Language matters
I am trying to comprehend why many in the male to female gender variant community continue to employ the term crossdresser when female to male persons who do the same thing are not so labeled. If women aren't "crossdressing" when they wear traditionally male clothing, why is a male bodied person doing so when wearing a skirt? I tend to personally see this term as slightly anachronistic and dismissive rather than helpful since there are a series of societal connotations surrounding it which aren't generally positive or helpful. If we are going to move towards a deeper level of understanding and tolerance of all types of behaviour (no matter the percentage of the population which engages in it), we need to update the lexicon as we have done in many other areas of social science. Hence if we are going to less stigmatize a behaviour which has always existed and which occurs with much more frequency than transsexualism, a name change might be in order. Perhaps as a startin
I'm all for gender-freedom and choice but have doubts about some of this. Our society's understanding of gender is still primitive so claiming knowledge of it is often faulty. Back in the Seventies/Eighties, I was part of the feminist movement that argued gender is a social-construct with no biological basis. We (or at least I) now know that to be untrue. It may be politically popular to talk about existing outside the binary but I suspect in 10-20 years, science will disprove many of these ideas. Which isn't to say I disagree with arguing politically about expanding our society's idea of gender -- that's a worthwhile project -- just that I don't believe anyone has yet arrived at the absolute truth of humanity.
ReplyDeleteI see this whole thing as a rudimentary and clumsy step towards establishing an identity outside of the strict binary rules. It doesn't mean that it will last but I for one am glad that people are trying to break away from their straight jackets. Do I think that there are many genders? no but the appetite to define oneself is often fed through titles which is what this effort is about. As soon as gender variance is more widely accepted a lot of this will likely calm down.
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