Talk: You're the sexist

A couple of issues with the "Noticing gender is sexist!" section

So, first, since this is my first post here, I would like to say hi to everyone, and express hope that I will be of any help to the community here, with this contribution and any future one ^^

Now, the reason I'm opening a thread here is, I feel like there is a couple of issues with the following paragraph, and would like to discuss them with other contributors, to see if my concerns are valid or not, and if they are valid, what should be changed.

"Feminists vary on the question of ultimately not seeing gender itself, and it isn't necessarily a feminist goal to create a society where no one advertises their gender or gender is generally unknown. (In fact such a goal, where expressed, has been criticised as part of feminism's problems with internal transphobia.) The goal of most feminists is to eliminate discrimination based on gender and the inflexibility of current presentations and the gender binary, not gender itself."

Here's what bothering me in there:

The "ultimately" word in the first sentence feels a bit confusing. Does it describe an ideal society that would match feminist goals, like the other half of the sentence? Does it discuss the "core" attitude which feminist currents take *today* towards genders, all other things taken aside? If the word wasn't there, I'd lean towards the latter interpretation, but overall I think that clarifying this part of the sentence would probably be for the best. I can try to do it if someone explains me what's the intent here.
I am also a bit confused by the "gender is generally unknown" ending of this sentence. Is the intent here to describe a social outcome where gender exists, but isn't common knowledge? Or where it doesn't exist as a social construct anymore, and people are free to do whatever they like instead of shoehorning themselves into gender boxes? Or something else? Again, I can help with clarifying, if someone helps me understand what is being said here.
The parenthesis about transphobia, as it is currently written, feels very much like an original statement, reflecting the specific sensibility of the person who wrote the article rather than the feminist community as a whole. Perhaps part of the problem is that it is not clear in my mind what the sentence it builds upon means (see point 2). Perhaps another is that the "gender" word is used generally here, without clarifying if we are talking about gender roles as a social construct, or the neurological concept of gender as a physiological notion that is devoid of social influence (as seen in some trans* discussions). I think that sourcing this statement with one or more detailed articles about this matter would help me and other people clearly understand what is the problem that is being discussed here.
I am not sitting very well with the unsourced "most" of the last sentence. But perhaps that's just because I have a bit of an opposing point of view myself, and don't like to be put in the minority of weirdos if I can avoid to, heh heh.
Still in the last sentence, two "and"s in a row feels like an editing typo, I'd gladly replace the first one with a comma.
Finally... That's not a problem in the sentence itself and I don't intend to start an ideological debate here, so I'll understand if people refuse to reply to this last point. But it is a bit unclear to me how one can eliminate the inflexibility of gender roles and the gender binary without giving up on the idea of gender itself. Thus, I'd love to read any article that discusses this matter, if someone has a link handy (or keywords for search engines, for that matter, I simply don't know how to look this up on the Web).

All the best, HadrienG (talk) 08:03, July 22, 2014 (UTC)

Hi HadrienG, I had a go at editing that paragraph and hopefully it'll address some of your concerns. It was indeed fairly confusing! Hopefully it's better now.

Regarding your comment about the sentence on transphobia being an "original statement", this isn't wikipedia - there is plenty of original researched and unsourced opinion on here. That's by design :) You can read more about our editorial philosophy here . The sentence about women being told to act like men that I added to the end of the paragraph you mentioned, for example, came out of an IRC discussion with a fellow wiki editor, rather than an academic source.

For your last question - I'm no particular authority, but I don't see a contradiction between wanting to have a more fluid notion of gender identity and roles, while also having some areas along the spectrum which we know as "male" or "female". It's the punitive inflexibility of the narrowly defined notions we call "male" and "female" that's the problem, not their existence necessarily. If you're interested in further reading, I'd look to trans writers directly - Julia Serano's work would be a good place to start.

Hope that helps! Hypatia (talk) 09:12, July 22, 2014 (UTC)

Hi Hypatia! Your changes indeed adress most of my concerns :) In its new form, the paragraph is much more clear to me, and I also get that I was a bit too wikipedian in some of my remarks ^^

Actually, reading this again, I even feel a bit like there could be a separate article about this discussion, since this starts to be less about the alleged sexism of feminists who point out gender issues, and more about feminists' general attitude towards gender, which probably should not be defined by the movement's reaction to the naysayers. How would you feel about tweaking a bit one of the articles about gender to incorporate this new content, and merely linking to it here?

Regarding the gender fluidity discussion... I'm not sure I fully understood your answer. Would it be alright for me to rephrase it as "There's no intrinsic problem with having a set of social characteristics that we call 'male' or 'female', it's only when these sets becomes very rigid and people are forced to follow one of them to the letter that we should be concerned"? Or would I expose a misunderstanding on my part by doing so?

In any case, I'll try to check out Julia Serano's books, even if I have a hard time getting me to read something that's not on a computer screen these days. They do sound interesting, and hopefully they'd help me get a better grasp of trans issues, which are still much of a "I feel I should understand this, but I don't really get it yet" thing for me right now.

Thanks for your help! HadrienG (talk) 10:13, July 22, 2014 (UTC)

I don't feel particularly interested in working on this much more, sorry! You've written around 10x as much about this one paragraph as it actually contained, and I don't think it's worth any more disussion.

While I appreciate your diligence in clarifying the parts of this article that you found confusing, I think that you might find a broader and less nit-picky approach more satisfying, and it would be more respectful of the editorial style of this wiki. For whatever it's worth, Julia's books are available electronically, if paper is an impediment. Hypatia (talk) 19:37, July 22, 2014 (UTC)

I understand, and am sorry for coming across as nitpicking. I did not intend to offend, I only am much better at polishing details than working on the broad scheme of things. Thanks for the discussion! HadrienG (talk) 00:17, July 23, 2014 (UTC)

Don't mistake my lack of interest as "offense" :) Hypatia (talk) 17:25, July 23, 2014 (UTC)