Fem/me, then is "out-of-place" femininity then? So is it possible for heterosexual females to qualify, or bisexual ones?
I'm not certain that's an adequte summation of the definition we've been trying to hash out here. I think "femme" differs from "femininity" in the consciousness of its intent, which would mean it's also accessible to a heterosexual non-trans woman.
This then, is rebellion against a theoretical entity, "society" or "the system" in the sense that all conflicts require focus on an abstract when a specific adversarial creature cannot be found (see the "war on terror" or "fighting the power" etc).
I would have to say not quite. For one thing, subversion isn't the same as attack. Subversion is using in a different way, undermining the old ways of using a social system. And while a power structure may not be something you can hold or touch, it is very concrete and real to those affected by it. The social system of gender roles is very well established and pretty thoroughly studied, although more is being revealed about it every day. Acceptance of the basic fact that societies have systems of categorizing people that we call gender, and that these systems of categorization are real and have real effects, is necessary for you to continue with this topic.
What is the supposed goal of such a subversion?
The creation of new gender role 'categories' or the elimination of such categories altogether?
What would be the theoretical benefits of such a conquest?
Well, I can't say what the goals of fem/me identified people are. I can say this: I also, on occasion, do things which are deliberately subversive of the binary gender system, and my goal in doing this is generally to raise awareness of the fact that the binary gender system excludes certain people, and that it causes problems for those it excludes. The benefits I'm hoping for are that people might stop acting as if I am attacking their way of life simply by virtue of the fact that the binary gender system doesn't really have room for me. However, I offer this only to show that motivations for subversion may be more complex and subtle than those you described, not to speak for fem/mes.
I'm not certain that we require either of the above, so it would need to be explained to me, why, exactly, there is an issue with generalizing human behavior?
There is an issue with generalizing human behavior only when such a generalization creates rigid stereotypes upon which power structures are based. The reason there is an issue here is that when power structures are based on rigid stereotypes, then people who do not fit those stereotypes are excluded from the power structure, and this causes harm. Agreement with this is not necessary to continue with the topic, but acceptance that some people believe this for valid reasons is.
And I had always thought that male or femaleness were intrinsic chromosomal qualities, having little to do with "society" and its tendency to overuse its patterning abilities. did this change?
{kidding on the square}No, you were wrong all along.{/k}
I'm being slightly flippant, as I regard you as being as well. As I see it, you are both right and wrong. There is certainly a biological aspect to sex, in that certain configurations of chromosomes (of which many more than two are possible) create certain changes in reproductive organs, as well as certain superficial characteristics which correlate with these changes in reproductive organs. Where society steps in is to name this "sex", take the two most common and disregard everything else as an unhealthy aberration even when the individual exhibiting it is perfectly healthy otherwise, enforce the binarism by surgically altering people who are regarded as abnormal, and then declare the binarism the product of biological imperative.
Leaving intersex people aside, even if we take as given that biology gives us two major sexes and that the many people who don't quite fit either of them are suffering from various abnormalities, it is still society which says that this must mean there can only be two genders, that these two genders are rigidly linked with the two biological sexes, and that certain kinds of clothing and behavior are appropriate for people of one gender or another. That's not encoded in our DNA, and that's what we're talking about here— gender, not sex.
I'm wary of following this too far off-topic, though.
Id, I think, sees it as primarily a term to be applied to trans folk?
Nope. I think you're confused because one of the questions I asked, and on which I've mainly been focusing, is whether female-assigned femme people who consider their gender to be femme, not female or woman, actually qualify as transgender on that grounds. I have a mental block about this, because that's not what transgender looks like in my head, so I've made a series of stupid errors and assumptions in the past. I've been trying to get my head around it and hoping people here with less attachment to a particular interpretation of transgender can help me.
then I'm left scratching my head about who actually opposes such a statement.
One of the things I oppose about pure social constructionism is a tendency in some circles to use it in opposition to physical gender transition. If gender is entirely socially constructed, some people argue, then people who want to change genders have just been poorly conditioned, and can be reconditioned to conform. Or, taking another possible tack, they're simply rebelling against the cultural conditioning they received, and they can do that more effectively by just living the way they want to and not taking hormones or getting surgery, since surely that is just buying into the social system. But I only oppose social constructionism to the degree that I assert that other factors also play a part in our identity formation, including choice and biology.
I'm also slightly unsure about the "system" of gender normativity. It seems so monolithic, and some of you seem so convinced that it needs to be undermined by queer and trans identities, so I feel like a bit of a fool by asking what exactly it is. But I'm asking anyway, because I think thats the best way for me to get whats being said.
In what ways is my description of that system unclear, or which parts do you feel are inaccurate? It was a hasty and shallow treatment, I admit, and I'm happy to clarify it.
As far as being sure it needs to be undermined— I only think it needs to be opened up. I don't want to take away from other people something they're comfortable with. (I know other people who emphatically do, and I respect this difference between us.) And it's not monolithic exactly but it's becoming more monolithic as this certain notion of gender and sex which is prevalent in, for example, the UK and US, spreads to places with different systems (Oaxaca, New Guinea, parts of Bulgaria, and the Amazon, for some examples).
To turn elene's question around, if that is so for math why not for gender?
I know this analogy isn't perfect, and I'm sure we're about to run up against the edges of its usefulness, but I agree. I had a relatively high degree of math ability until I was told often enough that I was better at language than at math (socialization) and decided to focus on my strengths (choice). Now it can take me half an hour to work out a simple problem such as one I did earlier today, which was a narrative problem which required me to figure out the hypotenuse of two triangles. I could have been quite good at math because I had that innate ability somewhere before I lost it. Now I'm not sure if it's the socialization, the choice/preference (or laziness), or an actual degradation of my cognitive functions which prevents me getting better at it again. Likewise, I think that innate identity (which goes far beyond genitals and chromosomes) as well as socialization and choice (which is far more subtle than it sounds) play roles in our gender identity formations. And I also don't think this means we should be made to be one or the other, just as I shouldn't be made to become an engineer if that's not where I feel my aptitudes lie. |
