However, Ruth Davidson isn't happy at all. She is a Scottish politician who is currently the leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, the leader of the second largest party in the Scottish Parliament, and the Member of the Scottish Parliament for Edinburgh Central.
After Saudi dictator Abdullah died in 2015, the British government
(Cameron and Theresa May) decided to hang flags at half-mast as a sign
of "respect" to the islamofascist Saudi dictator family. In response,
Ruth Davidson tweeted: "Flying flags at half-mast on government buildings for
the death of a Saudi king is a steaming pile of nonsense. That is all."
Klevius correction: There are no kings or princes
in the land that England gave to the islamofascist Saudi war lord/dictator
family at a time when most kings in the civilized world lost their king
power for democracy. Saudi Arabia is very out of sync with the rest of the world, and
it''s only the petrodollars that keeps this immoral cancer still ticking.
Klevius: This is a sexy woman. I could live with her without even
touching her if necessary. Right, she's already marrying. What a pity.
For a better understanding of the concept 'heterosexual attraction' , start by reading what Klevius wrote:
Klevius' proposal to bright minded and non-biased readers: Do read
EMAH,
i.e. how continuous integration in Thalamus of complex neural patterns
without the assistance of one or infinite "Homunculus" constitutes the
basis for memory and "consciousness".
Klevius quest of the day: What's the difference between the Pope and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg?
Klevius hint: It's all about 'not sameness' and Human Rights! Human Rights IS 'sameness' stupid!
When God was created he was made like Adam.
When the basic idea of Universal Human Rights was created it was made like Adam AND Eve.
And for you who think heterosexual attraction, i.e. that women are
sexier than men, could be (exc)used as a reason for depriving women of
legal sameness. Please, do think again!And read Klevius Sex and Gender
Tutorial below - if you can!
The Plan of God
A Cardinal, a Pope and a Justice "from medieval times"
Keith O'Brien has reiterated the Catholic Church's continued
opposition to civil partnerships and suggested that there should be no
laws that "facilitate" same-sex relationships, which he claimed were
"harmful", arguing that “The empirical evidence is clear, same-sex
relationships are demonstrably harmful to the medical, emotional and
spiritual wellbeing of those involved, no compassionate society should
ever enact legislation to facilitate or promote such relationships, we
have failed those who struggle with same-sex attraction and wider
society by our actions.”
Four male members of the Scottish Catholic clergy allegedly claim that
Keith O'Brien had abused his position as a member of the church
hierarchy by making unwanted homosexual advances towards them in the
1980s.
Keith O'Brien criticized the concept of same-sex marriage saying it
would shame the United Kingdom and that promoting such things would
degenerate society further.
Pope Francis, aka Jorge Bergoglio: Same-sex is a destructive
pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere
bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to
confuse and deceive the children of God." He has also insisted that
adoption by gay and lesbian people is a form of discrimination against
children. This position received a rebuke from Argentine president
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who said the church's tone was
reminiscent of "medieval times and the Inquisition".
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 'Sex' is a dirty word, so let's use 'gender' instead!
Klevius: Let's not!
As previously and repeatedly pointed out by Klevius, the treacherous use
of 'gender' instead of 'sex' is not only confusing but deliberately so.
So when Jewish Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg proposed gender' as a
synonyme for 'sex' (meaning biological sex) she also helped to shut the
door for many a young girl's/woman's possibilities to climb outside the
gender cage.
The Universal Human Rights declaration clearly states that your
biological sex should not be referred to as an excuse for limiting your
rights.
Islam (now represented by OIC and its Sharia declaration) is the
worst and most dangerous form of sex segregation - no matter in how
modern clothing it's presented!
Klevius Sex and Gender Tutorial
What is 'gender' anyway?
(text randomly extracted from some scientific writings by Klevius)
It might be argued that it is the
developing girl, not the grown up woman, who is the most receptive to
new experience, but yet is also the most vulnerable. Therefore we need to address the analysis of the tyranny of gender before
the point at where it's already too late. I prefer to use
the term ‘female’ instead of ‘woman’, when appropriate in
this discussion. I also prefer not to define women in relation to
men, i.e. in line with the word 'universal' in the Human Rights
Declaration. In short, I propose 'gender blindness' equally as, for
example, 'color blindness'.
According to Connell (2003:184), it is an old and
disreputable habit to define women mainly on the basis of their
relation to men. Moreover, this approach may also constitute a
possible cause of confusion when compared to a definition of ‘gender’
which emphasizes social relations on the basis of ‘reproductive
differences’.
To really grasp the absurdity of
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's and others habit of confusing 'gender'
with 'sex' one may consider that “normal” women live in the same
gender trap tyranny as do transsexuals.
The definition of ‘acquired gender’
is described in a guidance for/about transsexuals as:
Transsexual people have the deep
conviction that the gender to which they were assigned at birth on
the basis of their physical anatomy (referred to as their “birth
gender”) is incorrect. That conviction will often lead them to take
steps to present themselves to the world in the opposite gender.
Often, transsexual people will undergo hormonal or surgical treatment
to bring their physical identity into line with their preferred
gender identity.
This evokes the extinction of the
feminine or women as directly dependent on the existence of the
masculine or men. Whereas the feminine cannot be defined without the
masculine, the same applies to women who cannot be defined - only
described - without men.
Female footballers, for example - as
opposed to feminine footballers, both male and female - are, just
like the target group of feminism, by definition distinguished by
sex. Although this classification is a physical segregation – most
often based on a delivery room assessment made official and not at
all taking into account physical size, strength, skills etc. - other
aspects of sex difference, now usually called ‘gender’, seem to
be layered on top of this dichotomy. This review departs from the
understanding that there are two main categories that distinguish
females, i.e. the physical sex belonging, for example, that only
biological women may participate in a certain competition, and the
cultural sex determination, for example that some sports are less
‘feminine’ than others.
‘Gender’, is synonymous with sex segregation, given
that the example of participation on the ground of one’s biological
sex is simply a rule for a certain agreed activity and hence not sex
segregation in the form of stipulated or assumed separatism. Such sex
segregation is still common even in societies which have prescribed
to notions of general human freedom regardless of sex and in
accordance with Human Rights. This is because of a common consensus
that sex segregation is ‘good’ although its effects are bad.
In
Durkheim’s (1984: 142) view such ‘organized despotism’ is where
the individual and the collective consciousness are almost the same.
Then sui generis, a new life may be added on to that of the main
body. As a consequence, this freer and more independent state
progresses and consolidates itself (Durkheim 1984: 284).
However,
consensus may also rest on an imbalance that is upheld and may even
strengthen precisely as an effect of the initial imbalance. In such a
case ‘organized despotism’ becomes the means for conservation. As
a consequence, the only alternative would be to ease restrictions,
which is something fundamentally different from proposing how people
should live their lives. ‘Organized despotism’ in this meaning
may apply to gender and to sex segregation as well.
According to Connell (2003) whose
confused view may be closer to that of Justice Ginsburg, gender is
neither biology, nor a fixed dichotomy, but it has a special relation
to the human body mirrored in a ‘general perception’. Cultural
patterns do not only mirror bodily differences. Gender is ‘a
structure’ of social relations/practices concentrated to ‘the
reproductive arena’, and a series of due practices in social
processes. That is, gender describes how society relates to the human
body, and has due consequences for our private life and for the
future of wo/mankind (Connell 2003:21-22).
Gender is neither biology, nor a fixed
dichotomy, but it has a special relation to the human body mirrored
in a “general perception.” What is wrong with this view is the
thought that cultural patterns only mirror bodily differences. Gender
is “a structure” of social relations/practices concentrated to
“the reproductive arena”, and a series of due practices in the
social processes. I.e. it describes how society relates to the human
body, and due consequences to our private life and for the future of
wo/mankind (Connell 2003:21-22). The main problem here involves how
to talk without gender.
... sex should properly refer to the
biological aspects of male and female existence. Sex differences
should therefore only be used to refer to physiology, anatomy,
genetics, hormones and so forth. Gender should properly be used to
refer to all the non‑biological aspects of differences between
males and females ‑ clothes, interests, attitudes, behaviours
and aptitudes, for example ‑ which separate 'masculine' from
'feminine' life styles (Delamont 1980: 5 in Hargreaves 1994:146).
The distinction between sex and gender
implied in these quotations, however, does not seem to resolve the
issue precisely because it fails to offer a tool for discriminating
biological aspects of differences from non-biological, i.e. cultural.
This is also reflected in everyday life “folk categories of sex and
gender” which (most?) often appear to be used as if they were the
same. Although 'masculine' and 'feminine' are social realities, there
is a mystique about their being predetermined by biology” (ibid).
Furthermore the very relational meaning of ‘gender’ seems to
constitute a too an obvious hiding place for essentialism based on
sex. Apart from being ‘structure’, as noted above, gender is,
according to Connell, all about relations (2003:20). However, if
there are none, or if the relations are excluding, the concept of sex
segregation may be even more useful.
It seems that 'masculine' and
'feminine’ in this definition of gender is confusingly close to the
‘mystique about their being predetermined by biology’ when
compared to the ‘reproductive arena’ and ‘reproductive
differences’ in Connell’s definition of gender. However, although
gender, according to Connell (2003: 96), may also be ‘removed’
the crucial issue is whether those who are segregated really want to
de-sex segregate? As long as the benefits of a breakout are not
clearly assessable, the possible negative effects may undermine such
efforts.
According to Connell (2003:20) the very
key to the understanding of gender is not to focus on differences,
but, instead, to focus on relations. In fact, this distinction is
crucial here because relations, contrary to differences, are mutually
dependent. Whatever difference existing between the sexes is
meaningless unless it is connected via a relation. On the one hand,
big male muscles can hardly be of relational use other than in cases
of domestic violence, and on the other hand, wage gaps cannot be
identified without a comparative relation to the other sex.
Biological determinism is influential
in the general discourse of sports academia (Hargreaves 1994:8).
However, what remains to analyse is whether ‘gender’ is really a
successful concept for dealing with biological determinism?
‘To explain the cultural at the level
of the biological encourages the exaggeration and approval of
analyses based on distinctions between men and women, and masks the
complex relationship between the biological and the cultural’
(Hargreaves 1994:8).
With another example: to explain the
cultural (driver) at the level of the technical (type of car)
encourages the exaggeration and approval of analyses based on
distinctions between cars, and masks the complex relationship between
the car and the driver. However, also the contrary seems to hold
true;. that the cultural (driver/gender) gets tied to the
technical/biological. The ‘complex relationship’ between the car
and the driver is easily avoided by using similar1 cars, hence making
the driver more visible. In a sex/gender setting the ‘complex
relationship’ between sex and gender is easily avoided by
distinguishing between sex and culture2, hence making culture more
visible. The term ‘culture’, unlike the term ‘gender’ clearly
tries to avoid the ‘complex relationship’ between biology and
gender. The ‘complex relationship’ makes it, in fact, impossible
to distinguish between them. On top of this comes the ‘gender
relation’ confusion, which determines people to have ‘gender
relations’, i.e. to be opposite or separate.
This kind of gender view is popular,
perhaps because it may serve as a convenient way out from directly
confronting the biology/culture distinction, and seems to be the
prevalent trend, to the extent that ‘gender’ has conceptually
replaced ‘sex’, leading to the consequence that the latter has
become more or less self-evident and thus almost beyond scrutiny. In
other words, by using ‘gender’ as a sign for ‘the complex
relationship between the biological and the cultural’, biological
determinism becomes more difficult to access analytically.
Gender is neither biology, nor a fixed
dichotomy, but it has a special relation to the human body mirrored
in a ‘general perception.’ What is problematic with this view is
the thought that cultural patterns only mirror bodily differences.
Gender is ‘a structure’ of social relations/practices
concentrated to ‘the reproductive arena’, and a series of due
practices in social processes. That is, it describes how society
relates to the human body and has due consequences to our private
life and for the future of wo/mankind (Connell 2003: 21-22). The main
problem here involves how to talk sex without gender:
‘Sex should properly refer to the
biological aspects of male and female existence. Sex differences
should therefore only be used to refer to physiology, anatomy,
genetics, hormones and so forth. Gender should properly be used to
refer to all the nonbiological aspects of differences between males
and females clothes, interests, attitudes, behaviours and aptitudes,
for example which separate 'masculine' from 'feminine' lifestyles’
(Delamont 1980 quoted in Hargreaves 1994: 146).
The distinction between sex and gender
implied in these quotations, however, does not seem to resolve the
issue, precisely because it fails to offer a tool for discriminating
biological aspects of differences from non-biological ones, i.e.
those that are cultural. This is also reflected in everyday life.
‘Folk’ categories of sex and gender often appear to be used as if
they were the same thing. Although 'masculine' and 'feminine' are
social realities, there is a mystique about their being predetermined
by biology. Furthermore the very relational meaning of ‘gender’
seems to constitute a too obvious hiding place for a brand of
essentialism based on sex. Apart from being ‘structure’, as noted
above, gender is, according to Connell (2003:20), all about
relations. However, if there are none - or if the relations are
excluding - the concept of sex segregation may be even more useful.
In Connell’s analysis, however,
gender may also be removed (Connell 2003:96). In this respect and as
a consequence, gender equals sex segregation. In fact it seems that
the 'masculine' and 'feminine’, in the definition of gender above,
are confusingly close to the ‘mystique about their being
predetermined by biology’ when compared to the ‘reproductive
arena’ and ‘reproductive differences’ in Connell’s (2003:21)
definition of gender. The elusiveness of gender seems to reveal a
point of focus rather than a thorough-going conceptualization. So,
for example, in traditional Engels/Marx thinking the family’s
mediating formation between class and state excludes the politics of
gender (Haraway 1991: 131).
What's a Woman?
In What is a Woman? Moi (1999) attacks
the concept of gender while still emphasizing the importance of the
concept of the feminine and a strong self-conscious (female) subject
that combines the personal and the theoretical within it. Moi (1999:
76), hence, seems to propose a loose sex/gender axis resting on a
rigid womanhood based on women’s context bound, lived experience
outside the realm of men’s experience.
Although I share Moi’s suggestion for
abandoning the category of gender, her analysis seems to contribute
to a certain confusion and to an almost incalculable theoretical
abstraction in the sex/gender distinction because it keeps
maintaining sex segregation without offering a convincing defence for
it. Although gender, for example, is seen as a nature-culture
distinction, something that essentializes non-essential differences
between women and men, the same may be said about Moi’s approach if
we understand her ‘woman’ as, mainly, the mainstream biological
one usually classified (prematurely) in the delivery room. If the
sexes live in separate spheres, as Moi’s analysis seems to imply,
the lived, contextual experience of women appears as less suitable
for pioneering on men’s territory.
This raises the question about
whether the opening up of new frontiers for females may demand the
lessening or even the absence of femininity (and masculinity). In
fact, it is believed here that the ‘liminal state’ where social
progression might best occur, is precisely that. Gender as an
educated ‘facticity’ then, from this point of view, will
inevitably enter into a state of world view that adds itself onto the
‘lived body’ as a constraint.
It is assumed here that we commonly
conflate constructs of sex, gender, and sexuality. When sex is
defined as the ‘biological’ aspects of male and female, then this
conceptualization is here understood as purely descriptive. When
gender is said to include social practices organized in relation to
biological sex (Connell 1987), and when gender refers to
context/time-specific and changeable socially constructed
relationships of social attributes and opportunities learned through
socialization processes, between women and men, this is also here
understood as descriptive. However, when description of gender
transforms into active construction of gender, e.g. through secrets
about its analytical gain, it subsequently transforms into a
compulsory necessity. Gendering hence may blindfold gender-blind
opportunities.
In conclusion, if gender is here
understood as a social construct, then is not coupled to sex but to
context, and dependent on time. Also it is here understood that every
person may possess not only one but a variety of genders. Even if we
consider gender to be locked together with the life history of a
single individual the above conceptualization makes a single,
personal gender impossible, longitudinally as well as
contemporaneously. Whereas gender is constructive and deterministic,
sex is descriptive and non-deterministic. In this sense, gender as an
analytical tool leaves little room for the Tomboy.
The Tomboy - a threat to "femininity"
Noncompliance with what is assumed
‘feminine’ threatens established or presumed sex segregation.
What is perceived as ‘masculinity’ or ‘maleness’ in women, as
a consequence, may only in second place, target homosexuality. In
accordance with this line of thought, the Tomboy embodies both the
threat and the possibilities for gendered respectively gender-blind
opportunity structures.
The Tomboy is the loophole out of gender
relations. Desires revealed through sport may have been with females
under the guise of a different identity, such as that of the Tomboy
(Kotarba & Held 2007: 163). Girls throw balls ‘like girls’
and do not tackle like boys because of a female perception of their
bodies as objects of action (Young 2000:150 cited in Kotarba &
Held 2007: 155).
However, when women lacking experience
of how to act in an effective manner in sport are taught about how to
do, they have no problem performing, quite contrary to explaining
shortcomings as due to innate causes (Kotarba & Held 2007: 157).
This is also opposite to the experiences of male-to-female
transsexuals who through thorough exercise learn how to feminisize
their movements (Schrock & Boyd 2006:53-55). Although, according
to Hargreaves (1994), most separatist sports philosophies have been a
reaction to dominant ideas about the biological and psychological
predispositions of men and women, supposedly rendering men 'naturally
suited to sports, and women, by comparison, essentially less suited
(Hargreaves 1994:29-30), the opposite may also hold true. Separatism
per definition needs to separate and this separation is often based
on biological differences, be it skin colour, sex or something else.
From this perspective, the Tomboy would constitute a theoretical
anomaly in a feminine separatist setting. Although her physical body
would possibly qualify what makes her a Tomboy would not.
The observation that in mixed
playgrounds, and in other areas of the school environment, boys
monopolize the physical space (Hargreaves 1994:151) may lack the
additional notion that certain boys dominate and certain boys do not.
Sports feminists have 'politicized' these kinds of experience by
drawing connections between ideas and practice (Hargreaves 1994:3)
but because of a separatist approach may exclude similar experience
among parts of the boys. Moreover, a separatist approach is never
waterproof and may hence leak Tomboy girls without a notion.
Femininity and feminism
Feminism and psychoanalysis as oppressors
According to Collier and Yanagisako
(1987), Henrietta Moore (1994) and other feminist anthropologists,
patriarchal dominance is an inseparable socially inherited part of
the conventional family system. This implicit suggestion of radical
surgery does not, however, count on unwanted secondary effects
neither on the problem with segregated or non-segregated sex-worlds.
If, in other words, oppression is related to gender segregation
rather than patriarchy, or perhaps that patriarchy is a product of
sex segregation, then there seems to be a serious problem of
intellectual survival facing feminists themselves. If feminism1 is to
be understood as an approach and/or analytical tool for separatism2,
those feminists and others who propose not only analytical
segregation but also practical segregation, face the problem of
possible oppression inherent in this very segregation (Klevius 1994,
1996). In this sense oppression is related to sex segregation in two
ways:
1. As a means for naming it (feminism)
for an analytical purpose.
2. As a social consequence or political
strategy (e.g. negative bias against female football or a separatist
strategy for female football).
It is notable that the psychoanalytic movement has not only been contemporary with feminism, but it
has also followed (or led) the same pattern of concern and proposed
warnings and corrections that has marked the history of ‘feminism’
in the 20th century. According to S. Freud, the essence of the
analytic profession is feminine and the psychoanalyst ‘a woman in
love’ (L. Appignanesi & J. Forrester 1992:189). But
psychoanalytically speaking, formalized sex and sex segregation also
seem to have been troublesome components in the lives of female
psychoanalysts struggling under a variety of assumed, but
irreconcilable femininities and professional expectations.
In
studying the history of feminism one inevitable encounters what is
called ‘the women’s movement’. While there is a variety of
different feminisms, and because the borders between them, as well as
to what is interpreted as the women’s rights movement, some
historians, incl. Klevius, question the distinction and/or methods in use for this
distinction.
However, it could also be argued that
whereas the women’s right movement may be distinguished by its lack
of active separatism within the proposed objectives of the movement,
feminism ought to be distinguished as a multifaceted separatist
movement based on what is considered feminine values, i.e. what is
implied by the very word ‘feminism’3. From this perspective the
use of the term ‘feminism’ before the last decades of the 19th
century has to be re-evaluated, as has every such usage that does not
take into account the separatist nature underpinning all feminisms.
Here it is understood that the concept ‘feminism’, and its
derivatives, in every usage implies a distinction based on separating
the sexes - e.g. addressing inequality or inequity - between male and
female (see discussion above). So although ’feminism’ and
‘feminisms’ would be meaningless without such a separation, the
‘women’s rights movement’, seen as based on a distinct aim for
equality with men in certain legal respects, e.g. the right to vote,
could be described as the opposite, i.e. de-segregation, ‘gender
blindness’ etc.
As a consequence the use of the word
feminism in a context where it seems inappropriate is here excepted
when the authors referred to have decided to do so. The feminist
movement went back to Mary Wollstonecraft and to some French
revolutionaries of the end of the eighteenth century, but it had
developed slowly. In the period 1880 to 1900, however, the struggle
was taken up again with renewed vigour, even though most
contemporaries viewed it as idealistic and hopeless. Nevertheless, it
resulted in ideological discussions about the natural equality or
non-equality of the sexes, and the psychology of women. (Ellenberger
1970: 291-292).
Not only feminist gynocentrists, but
also anti-feminist misogynists contributed with their own
pronouncements on the woman issue. In 1901, for example, the German
psychiatrist Moebius published a treatise, On the Physiological
Imbecility of Woman, according to which, woman is physically and
mentally intermediate between the child and man (see Ellenberger
1970:292). However, according to the underlying presumption of this
thesis, i.e. that the borders between gynocentrism and misogyny are
not well understood, these two approaches are seen as more or less
synonymous. Such a view also confirms with a multitude of points in
common between psychoanalysis and feminism. As was argued earlier,
the main quality of separatism and ‘complementarism’ is an
insurmountable border, sometimes contained under the titles: love,
desire etc.
No comments:
Post a Comment