Remind me again: *who* thinks there's a right way and a wrong way to be a man or a woman?
To buy into gender ideology, you have to believe on some level that there’s a right and wrong way to be a boy or girl or man or woman. You also have to deny to yourself that you believe this. It helps if you can project this belief on people who don’t think there’s a wrong way to be male or female.
If you don't believe there's a right and wrong way to be male or female, then claims like "I don't feel like/identify as a girl" or "he doesn't act like a boy" don't make sense. Certainly, you won't take such statements literally and enact those statements on a child's one and only body.
But, being liberation artistes, gender ideologues cannot admit that they believe there's a right and wrong way to be male and female. They convince themselves of their open-mindedness by insisting that anyone can be a man or a woman, regardless of sex (but dependent on behavior, presentation, and sex-role stereotypes).
This is tied to gender ideologues' inability to see unconventional women of the past as anything other than 'transcestors,' stripping these women of not just their sex but the times and places in which they lived, the only context in which their lives and choices make any sense.
All the women interesting enough to rate a mention in the history books were really men (and we know they were men because they were interesting!)' is not the progressive take some people seem to think it is. Why would you interpret a woman disguising herself as a man because it was *the only way* she could go to medical school or serve in an army or live with the woman she loved as a sign she wasn't a woman at all, if you don't believe there's such a thing as 'doing' woman 'wrong'? When we trans Joan of Arc and Hatshepsut, we're reinforcing the idea that there's a right and wrong way to be a girl and that we know famous women of the past were really men because they subverted conventions, because they made history at all.
In the process, the gender vanguard ends up sounding an awful lot like gender traditionalists commenting on these women in their own times: ‘Women don’t act like that, so maybe she’s not a woman at all…’
I agree 100 % (as usual... can't remember a time I disagreed with Eliza!)
One thing I'm curious about is how much 'gender ideologues' genuinely believe this, or do they know perfectly well it's nonsense, but can't admit it to themselves (or anyone else) ?
The key paragraph in this regard is this:
"But, being liberation artistes, gender ideologues cannot admit that they believe there's a right and wrong way to be male and female. They convince themselves of their open-mindedness by insisting that anyone can be a man or a woman, regardless of sex (but dependent on behavior, presentation, and sex-role stereotypes)."
As you have much more experience talking to die-hard believers, what is your sense about it? Are they 'Genuine Believers' (and therefore blind to the sexism inherent in the position) , or Frauds/charlatans/liars' who are well aware of the position, but feel they have to bury any doubts/inconsistencies?
This really reinforces to me the importance of asking questions.
A while ago, a colleague of mine asked for a book recommendation on "projecting 'feminine' energy" or some bullshit and I asked something like "are you asking how to challenge sexist gender stereotypes?" and recommended "The Myth of Mars and Venus" by Deb Cameron (which is kind of a rebuttal to Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus).
A lot of people just blindly buy into crap like "feminine energy" or a gendered soul but claim "everyone has both inside them". My big question is: "If masculine and feminine energy is something everyone has, then why separate them into those categories to begin with?" Furthermore, isn't "masculinity" just the embodiment of dominance (muscular, virile, aggressive) and "femininity" just the embodiment of subservience (nurturing, yielding, objectified)?
In older dictionaries, you could find a definition of gender like "what is PROPER to each sex" which I think is a very useful definition as it describes the fact that there are behavioral proscriptions assigned to each sex.
I think I might do some of my own writing about this.