretend they're not likely to ask for a free Ferrari, and you pay them the same as you pay any woman (on non-Ferrari driving man) who works in the same company. What do you think would happen to men's wages in that scenario? Imagine if you were a man, the only guy in the company who didn't want the free Ferrari, now your wages are cut along with everyone else to pay for the Ferraris. Forcing employers to pay "extra" for one gender to "help them out" actually means lower wages down the line for any industry that employs them.

In other words, we have different things we'd like to incentivize, that are all good for women, and we might be deluding ourselves that they can all be had at the same time. You can find articles by middle-age feminists who say the "you can have it all" feminist mantra that arose in the 1980s is bullshit, that not only is unachievable, but it dips into the quality of each of the things you do have, while also making women feel like they failed because they couldn't juggle all the things they're meant to be. Fashion model + mother + career women + concerned citizen. Whereas if a guy nails just one bit of his life we usually applaud. Yeah, you can "have it all" as long as you're happy for each component to be crap, or a mere hollow facade.

[Reudh]

There is already a word for that, which is sex (and intersex people for those that have rarer mix like XXY). Gender usually refers to the social implication and expectations of the stuff, although they do get mixed up sometime.

Klinefelter males are not "intersex". They are still male, they do not possess any characteristics of females, besides reduced (compared to XY males) testosterone production.

[hops]

Honestly abolishing Gender is kind of more of a fantasy then a realistic solution.

A person knows what gender is as soon as they are born, even if they aren't aware of it.

How would you prove this? One could argue it's social conditioning. If we conditioned a child to ignore gender, they would ignore gender.

[Reelya]

Honestly abolishing Gender is kind of more of a fantasy then a realistic solution.

A person knows what gender is as soon as they are born, even if they aren't aware of it.

How would you prove this? One could argue it's social conditioning. If we conditioned a child to ignore gender, they would ignore gender.

That's a lot of certainty for a social program that's never worked even once despite many attempts. how does your "we can condition any gender you like" thing fit with transgender people? if we accept that transgender is a born-thing then we also need to accept cisgender is a born-thing. If this magic conditioning works so well then we should use it on transgender people more, right, rather than less, since we could avoid them needing sex reassignment surgery later. See the potentially troublesome conclusions when we don't think through the big picture?

Every article I've ever read about the history of gender-neutral parenting / conditioning was an abject failure. I've never read about a real success in my life. There were thousands of experiments in gender-neutral parenting especially in the 1970s. For all the vast amount of talk about it, where are the success stories that could be used to set an example? Even one example plz of this ever working?

But of course any time it fails, it's never the concept which was faulty, they blame the people. "The program doesn't fail, you failed the program ... don’t ever speak ill of the program! The program is rock solid. The program is sound". Seriously, though, that sort of thing is the way cults talk about their methods.

[Jimmy]

Man allegedly adds hydrochloric acid to lubricant dispenser in gay club

Opposition party set to block asking everyone if they are okay with gay marriage

Still not a great time to be gay in Australia, folks. Still a step up from Saudi Arabia, but not much.

[hops]

Honestly abolishing Gender is kind of more of a fantasy then a realistic solution.

A person knows what gender is as soon as they are born, even if they aren't aware of it.

How would you prove this? One could argue it's social conditioning. If we conditioned a child to ignore gender, they would ignore gender.

That's a lot of certainty for a social program that's never worked even once despite many attempts. how does your "we can condition any gender you like" thing fit with transgender people? if we accept that transgender is a born-thing then we also need to accept cisgender is a born-thing. If this magic conditioning works so well then we should use it on transgender people more, right, rather than less, since we could avoid them needing sex reassignment surgery later. See the potentially troublesome conclusions when we don't think through the big picture?

Every article I've ever read about the history of gender-neutral parenting / conditioning was an abject failure. I've never read about a real success in my life. There were thousands of experiments in gender-neutral parenting especially in the 1970s. For all the vast amount of talk about it, where are the success stories that could be used to set an example? Even one example plz of this ever working?

But of course any time it fails, it's never the concept which was faulty, they blame the people. "The program doesn't fail, you failed the program ... don’t ever speak ill of the program! The program is rock solid. The program is sound". Seriously, though, that sort of thing is the way cults talk about their methods.

Huh, I didn't know about that.

Though on unrelated matter, is it just me or people who are dicks to transgendered individuals always the ones who benefit from the status quo?

[spümpkin]

I'm fairly sure that is indeed the case, Cin.

[Reelya]

http://www.simplypsychology.org/behaviorism.html
Behaviorism was the dominant ideology in first half of the 20th century psychology. It proposed that everything is social conditioning, and that the mind is a "blank slate" at birth. That informed the post-feminist androgyny movement of the 1970's when many parents tried to raise kids with gender-neutral everything. i.e. all clothing in gender-neutral yellows and greens rather than blue and pink. That was a big, colossal failure, and I haven't heard a single success story from that.

It contrasts heavily with modern gender-neutral parenting, which is all about "let the kids do what they want and don't try and mold them one way or the other". So you see the modern version of gender-neutral parenting has almost nothing to do with the "blank slate" concept that informed the 1970's version. And it does less to actually overthrow gender than the old version did, really.

And yup, on the anti-trans people. It's straight-forward on the Christian Right side, but it would be more enlightening to untangle why so many (mainly 2nd wave) feminist academics are anti-trans.

[Harry Baldman]

And yup, on the anti-trans people. It's straight-forward on the Christian Right side, but it would be more enlightening to untangle why so many (mainly 2nd wave) feminist academics are anti-trans.

I think the article already linked (this one) untangles it just fine in its own way. There are different understandings of gender involved.

From what I understand, certain feminists don't like trans people because they further two of the things they ideologically despise.

First of all, the idea that your gender is something you are beholden to (which gender that would be and whether it's the one society expects of you is irrelevant) and, in fact, extremely relevant to your continued mental health. In terms of "gender is a social construct" thought it frames a transgender individual as the purest victim of the artificial divide between men and women. Hating one is like an intellectual hating a blue-collar voter acting persistently against their interests - they seem like victims of a system they themselves do their best to perpetuate. Blaming the victim is also very convenient in that you don't need to actually address their grievances.

Secondly, it might be that in their eyes being transgender perpetuates the idea that the female is "the other", and being a transwoman is to them difficult to distinguish from an obsessive pursuit of the other to make themselves appear beautiful and special, and is mistaken for mere xenophilia (the stereotypical transvestite man who feels empowered by dressing as a woman, for instance) taken to its logical conclusion in a way that damages the cause of feminism, which is ultimately the abolition of gender and equality between the sexes.

It's a matter of framing. For instance, the article linked paints the non-binary crowd (with decent arguments) as ultimately wrong-headed because they're damagingly misapplying the concept of gender. Extend this train of thought to its logical conclusion, and you may just wind up with trans-exclusionary feminism.

[Grimlocke]

Hmmm, maybe the 2nd wave feminists embraced a very strong group thinking, and considered transsexuals defectors?

Seems pretty stupid to think of your gender in the same terms as a political faction, but 'pretty stupid' is not a huge stretch for some of the more extreme feminists.

[Harry Baldman]

Thirdly, I guess there's a parallel you could try and draw: imagine a middle-class white boy saying they have a medical need to put on blackface because they cannot mentally bear the idea of continuing to be white, and feel that they are instead black people by nature. That might be what a TERF hears when they are confronted with a transwoman expressing their condition (not really sure how they feel about transmen, of course, but all too often transmen tend to be ignored in transgender discussions because people don't care about them nearly as much as transwomen overall).