Sunday, October 25, 2015
a debate on the historical importance of microtonality in the western music tradition
microtonal music is actually just about everywhere, even if it's not always called that.
the blues are named after something called the "blue note", which was bending the string up a microtone. essentially all blues music makes use of this microtonal technique, which means large amounts of rock music make use of it as well.
it was also huge in prog & fusion music, through things like vibrato, harmonies from alternate tunings and playing with echo machines. miles davis, chick corea, yes, genesis - there's microtones all over all that stuff.
it became very much cemented in the more chaotic aspects of punk rock and hit a height of mainstream appeal in the 90s, when it became known using the term grunge. one of the better examples of microtonal music in pop is alice in chains.
and, it's been widely implemented across the "intelligent techno" sphere by artists like autechre and aphex twin, by using algorithms, frequency generators and other such fun things.
this idea of eastern v western music is a false dichotomy. microtones have always existed in the west, it's just that the church thought they were "evil" and tried to destroy them.
boptillyouflop
+deathtokoalas The western music microtones you're talking about are much more articulations than independent notes (for the jazz blue notes), imho, and that's how they're played on instruments that don't bend like pianos. Plus they're not really used in harmony (it's much more a solo).
Same goes for vibratos and bends... even though they're physically not tuned on the target, lexically they're just normal notes with an articulation.
deathtokoalas
+boptillyouflop i don't agree. and, i think you're missing the historical truth, that a lot of it comes from celtic music, which had a very defined concept of microtonality. that worked it's way down into british folk music and into the various modern western forms from there. traditional latin & byzantine music also had concepts of microtonality.
most texts will talk to you about equal temperament, and how western music theory discarded microtones as a kind of mathematical model of music theory. but, this is at best a half-truth. to understand how western christianity (and this is, at it's core, a religious thing) interpreted certain intervals, you need to go back to a strain of greek philosophy that began with pythagoras. a system of mysticism developed out of a crude understanding of number theory that gave special properties to certain ratios. they'll teach you in first year calculus that they thought the square root of two was some kind of evil omen, because it was "irrational" - in fact our very concept of logic stems from this archaic number mysticism. this developed over time into this idea that certain ratios (4ths and 5ths) were approved by god himself, and all these other ratios were tainted by the influence of satan. it sounds utterly ridiculous, but it's the actual truth of it.
there were microtones in western folk music the whole time, but the church cracked down on them as representing something evil. and, it's only out of this extreme form of religious censorship on artistic expression that we develop this concept of "western music". equal temperament was built as a mathematical model to cement this christian conception of "allowed intervals" - but that suggests the existence of "forbidden intervals". the whole thing is really an entirely contrived construction of western academia. but, of course, the church was powerful enough to write history for over a thousand years, and what we have is what they've allowed us to have.
so, when you talk about a blue note or an alternate folk tuning in a prog piece, or even the dissonance of grunge, it's not merely articulations. it's very much a continuation of the deep cultural legacy of microtonality in western music.
to put it another way: the hierarchy may have taken away our ability to write these ideas down, and explain them, but the ideas were there in antiquity, never disappeared in western folk music and are, in fact, still with us today.
i know that what they teach you in school is that western history is the history of christianity. it is from this enforced, entrenched narrative that the idea that church music is the same thing as western music comes from.
but, it's really a type of brainwashing. if you scratch the surface a little, it is easy to see that the history of western culture is a struggle against first rome and then christianity - from the perpetual celtic uprisings in france and spain, to the german and viking invasions, to the renaissance and the enlightenment right up to the hippies and the modern period. in era after era, and all over western europe, there is this single defining counter-narrative of struggle against everything rome has ever represented that truly defines us as the barbarians that we are.
the truth is that our folk music traditions, as they continue to exist, and as they have always defined us, have always been microtonal, as best as we're able to understand them from a distance. remember that the celts lived all over europe in antiquity. the germans were late invaders, and their culture has been so thoroughly destroyed by the romans that we have no concept at all of what their music was. but, we understand celtic music, and we know it utilized microtones.
this narrative even exists in upper class music, starting with beethoven and completing with webern. the foundations of western music theory were all but discarded by western musicians practically the moment they were created. in the terms we define western music theory in, the only true western composer is mozart.
boptillyouflop
+deathtokoalas Byzantine music has REAL microtonality yes, and has had it since forever.
The real reason western music doesn't have microtones is that our harmony is ridiculously overdeveloped, and this literally FORCES everything into the circle of 5ths and makes microtones sound bad.
If we didn't write everything with chord progressions and independent bass and harmonized melodies and overlapping lines, we'd have microtones up the wazoo.
deathtokoalas
+boptillyouflop but, that simply isn't true. and, of course, byzantine music did not develop in a vacuum - it is sourced from the same greek and latin sources that arabic music is, and those sources carried on in the western roman world for quite a long time.
if you look at even your standard celtic jig, on guitar (lute), you see all these grace notes, slides, bends, hammers, etc. where do you think those came from? they're not just random elaborations or disconnected stylistic flairs. they're artifacts of a microtonal music system.
so, when you hear the blue notes, and you put it in context, you have to realize where it's coming from. the notes were banned by the authorities as "satanic", yes. they were written out of the history books. but, they never stopped getting played.
boptillyouflop
+deathtokoalas Grace notes, slides, bends, hammers and so forth are totally normal. They happen in pretty much every musical tradition, both in traditions that are intensely microtonal (ex: Arabic) and in traditions that aren't (ex: Chinese).
They can easily evolve out nothing - for instance, Chiptune's ridiculously fast arpeggios evolved around 1990 out of trying to cram chords in songs on computers with only 3 or 4 sound channels (C64, Amiga).
Church music is low on articulations simply because it has to be sung by a whole bunch of people inside a church hall. Grace notes aren't banned by the church, they're banned by the acoustics of the building!
deathtokoalas
+boptillyouflop again: i think you need to read up on this a bit more. seek out specialist material, and ignore general texts. out.
point was to the op: microtones are everywhere. what we call "western music theory" is a failed christian model, like creationism, that simply doesn't describe the world around us very well.
boptillyouflop
+deathtokoalas Western music theory isn't a model of anything, it's a harmonization technique. Writing a melody is intuitive, but turning that into multiple parts is much more technical.
So Western theory breaks down earlier songs into techniques that can be applied to a simple melody to turn it into a full blown song.
If microtones were useful towards this goal in typical Western musical styles, believe me, musicians would be getting sheets with half flats and comma alterations all over the place.
deathtokoalas
+boptillyouflop again: you're clearly approaching this from a point of extreme ignorance, as though the voice leading created the theory, rather than was a result of it. you're just repeating church propaganda.
please research the history of this topic before you reply further. as mentioned, you want to begin with the pythagorean music theory, but you need to get beyond the introductory mathematical explanation and get into the philosophical underpinnings. our primary source for this is aristotle.
boptillyouflop
+deathtokoalas Fine then. The Christian church lobotomized Western music and confined it to the simple diatonic scale.
From that low point, Western music built itself back mostly by layering on independent voices and complexifying harmony.
This is why Western music nowadays has built up so much theory about chords, basslines, harmonization, key changes, orchestration, counterpoint and voice leading.
It invests all its complexity points in making multiple happen at the same time, which leaves other areas underdeveloped:
- Only 2 scale families (where Arabic music has 10~ Maqam families)
- Only 4/4 3/4 6/8 as common time signatures (Arabic music easily uses 5/4, 7/4, 11/4 etc)
- Underdeveloped melodic ornamentation
- Underdeveloped intonation variations (a Turkish Kanun player has multiple mandals per string and can practically move it up or down in comma steps).
- Underdeveloped improvisation (though this is getting better)
Gene Ruffalo
+deathtokoalas "...the blue notes, ...banned by the authorities as satanic..."_
Not the Dimminished Fifth?!! Bastards banned it, did they? Black Sabbath wore the hell out of that interval.
So fill me in, how is a "blues" note microtonal? I've been a violinist and guitarist for well over 40 yrs, tuned pianos since the 1980's, basically a well seasoned hippie born in the early 60's. I am sure you know this, that the "blues notes", in lets say a major pentatonic scale, are a minor 3rd and a diminished 5th. Both are ½ steps away from the notes surrounding them in the scale. Granted you might "choke it" short of the ½ step if you are bending into it on a guitar, but theoretically they are within the divisions of the 12 note octave. Does it truly make it a microtone if it is unintentional? Is there any structure, any set frequency divisions in these so called microtones? OR is it just the "if it sounds good and feels right, go for it" approach? In a violin you would actually play the 7th note (known as a "leading tone") as close as possible to the 8th (octave) in a major or harmonic minor scale (etc...), no longer making the two notes ½ step apart, but depending on who is playing the instrument and how thick your fingers are would decide the frequency of said leading tone. I have slender fingers so it is tight w/ me. So, is that really considered a microtone? In other words, have I been playing these mother fuckers for decades and not intentionally knowing it? I mean, it sounds good and feels right! Can these microtones be created in the natural world through harmonic vibrations? I know, these are a lot of questions, but you seem to have answers! Please don't make fun of me for not knowing things like this.. what does Christianity and the church have to do with any of this? Does not ancient Japanese bamboo flute music and Native American war chants use 5 note pentatonic scales? ONE LAST QUESTION, what do you have against koalas?
Kinkzoz
+Gene Ruffalo I don't think it's microtonal if it's an accident. The violin (and other similar instruments) could all be considered microtonal, if you put your fingers inbetween where two notes are. Yes. The internet just hates religion for some reason idk. Maybe. I'm too lazy to google it. I have nothing against koalas.
Hope that helps.
deathtokoalas
+Gene Ruffalo a blue note is roughly a quartertone. when it's vocal, it's usually about that flat. blues guitarists will emulate this by bending flat.
the wolf interval is the only part of this discussion that finds it's way into modern music theory. as mentioned, you have to understand pythagorean number mysticism and how it was applied by christian platonists to understand how this process came about. it's really just about finding ratios that exist within the set of rational numbers. the textbooks don't get into the number mysticism, as it isn't viewed as relevant to understanding the theory. but, in this context it's necessary to understand what western music theory actually is.
the last response from boptillyouflop was acceptable, except to point out that the church was unsuccessful in entirely expunging "irrational tones" from western folk music.
but, you're going to have to track down the pythagorean number mysticism yourself - it's obscure and complex, and (correctly) widely viewed as a lot of nonsense. it's easy to follow from the source, but.....well, if you can find an easy to follow summary (or write one yourself), let me know. don't expect this. the traditional academic history of music theory begins after this discussion for the reason that it's not worth teaching this stuff in almost any other context besides understanding the role of microtones in the history of western music.
http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2010/blue-notes/
Gene Ruffalo
+deathtokoalas Thanks, I know all about blue notes, been playing blues for decades. Technically it is a 1/2 step. In a C Major Pentatonic Scale it would be an Eb and in a C Minor Pentatonic Scale it would be Gb. Instruments like blues harps, saxes, and guitars that can bend notes you can cut it short to a quarter step, but on a piano you are limited to the half step adjustment, which sounds good too. Of course they are always just quick passing tones, you would never ride one out. I was really more interested in the other questions I threw at you, which I see you just responded to.
deathtokoalas
+Gene Ruffalo it really isn't a half-step, and the link i posted did a good job of disarming that. as mentioned, it was historically a consequence of vocalists coming down about a quarter to an eighth step flat, which created a slight dissonance in harmony. that was ported to other instruments quite consciously, and there are plenty of examples of using the technique to create sustained notes on just about any instrument. fusion and prog players have used sustained blue notes to great effect; there's a hancock example there, but you can hear it across the spectrum from tony banks to miles davis. and, as i pointed out before, those sustained uses became very integral aspects of the noisier reaches of punk rock, through intermediaries like frank zappa and can. that eventually developed into grunge.
you really can't play blue notes on the piano and there's no use in even talking about it.
boptillyouflop
+deathtokoalas Yeah, discussions about microtonal stuff in western music always seemed to be basically numerology for music to me. It's displayed in its full glory on the Xenharmonic Wiki.
Pythagorean theory is also numerological and mystic and crazy, it's just that the wide array of 5ths and low tolerance for mistuned 5ths in western music kinda leads towards it (or a close approximation like 12tet or well temperament, or an extension like Danielou tuning).
deathtokoalas
+boptillyouflop or is it that the reason we put so much emphasis on fifths, and react so negatively to them when they're out of tune, is due to the socialization that has followed from the importance that our ancestors put on the mystical properties of the ratio?
Gene Ruffalo
+deathtokoalas where's this link at you say you posted? we are talking a lot of semantics here, for there seems to be a difference of terminology between your "blue note" and "the blues (plural) note" that is in a minor blues scale, normally fretted on a guitar and played by a quick hammer on or trill. I can think of a lot of old BB King licks that play the actual semitone "blues note", but I'd really like to hear this Zappa stuff and other examples you mentioned. Thanks
deathtokoalas
+Gene Ruffalo i was referring to the ethan hein link above.
boptillyouflop
+deathtokoalas The importance of the fifth is not just cultural. It's structural. Musical cultures with different structural requirements tune differently.
Indian music pitches are all intervals up from a drone bass, so they tune in just intonation (logically).
Arabic music tends to center around small melodic steps within a tetrachord. Neutral seconds make structural sense: they make an interesting contrast to major seconds and minor seconds.
Indonesian Gamelan and Thai music are somewhat polyphonic and use a lot of bells and gongs and metallophones, which have irregular frequencies as harmonics, so they don't tune in fifths - instead, they tend to split the octave in roughly equal parts with some gaps.
Chinese and Japanese music are similar in polyphonic structure to the Gamelan, but they have a lot more string and wind instruments (which have regular harmonics). They tune in fifths.
deathtokoalas
+boptillyouflop everything will always make perfect sense when you explain your observations in terms of the observations themselves. it's tautological.
it's only structural in terms of the mathematics. we built the instruments to use the math; we didn't write the math to explain the instruments. it's consequently actually more of a social construction. so, to understand why we built instruments that tune in fifths, we need to understand why we wanted music to sound that way - and the answer is because we thought these ratios had special properties.
we don't say we write in fifths because the instruments push us in this direction. that's mixing up cause and effect.
Scott Wallace
+deathtokoalas You say: so, to understand why we built instruments that tune in fifths, we need to understand why we wanted music to sound that way - and the answer is because we thought these ratios had special properties.
I would put it differently. These ratios do have special properties: people perceive fifths as being consonant even if they have no idea of the mathematics. Sure, part of what we consider consonant or pleasing is cultural, but people all over the world sing in unisons, octaves, and fifths, and it's not hard to hear why: the ratios of 1/1, 2/1, and 3/2 simply clash less than, say, the Pythagorean third, 81/64. Simpler geometry makes for consonance because the waves fit together nicely.
In other words, we don't write in fifths because the instruments push us in this direction: our ears push us in this direction.
cheers from warm Vienna, Scott
deathtokoalas
+Scott Wallace this is the perspective that musicologists will go well out of their way to push aside, and that bop isn't arguing. if you talk to somebody that grew up in india or in an islamic culture, or in an indigenous culture, they really won't have the same perceptions about 4ths and 5ths.
there's a mathematical basis to it in the way the string vibrates - there's some method to the madness. but, we construct these conventions.
there's nothing physical about major keys being happy, minor keys being sad and other keys being "mysterious". it's just what we've been taught. this is a point that virtually everybody agrees upon.
my only point was that if you look closely you can actually determine why it's what we've been taught.
Scott Wallace
+deathtokoalas Oh, I agree with you about different perceptions of fourths and fifths. But it's also a fact that fourths and fifths are part of almost every musical culture on Earth, including India's. And there's a physical basis for that, which is based on mathematics.
And yes, the conventions of major/happy, minor/sad are not universal by any means. You only have to hear all the European medieval love songs to realize that.
cheers from warm Vienna, Scott
the blues are named after something called the "blue note", which was bending the string up a microtone. essentially all blues music makes use of this microtonal technique, which means large amounts of rock music make use of it as well.
it was also huge in prog & fusion music, through things like vibrato, harmonies from alternate tunings and playing with echo machines. miles davis, chick corea, yes, genesis - there's microtones all over all that stuff.
it became very much cemented in the more chaotic aspects of punk rock and hit a height of mainstream appeal in the 90s, when it became known using the term grunge. one of the better examples of microtonal music in pop is alice in chains.
and, it's been widely implemented across the "intelligent techno" sphere by artists like autechre and aphex twin, by using algorithms, frequency generators and other such fun things.
this idea of eastern v western music is a false dichotomy. microtones have always existed in the west, it's just that the church thought they were "evil" and tried to destroy them.
boptillyouflop
+deathtokoalas The western music microtones you're talking about are much more articulations than independent notes (for the jazz blue notes), imho, and that's how they're played on instruments that don't bend like pianos. Plus they're not really used in harmony (it's much more a solo).
Same goes for vibratos and bends... even though they're physically not tuned on the target, lexically they're just normal notes with an articulation.
deathtokoalas
+boptillyouflop i don't agree. and, i think you're missing the historical truth, that a lot of it comes from celtic music, which had a very defined concept of microtonality. that worked it's way down into british folk music and into the various modern western forms from there. traditional latin & byzantine music also had concepts of microtonality.
most texts will talk to you about equal temperament, and how western music theory discarded microtones as a kind of mathematical model of music theory. but, this is at best a half-truth. to understand how western christianity (and this is, at it's core, a religious thing) interpreted certain intervals, you need to go back to a strain of greek philosophy that began with pythagoras. a system of mysticism developed out of a crude understanding of number theory that gave special properties to certain ratios. they'll teach you in first year calculus that they thought the square root of two was some kind of evil omen, because it was "irrational" - in fact our very concept of logic stems from this archaic number mysticism. this developed over time into this idea that certain ratios (4ths and 5ths) were approved by god himself, and all these other ratios were tainted by the influence of satan. it sounds utterly ridiculous, but it's the actual truth of it.
there were microtones in western folk music the whole time, but the church cracked down on them as representing something evil. and, it's only out of this extreme form of religious censorship on artistic expression that we develop this concept of "western music". equal temperament was built as a mathematical model to cement this christian conception of "allowed intervals" - but that suggests the existence of "forbidden intervals". the whole thing is really an entirely contrived construction of western academia. but, of course, the church was powerful enough to write history for over a thousand years, and what we have is what they've allowed us to have.
so, when you talk about a blue note or an alternate folk tuning in a prog piece, or even the dissonance of grunge, it's not merely articulations. it's very much a continuation of the deep cultural legacy of microtonality in western music.
to put it another way: the hierarchy may have taken away our ability to write these ideas down, and explain them, but the ideas were there in antiquity, never disappeared in western folk music and are, in fact, still with us today.
i know that what they teach you in school is that western history is the history of christianity. it is from this enforced, entrenched narrative that the idea that church music is the same thing as western music comes from.
but, it's really a type of brainwashing. if you scratch the surface a little, it is easy to see that the history of western culture is a struggle against first rome and then christianity - from the perpetual celtic uprisings in france and spain, to the german and viking invasions, to the renaissance and the enlightenment right up to the hippies and the modern period. in era after era, and all over western europe, there is this single defining counter-narrative of struggle against everything rome has ever represented that truly defines us as the barbarians that we are.
the truth is that our folk music traditions, as they continue to exist, and as they have always defined us, have always been microtonal, as best as we're able to understand them from a distance. remember that the celts lived all over europe in antiquity. the germans were late invaders, and their culture has been so thoroughly destroyed by the romans that we have no concept at all of what their music was. but, we understand celtic music, and we know it utilized microtones.
this narrative even exists in upper class music, starting with beethoven and completing with webern. the foundations of western music theory were all but discarded by western musicians practically the moment they were created. in the terms we define western music theory in, the only true western composer is mozart.
boptillyouflop
+deathtokoalas Byzantine music has REAL microtonality yes, and has had it since forever.
The real reason western music doesn't have microtones is that our harmony is ridiculously overdeveloped, and this literally FORCES everything into the circle of 5ths and makes microtones sound bad.
If we didn't write everything with chord progressions and independent bass and harmonized melodies and overlapping lines, we'd have microtones up the wazoo.
deathtokoalas
+boptillyouflop but, that simply isn't true. and, of course, byzantine music did not develop in a vacuum - it is sourced from the same greek and latin sources that arabic music is, and those sources carried on in the western roman world for quite a long time.
if you look at even your standard celtic jig, on guitar (lute), you see all these grace notes, slides, bends, hammers, etc. where do you think those came from? they're not just random elaborations or disconnected stylistic flairs. they're artifacts of a microtonal music system.
so, when you hear the blue notes, and you put it in context, you have to realize where it's coming from. the notes were banned by the authorities as "satanic", yes. they were written out of the history books. but, they never stopped getting played.
boptillyouflop
+deathtokoalas Grace notes, slides, bends, hammers and so forth are totally normal. They happen in pretty much every musical tradition, both in traditions that are intensely microtonal (ex: Arabic) and in traditions that aren't (ex: Chinese).
They can easily evolve out nothing - for instance, Chiptune's ridiculously fast arpeggios evolved around 1990 out of trying to cram chords in songs on computers with only 3 or 4 sound channels (C64, Amiga).
Church music is low on articulations simply because it has to be sung by a whole bunch of people inside a church hall. Grace notes aren't banned by the church, they're banned by the acoustics of the building!
deathtokoalas
+boptillyouflop again: i think you need to read up on this a bit more. seek out specialist material, and ignore general texts. out.
point was to the op: microtones are everywhere. what we call "western music theory" is a failed christian model, like creationism, that simply doesn't describe the world around us very well.
boptillyouflop
+deathtokoalas Western music theory isn't a model of anything, it's a harmonization technique. Writing a melody is intuitive, but turning that into multiple parts is much more technical.
So Western theory breaks down earlier songs into techniques that can be applied to a simple melody to turn it into a full blown song.
If microtones were useful towards this goal in typical Western musical styles, believe me, musicians would be getting sheets with half flats and comma alterations all over the place.
deathtokoalas
+boptillyouflop again: you're clearly approaching this from a point of extreme ignorance, as though the voice leading created the theory, rather than was a result of it. you're just repeating church propaganda.
please research the history of this topic before you reply further. as mentioned, you want to begin with the pythagorean music theory, but you need to get beyond the introductory mathematical explanation and get into the philosophical underpinnings. our primary source for this is aristotle.
boptillyouflop
+deathtokoalas Fine then. The Christian church lobotomized Western music and confined it to the simple diatonic scale.
From that low point, Western music built itself back mostly by layering on independent voices and complexifying harmony.
This is why Western music nowadays has built up so much theory about chords, basslines, harmonization, key changes, orchestration, counterpoint and voice leading.
It invests all its complexity points in making multiple happen at the same time, which leaves other areas underdeveloped:
- Only 2 scale families (where Arabic music has 10~ Maqam families)
- Only 4/4 3/4 6/8 as common time signatures (Arabic music easily uses 5/4, 7/4, 11/4 etc)
- Underdeveloped melodic ornamentation
- Underdeveloped intonation variations (a Turkish Kanun player has multiple mandals per string and can practically move it up or down in comma steps).
- Underdeveloped improvisation (though this is getting better)
Gene Ruffalo
+deathtokoalas "...the blue notes, ...banned by the authorities as satanic..."_
Not the Dimminished Fifth?!! Bastards banned it, did they? Black Sabbath wore the hell out of that interval.
So fill me in, how is a "blues" note microtonal? I've been a violinist and guitarist for well over 40 yrs, tuned pianos since the 1980's, basically a well seasoned hippie born in the early 60's. I am sure you know this, that the "blues notes", in lets say a major pentatonic scale, are a minor 3rd and a diminished 5th. Both are ½ steps away from the notes surrounding them in the scale. Granted you might "choke it" short of the ½ step if you are bending into it on a guitar, but theoretically they are within the divisions of the 12 note octave. Does it truly make it a microtone if it is unintentional? Is there any structure, any set frequency divisions in these so called microtones? OR is it just the "if it sounds good and feels right, go for it" approach? In a violin you would actually play the 7th note (known as a "leading tone") as close as possible to the 8th (octave) in a major or harmonic minor scale (etc...), no longer making the two notes ½ step apart, but depending on who is playing the instrument and how thick your fingers are would decide the frequency of said leading tone. I have slender fingers so it is tight w/ me. So, is that really considered a microtone? In other words, have I been playing these mother fuckers for decades and not intentionally knowing it? I mean, it sounds good and feels right! Can these microtones be created in the natural world through harmonic vibrations? I know, these are a lot of questions, but you seem to have answers! Please don't make fun of me for not knowing things like this.. what does Christianity and the church have to do with any of this? Does not ancient Japanese bamboo flute music and Native American war chants use 5 note pentatonic scales? ONE LAST QUESTION, what do you have against koalas?
Kinkzoz
+Gene Ruffalo I don't think it's microtonal if it's an accident. The violin (and other similar instruments) could all be considered microtonal, if you put your fingers inbetween where two notes are. Yes. The internet just hates religion for some reason idk. Maybe. I'm too lazy to google it. I have nothing against koalas.
Hope that helps.
deathtokoalas
+Gene Ruffalo a blue note is roughly a quartertone. when it's vocal, it's usually about that flat. blues guitarists will emulate this by bending flat.
the wolf interval is the only part of this discussion that finds it's way into modern music theory. as mentioned, you have to understand pythagorean number mysticism and how it was applied by christian platonists to understand how this process came about. it's really just about finding ratios that exist within the set of rational numbers. the textbooks don't get into the number mysticism, as it isn't viewed as relevant to understanding the theory. but, in this context it's necessary to understand what western music theory actually is.
the last response from boptillyouflop was acceptable, except to point out that the church was unsuccessful in entirely expunging "irrational tones" from western folk music.
but, you're going to have to track down the pythagorean number mysticism yourself - it's obscure and complex, and (correctly) widely viewed as a lot of nonsense. it's easy to follow from the source, but.....well, if you can find an easy to follow summary (or write one yourself), let me know. don't expect this. the traditional academic history of music theory begins after this discussion for the reason that it's not worth teaching this stuff in almost any other context besides understanding the role of microtones in the history of western music.
http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2010/blue-notes/
Gene Ruffalo
+deathtokoalas Thanks, I know all about blue notes, been playing blues for decades. Technically it is a 1/2 step. In a C Major Pentatonic Scale it would be an Eb and in a C Minor Pentatonic Scale it would be Gb. Instruments like blues harps, saxes, and guitars that can bend notes you can cut it short to a quarter step, but on a piano you are limited to the half step adjustment, which sounds good too. Of course they are always just quick passing tones, you would never ride one out. I was really more interested in the other questions I threw at you, which I see you just responded to.
deathtokoalas
+Gene Ruffalo it really isn't a half-step, and the link i posted did a good job of disarming that. as mentioned, it was historically a consequence of vocalists coming down about a quarter to an eighth step flat, which created a slight dissonance in harmony. that was ported to other instruments quite consciously, and there are plenty of examples of using the technique to create sustained notes on just about any instrument. fusion and prog players have used sustained blue notes to great effect; there's a hancock example there, but you can hear it across the spectrum from tony banks to miles davis. and, as i pointed out before, those sustained uses became very integral aspects of the noisier reaches of punk rock, through intermediaries like frank zappa and can. that eventually developed into grunge.
you really can't play blue notes on the piano and there's no use in even talking about it.
boptillyouflop
+deathtokoalas Yeah, discussions about microtonal stuff in western music always seemed to be basically numerology for music to me. It's displayed in its full glory on the Xenharmonic Wiki.
Pythagorean theory is also numerological and mystic and crazy, it's just that the wide array of 5ths and low tolerance for mistuned 5ths in western music kinda leads towards it (or a close approximation like 12tet or well temperament, or an extension like Danielou tuning).
deathtokoalas
+boptillyouflop or is it that the reason we put so much emphasis on fifths, and react so negatively to them when they're out of tune, is due to the socialization that has followed from the importance that our ancestors put on the mystical properties of the ratio?
Gene Ruffalo
+deathtokoalas where's this link at you say you posted? we are talking a lot of semantics here, for there seems to be a difference of terminology between your "blue note" and "the blues (plural) note" that is in a minor blues scale, normally fretted on a guitar and played by a quick hammer on or trill. I can think of a lot of old BB King licks that play the actual semitone "blues note", but I'd really like to hear this Zappa stuff and other examples you mentioned. Thanks
deathtokoalas
+Gene Ruffalo i was referring to the ethan hein link above.
boptillyouflop
+deathtokoalas The importance of the fifth is not just cultural. It's structural. Musical cultures with different structural requirements tune differently.
Indian music pitches are all intervals up from a drone bass, so they tune in just intonation (logically).
Arabic music tends to center around small melodic steps within a tetrachord. Neutral seconds make structural sense: they make an interesting contrast to major seconds and minor seconds.
Indonesian Gamelan and Thai music are somewhat polyphonic and use a lot of bells and gongs and metallophones, which have irregular frequencies as harmonics, so they don't tune in fifths - instead, they tend to split the octave in roughly equal parts with some gaps.
Chinese and Japanese music are similar in polyphonic structure to the Gamelan, but they have a lot more string and wind instruments (which have regular harmonics). They tune in fifths.
deathtokoalas
+boptillyouflop everything will always make perfect sense when you explain your observations in terms of the observations themselves. it's tautological.
it's only structural in terms of the mathematics. we built the instruments to use the math; we didn't write the math to explain the instruments. it's consequently actually more of a social construction. so, to understand why we built instruments that tune in fifths, we need to understand why we wanted music to sound that way - and the answer is because we thought these ratios had special properties.
we don't say we write in fifths because the instruments push us in this direction. that's mixing up cause and effect.
Scott Wallace
+deathtokoalas You say: so, to understand why we built instruments that tune in fifths, we need to understand why we wanted music to sound that way - and the answer is because we thought these ratios had special properties.
I would put it differently. These ratios do have special properties: people perceive fifths as being consonant even if they have no idea of the mathematics. Sure, part of what we consider consonant or pleasing is cultural, but people all over the world sing in unisons, octaves, and fifths, and it's not hard to hear why: the ratios of 1/1, 2/1, and 3/2 simply clash less than, say, the Pythagorean third, 81/64. Simpler geometry makes for consonance because the waves fit together nicely.
In other words, we don't write in fifths because the instruments push us in this direction: our ears push us in this direction.
cheers from warm Vienna, Scott
deathtokoalas
+Scott Wallace this is the perspective that musicologists will go well out of their way to push aside, and that bop isn't arguing. if you talk to somebody that grew up in india or in an islamic culture, or in an indigenous culture, they really won't have the same perceptions about 4ths and 5ths.
there's a mathematical basis to it in the way the string vibrates - there's some method to the madness. but, we construct these conventions.
there's nothing physical about major keys being happy, minor keys being sad and other keys being "mysterious". it's just what we've been taught. this is a point that virtually everybody agrees upon.
my only point was that if you look closely you can actually determine why it's what we've been taught.
Scott Wallace
+deathtokoalas Oh, I agree with you about different perceptions of fourths and fifths. But it's also a fact that fourths and fifths are part of almost every musical culture on Earth, including India's. And there's a physical basis for that, which is based on mathematics.
And yes, the conventions of major/happy, minor/sad are not universal by any means. You only have to hear all the European medieval love songs to realize that.
cheers from warm Vienna, Scott
at
11:17
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
first vlog (24-10-2015: introductions)
i allowed youtube to "fix" the shake, and it made a mess, so i've reuploaded this.
i won't post these here daily. if you want to follow it, follow it on youtube.
well, i blew the day learning how to edit videos. it should be a faster process, moving forward. it turned out to be fairly intuitive. but, it was also a learning process regarding a few things. the camera jitter was more than i expected; it turns out there's an easy fix ("stabilize"), but i should be more aware of it. also, i recorded today at 320p because i wanted to conserve memory card space on the way to the store to get a bigger card, and i don't think it's quite good enough. exposure in the basement is bad, but it turns out i can fix it in editing. the audio on the device is fine. all in all, i think i can work quite well with this device. today's upload is going to look pretty amateur, but hopefully that will resolve itself in a few days.
this is really just an introduction, i'm just laying down the setting.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myu96jS68ZE
i won't post these here daily. if you want to follow it, follow it on youtube.
well, i blew the day learning how to edit videos. it should be a faster process, moving forward. it turned out to be fairly intuitive. but, it was also a learning process regarding a few things. the camera jitter was more than i expected; it turns out there's an easy fix ("stabilize"), but i should be more aware of it. also, i recorded today at 320p because i wanted to conserve memory card space on the way to the store to get a bigger card, and i don't think it's quite good enough. exposure in the basement is bad, but it turns out i can fix it in editing. the audio on the device is fine. all in all, i think i can work quite well with this device. today's upload is going to look pretty amateur, but hopefully that will resolve itself in a few days.
this is really just an introduction, i'm just laying down the setting.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myu96jS68ZE
at
09:21
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
the driving thing should be obvious, but it does require some education. there's a common, but flawed, perspective that driving stoned is less dangerous than driving drunk. you will hear that explicitly from marijuana users.
and, there is a slight caveat. alcohol tolerance is a thing that exists, but it's not at the same level as marijuana tolerance. the more often you smoke, the less it affects you. this creates a misperception about it. it may actually be true that a heavy marijuana user could, in theory, operate a vehicle at a fairly high level of thc in the blood - although the law should ignore this truth, in setting down objective levels. that's far less true of alcohol. but, the key is that the abstract truth does not apply to casual users. so, you get this level of ignorance around the safety of driving coming from heavy users that don't realize that it doesn't apply to casual users, and casual users foolishly behaving like heavy users.
on the one hand, this is something that a public education campaign can do a lot to resolve. on the other hand, there are idiots on this planet and there's not much you can do to stop them. if they're not driving around baked, they're taking their snowmobiles on the river in spring or...you get the point. you can't legislate against stupidity. you can try and beat it out of people with psas. but, it's going to happen.
regarding the black market: it is essential that people make the choice to do this legally. pushing public input is important, and i think this incarnation of the liberal party gets that. being competitive with the black market is important - but will be hard. but, the absolute key thing is that we have to collectively decide to buy it at the store. it's really up to us. personally, i'm in.
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/trudeau-marijuana-colorado-1.3287747
Alan Cane
Why do I get the impression that most pot supporters here are from BC?
Bogmer
Pot is Canada's second largest industry.
jessica murray
it's actually even thought to be the single largest industry, by gdp, in british columbia
and, there is a slight caveat. alcohol tolerance is a thing that exists, but it's not at the same level as marijuana tolerance. the more often you smoke, the less it affects you. this creates a misperception about it. it may actually be true that a heavy marijuana user could, in theory, operate a vehicle at a fairly high level of thc in the blood - although the law should ignore this truth, in setting down objective levels. that's far less true of alcohol. but, the key is that the abstract truth does not apply to casual users. so, you get this level of ignorance around the safety of driving coming from heavy users that don't realize that it doesn't apply to casual users, and casual users foolishly behaving like heavy users.
on the one hand, this is something that a public education campaign can do a lot to resolve. on the other hand, there are idiots on this planet and there's not much you can do to stop them. if they're not driving around baked, they're taking their snowmobiles on the river in spring or...you get the point. you can't legislate against stupidity. you can try and beat it out of people with psas. but, it's going to happen.
regarding the black market: it is essential that people make the choice to do this legally. pushing public input is important, and i think this incarnation of the liberal party gets that. being competitive with the black market is important - but will be hard. but, the absolute key thing is that we have to collectively decide to buy it at the store. it's really up to us. personally, i'm in.
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/trudeau-marijuana-colorado-1.3287747
Alan Cane
Why do I get the impression that most pot supporters here are from BC?
Bogmer
Pot is Canada's second largest industry.
jessica murray
it's actually even thought to be the single largest industry, by gdp, in british columbia
at
09:14
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
sourcescience
This all comes about because feminism has insisted for decades that gender is a performance rather than something that dwells in the brain. She has no choice but to say this otherwise she would have to admit that there is such a thing as the female brain.
Hoisted on her own petard.
Jane S
+sourcescience That's a really interesting, valid point I hadn't considered. Gender expression - the "we" that we display to the world to express ourselves - isn't the same as gender identity. Greer is confusing the two.
Mancheeze
+sourcescience No. That's not what feminist analysis says.
Jane S
But I've heard it said, too. One of the points is that there is no difference in brain and so women are capable of what men are - and yet, women are capable anyway - it doesn't matter whether you have a female or male brain in the parts that define gender identity. That doesn't interfere with intelligence. I know a girl who is smarter than most people. Society teaching girls that they shouldn't aim as high as boys is the problem imo. :)
sourcescience
+Mancheeze rubbish. That is the heart of feminism. If you don't even understand that then you know nothing.
Mancheeze
+Jane S That's what gender is, a social prescription that oppresses girls, for being female. You tell girls to wear pink, wear heels, and be submissive. that's what gender is.
Gender identity is also meaningless as it's just a 'feeling' in someone's head that can be anything so defines nothing.
Mancheeze
+sourcescience That's not an argument.
sourcescience
+Mancheeze You're correct it isn't. Since you didn't post one of your own I followed your lead.
sourcescience
+Mancheeze If gender is socially prescribed then are M-F transsexuals still male?
Mancheeze
+sourcescience yes. Why wouldn't they be? Nobody changes sex.
sourcescience
+Mancheeze ah, so you too are a transphobe. How predictable.
Mancheeze
+sourcescience Not an argument. Just a slogan and a slur. Maybe if you transactivists could argue a point you wouldn't have to try silencing academics who have more knowledge in their pinky than you do on the whole.
I suppose I'm asking for some critical thought but there's none to be found.
sourcescience
+Mancheeze I did argue in my original post. Your response was essentially "no it isn't". I'm not a transactivist either, but thanks for labelling me and thus being guilty if the very thing about which you complain.
Just because nobody understands you doesn't mean you're a genius.
Mancheeze
+sourcescience Still can't argue a point.
Men are not women. Fact. No evidence to the contrary.
Tamsin Mc Cormick
+sourcescience I think that the transsexual experience and evidence undermines some main tenets of feminism . The "hard wired" stuff versus the social construct are certainly nailed. The MTF experience has all of that and some feminists don't like the rug being pulled from under them !!
Mancheeze
+Tamsin Mc Cormick There is no evidence to suggest men who play dress up to get an erection has any biological basis. None.
Alexander Todoroff
+sourcescience You, and almost everyone under the sun, only get half of the argument.
Yes gender is fluid social construct. But a social construct is coercively enforced. Thus, it's not just about choice but about how society enforces gender. Women suffer differently than trans. Trans women that are born into a male association will benefit in a world where male is the preference. It's really not hard to validate some of Greer's position by this.
BuFFoTheArtClown
+Alexander Todoroff What world is this that male is the preference? Not this one. Hasn't been, if ever.
Jane S
The point you're missing is that it isn't a fetish. It's not even transvestism, which some trans girls abhor because it sounds similar and is confused by some people with transgenderism. The argument that it's a fetish has been debunct, especially by the WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the largest association of medical professionals who provides care for transgender people). Do you have a fetish for dressing up in every day female clothes, Mancheeze? No? Yeah, that's cos - like trans girls - YOU ARE A GIRL. You don't get sexually excited by it. I have not known a single trans girl who got excited by wearing female clothes. What I have seen, however, is happiness that they can finally wear what they should have worn all along had they not been forced into the wrong puberty and told to fit a role they hated (that of pretending to be a "man"). Trans girls I know despised having to work out how they were supposed to act to fit what people saw them as (i.e. men), cos the role doesn't come naturally to them. One girl spent her whole life forcing herself to walk in an exaggerated way, with a scowl that was ridiculous cos she thought that's how men were supposed to walk, which was a conscious effort EVERY SINGLE DAY OF HER LIFE, before she got the courage to admit she couldn't keep up the act anymore.
Samantha Michelle
+Jane S You don't need to be a woman to wear dresses/feminine clothing. Clothes have no gender.
Jane S
You're missing the point.
sourcescience
+Alexander Todoroff so you contend that there is no such thing as a male or female brain?
sourcescience
+Mancheeze Oh dear. Let's spell it out for you one final time. I made an argument. You disagreed but made no argument of your own. Now you demand that others make an argument.
Do you see it yet?
Jane S
+Alexander Todoroff
"Trans women that are born into a male association will benefit in a world where male is the preference." - But that's wrong. The trans women - women - were only forced into playing along with men until they get the courage to come out. I haven't met a single trans woman who relishes that men have the privilege in life. They want women to have it too, as I do. They want to be accepted as the women they are, to fight alongside women. Yes, I only speak for the ones I've known and met - but that's still an awful lot. I've seen people say trans women are "so angry" ("like men" apparently, as if you can over generalise like that!), but every time I've seen it, it's been when a trans person is sticking up for trans hate or fighting a (sadly) losing battle against women who think they're not women. Anyone would get frustrated at fighting a losing battle when there shouldn't be a battle at all.
Hannah White
+Jane S Why should women be forced to think that MTF are genetically female? Of course it's a losing battle, because that expectation is unrealistic and not based on anything real.
Mad Walrus
+Mancheeze A lot of trans women like to wear pink and high heels.
Samantha Michelle
+Mad Walrus Because they think femininity = womanhood. When it does not.
Mad Walrus
+Samantha Michelle They think? Or feel?...
Jane S
Maybe this will make you rethink, Mancheeze. I don't wish for anything other than you to consider these words with an open heart, to read it all fully and to put aside, while you read it, any wrongdoing or abuse you got or felt from a minority who felt victimised or sad or backed into a corner (we've all felt like that, particularly lesbians or bis, etc - and yes, I have a girlfriend). Honestly, I have met nothing but wonderful trans women who have never, ever said a bad word to me. They are my sisters:
"To date, this is the largest genetic study of transsexualism conducted."
"There is a likely genetic component to transsexualism, and genes involved in sex steroidogenesis are good candidates. We explored the specific hypothesis that male-to-female transsexualism is associated with gene variants responsible for undermasculinization and/or feminization."
"A recent study on female-to-male transsexuals identified a CYP17 single nucleotide polymorphism that was significantly associated with the occurrence of transsexualism (14). These individuals have a higher serum testosterone level than control female subjects, the converse effect of what is suggested in our study of male-to-female transsexualism. The effect we identified was weak; thus it seems highly likely that male-to-female transsexualism is due to multiple genetic factors."
"It is possible that a decrease in testosterone levels in the brain during development might result in incomplete masculinization of the brain in male-to-female transsexuals, resulting in a more feminized brain and a female gender identity."
"In conclusion, our findings indicate a significant association between male-to-female transsexualism and the long polymorphism for the AR repeat. This finding links the androgen receptor and further implicates genes in the steroidogenesis pathway as playing a role in male-to-female transsexualism. We speculate that reduced androgen and androgen signalling might contribute to the female gender identity of male-to-female transsexuals. Further studies including replication in other populations, larger patient collections, and analysis of other polymorphisms, both for the genes studied here and other sex steroidogenesis genes, should be undertaken."
"Increasingly, biomedical research is implicating biological factors. Co-occurrence among twin pairs, father-son pairs, and brother-sister pairs (7,8) raises the question of whether gender dysphoria is heritable. Anatomical studies show that certain brain structures in male-to-female transsexuals are more “female-like” in volume and neuronal density (9,10). Furthermore, the response to the odor of male and female steroids in male-to-female transsexuals was more similar to that of control women than control men (11). Other studies suggest that sex steroids influence gender identity."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3402034/
There is a far bigger study underway by the same researchers. Words like "likely", "highly likely" and "significant" mean something if a scientist uses them. :) :) :)
Mancheeze
+Jane S Any study of adults will not show innate mechanisms or structures because brains have neuroplasticity ie. it changes w/ environmental influence.
So no. none of this 'research' is applicable.
Again, you have to do fetal or newborn studies to show this. So far, they've found no differences.
There is no female or male brain. Been debunked years ago.
Jane S
+Mancheeze
Okay, I take that point and see that unless you can have proof that an actual newborn is identified as, say, MtF, you won't believe. Have you considered, though, that the many transgender kids out there (we'll go with your argument and say that they were not born as MtFs) are still, then, female because - for whatever reason is/has caused the brain to switch, the effect is the same. The brain of the person is now female. Therefore, she is a female in all the ways which matter (like, I couldn't care less if a female has three breasts, no breasts, a penis, both genitalia, etc - she's still a woman).
And I know you'll be thinking that there is no such thing as a male or female brain (which hasn't actually been proven or disproven to date) - again, I think you're right, barring the obvious that male brains are larger and heavier. I think you can't get a brain that's completely one or the other (I stand to be corrected though, if science proves it). I do think that connections can be wired differently in certain things, but on the whole, a brain is still a brain. I do, however, think that there are areas that store a person's gender identity - the areas that are coming up again and again in studies on transgender people as matching their gender identity rather than their biological sex. The fact that scientists are able to see that these areas are different for each sex means that these areas are different. And if a trans woman matches other women's brains in these scientifically tested areas, unlike actual men, for all intents and purposes, they have female parts to their brain - and they feel female. And that's what science has proven repeatedly, that these brain areas correlate with a trans person's chosen gender.
So taking your first point again, no matter how a person gets their brain rewired, whether in the womb or not, the brain is still not the same as the sex of their body in the parts that are measurably different.
Some people would argue that gender is not binary anyway, which means all of this is moot. Which I also agree with. People should be allowed to be who they want to be without having to explain themselves (sadly, that doesn't really happen in this day and age).
Samantha Michelle
Female is a sex identifier. There is no such thing as female or male brain. & brain studies were done on people who had FULLY TRANSITIONED already, so ofc the synthetic hormones they are full of had an effect on the brain. Gender as you all are using it is a feminine personality. One doesn't actually ever identify with a woman because none of them even know what a woman is. They just want women bodies.
Mancheeze
+Jane S No. Men who wear dresses and perform stereotypical feminine behaviours are not female.
'I do, however, think that there are areas that store a person's gender identity - the areas that are coming up again and again in studies on transgender people as matching their gender identity rather than their biological sex. '
No evidence for that and again, using adult brains means you can't say what mechanism or how or what actually changed that part or function of the brain.
The fact of the matter is it's simply a psychological condition, not a brain condition.
Gender is binary. There's masculine and feminine. Male trans simply switch how they present, they go right into the opposite box and they also do it in such a way that they reinforce the worst stereotypes about women ie. that women love to be fucked wearing lingerie and that porn and prostitution is good for women when it's not.
We don't allow people to do 'blackface' and get away with it but somehow it's ok to do this to women.
I don't think so.
jessica
+Mancheeze
see, the thing is that some girls choose to wear pink heels and avoid conflicts. i'm more about pink cons myself, but i also do a lot of walking.
i have agency. girls do, too. by taking that away, you're being a misogynistic piece of shit that is reducing the intelligence of girls to pretty things with silly ideas put in their heads.
jessica
+Alexander Todoroff
see, it's the socially coerced part that is misogynist.
girls make their own choices. i made my own choices. i wasn't brainwashed by a patriarchy trying to enslave me, and neither are your sisters that happen to like fluffy, pink things.
that's their choice. they made it, out of their own free will. and, you're being a piece of shit in denying them agency and telling them they have no thoughts of their own except the ones put in their heads by men.
jessica
+Jane S
well...
transwomen can sometimes be excited by sexy clothes, just like ciswomen can be.
it's less that it's been debunked, and more that it's been split off. we understand that these are two different things, and we don't conflate them anymore.
but, rad fems are stuck in the 60s. they've ignored everything that's happened since, which is massive amounts in this field. don't bother expecting a coherent, modern argument out of them - it's not coming.
Mancheeze
+jessica
It's obviously not coming from you either.
You have no evidence so you bash women who know men are men.
Not surprised.
jessica
+Jane S
jane, there's no male or female brain. i don't have a genetic condition, and find the suggestion that i'm a genetic defect to be insulting.
there's nothing "wrong" with me.
i've simply made a choice to take hormones and live as a female, because i want to. and, that's reason enough.
Mancheeze
+jessica You aren't female nor do you live like one.
You have ZERO in common with women.
jessica
+Mancheeze
i have no evidence of what, exactly? i haven't made any claims.
i don't think there's a contradiction in realizing that transwomen are not ciswomen, and still acknowledging us as women. there can be two different types of women.
black people are not white people. but, they're both people.
jessica
+Mancheeze
i think what's more accurate is that you're not a woman, and don't live like one - and have nothing in common with women.
Mancheeze
+jessica No. I AM a woman.Born female, XX. menstruate, been raped b/c I'm a woman so don't tell me I have a female brain or that men can ever know womanhood.
jessica
+Mancheeze
see, this is typical of radfems - they think womanhood is defined by being raped. it's just another word for slavery. they're completely unable to see past their own negative experiences, or see any of the positives. frankly, and by definition, there are no positives. to the radfem, all enjoyment in life comes from abolishing the feminine. to them, this is emancipation. they claim they wish to abolish gender, but it's funny how their idealizations always look like a society with uniform masculinity across the board. read between the lines - and, in fact, often on the lines - and what you learn is that what they truly want is for everybody to inhabit a male gender role. to them, this is the essence of freedom - to be men.
they claim to be on the left, but that sounds like ayn rand, to me.
and, it's deeply misogynist.
but, she was raped. so, none of this matters; she was raped, so therefore she is female. i have not been raped (this rather callous presumption is actually true), so therefore i am not.
these people are near the end of their cycle. they're already irrelevant. the boomers are just beginning to be gripped by death. they'll be gone altogether, soon.
Samantha Michelle
+jessica You're not a woman because you are a transwoman. if you're a woman then what are you transitioning from? Also she made no claim of being a radfem. You all just love to call anyone that doesn't buy into the gender cult a radfem/terf.
jessica
+Samantha Michelle
it's not hard to understand. i'll try a mathematical formula for you, maybe you might get it then.
let c be the set of ciswomen.
let t be the set of transwomen.
then W, the set of women, is defined by the union of c and t.
that is, W = c U t.
i do not claim to have been born with a female brain. that is absurd. i acknowledge that gender is non-biological and entirely fluid.
rather, i will argue that i have every right to wake up on thursday morning and decide i'm going to transition, and that you have an obligation to acknowledge it, or face the social consequences of being ostracized - as greer has.
Samantha Michelle
+jessica Lol no one has an obligation to accept your identity. Women and transwomen are seperate. You can do all you'd like with your body, and I will never challenge your right to do so. Everyone around me knows my stance, even my trans friends. I haven't been ostracized yet. Its almost like people can actually be around someone that has a different opinion than they. Who knew?
jessica
+Samantha Michelle
yes, you do - as white people have an obligation to accept people of colour, and straight people have an obligation to accept queer people.
transwomen are a subset of women. ciswomen are a subset of women. together, they make up women. ciswomen are only a part of women. transwomen are only a part of women. they are not the same thing. but, the category of women is incomplete, unless it includes both. do i have to explain it a fourth time, or do you understand it yet?
you're on the wrong side of this debate. and, you have a choice - you can correct your derogatory and discriminatory perceptions, or you can find yourself dealing with lost job opportunities, lost friends and lost family - and sitting around wondering why.
that's how social change happens in democratic societies. we just expunge the anti-social members.
Samantha Michelle
+jessica Trans activists love threatening people. Lol nothing's going to happen to me because of my opinion sweety. I'm not the one actively killing and harming trans people. I treat them as humans like any other person. But simply allowing trans people to transition and mutilate their bodies with surgery just because "I'm this cos I said so" does not seem humane at all to me. Sounds like its allowed simply because its profitable. Threatening violence and suicide because people disagree is proof of mental instability. & I will always question gender so that future feminine men won't have to id as women just because they grew their hair long and prefer wearing feminine clothing.
jessica
+Samantha Michelle
well, good luck explaining that to your boss when they're firing you because you're using the wrong pronouns.
Samantha Michelle
+jessica I literally never misgender them. What are you going on about?
jessica
+Samantha Michelle
i hope that casual readers have fun working their way through that contradiction.
Samantha Michelle
+jessica Explain to me how calling someone their birth sex is misgendering? Didn't you just say sex and gender are different things? :3 Tsk tsk.
Mancheeze
+Samantha Michelle Good catch.
Gender is a hierarchy, a social role that puts women at the bottom.
Feminists hate gender and want it thrown in the trash. Girls shouldn't have to buy pink toys. Ya know?
jessica
+Mancheeze
no. misogynists and misandrists hate gender and want it thrown in the trash. feminists celebrate gender, promote the agency of women to make independent choices and reject authoritarians that want to tell other people what to do.
Samantha Michelle
+Mancheeze Exactly! We are just trying to abolish gender. We do not want harm to come to trans people.
jessica
+Samantha Michelle
will you then abolish all the fashion decisions you don't like, all the religions you don't like and all the political perspectives you don't like?
feminism is about gender equality. it is not about the abolition of gender.
Jane S
It's misgendering and you can get fired for it if you repeatedly do it, because you should respect the gender the person has chosen to be regardless of your inner prejudice. And +jessica, as I've said elsewhere here, I also respect gender fluidity and non-binary. A person is free to do what they want as long as it's not harming others (which is isn't). Sex and gender are more than XX and XY. You obviously had very strong reasons to do it, so who am I to question you?
However, while yours might have been a choice, please consider that there are girls (and boys) who didn't get that choice. Reading your words, part of me wonders if actually there's more than one set of "trans women" (I'd rather just call you women, but for the purposes of this discussion...), those who chose to transition for whatever reason (i.e. gender fluidity), and those who didn't get a choice and who reject, completely, the idea that they "chose" to do it. They rejoice in the studies which say they were born that way (and they are peer-reviewed studies, not pseudoscience as one commenter on the other thread said). One girl I know, who I care very deeply for, has often cried because she had no choice that she's in this position, now treated like dirt because she is a girl. She couldn't live lying to herself anymore. She had been fighting against it her whole life but it just wasn't going away. As she says, she wasn't brave - she did what she had to. She had no choice, because she got to a point where she couldn't face the idea of living anymore if she didn't transition. She hated being seen as a man, treated like a man, called a man's name, and had to pretend to fit in with men.
And +Mancheese, as much as we have very differing opinions on the trans issue... I'm sorry to hear you were raped. It always sickns me that there are people who do that (to women, men and children). It's obvious there's a lot of anger there, and I can understand why. No one should have to go through that. It can ruin lives and change a person. I have a close family member who had that happen to her by a stranger in an alley. hugs Don't let it keep angering you though, or you will never know peace. I see that with my family member. It's ruined her life, and she's not able to get past it. :( I hope that came out okay. I'm not the best at wording things. I mean well though, and I just wanted to offer some support.
jessica
+Jane S
i don't know how you can argue with a straight face that opening your mouth and swallowing hormones isn't a choice.
there's a lot of things that go into how our personalities develop, and most of it is subconscious. but, there is no biological basis for personality - that is a consequence of experience. and we all make the choice to transition or not, no matter how compelling it is.
there's not a debate around this. the person you're describing required counselling first and foremost in making a decision about what kind of life they wanted to live. they weren't born with an innate condition (transsexuality cannot be explained by creationism).
i don't doubt that you honestly think there are peer-reviewed studies that support your argument. it's a wide spread (mis)perception, and it makes sense that it is in a calvinist society. it's predestination.
in fact, there are not.
you can dispute me by finding these studies and posting links. i have to warn you that i may debunk what you post, though.
Mancheeze
+Jane S I don't have to respect a man that doesn't respect me by doing 'womanface' and then forcing into my private spaces.
jessica
+Mancheeze
there's no more use in arguing with these people than there is in arguing with racists that continue to stress for segregation. they have no capacity to absorb new information, adjust to changing realities or grow with society. they're completely absorbed in a blinding ideology that they will never, ever break free from. they must simply be left behind.
if you look it up in a history book, you'll see that this is exactly the same argument that the klan used against integration.
Samantha Michelle
+Jane S They have the right to be called the proper pronouns and I do so! But just because you believe you're a woman doesn't mean you're entitled to woman spaces. & everyone doesn't have to cater to your delusion. You have a right to choose your gender, and people have the right to reject it. Gender is a social construct. Sexuality and sex are not.
jessica
+Samantha Michelle
again: this idea of "women spaces" is not valid. i refuse to have this discussion. i reject the premise.
there are no white spaces. there are no catholic spaces. and there are no female spaces.
putting up a fence is an invitation for people to tear it down.
Mancheeze
+Samantha Michelle
I only call certain people by the pronouns they desire. The rest I don't. Until transactivists stop forcing their way into women's and girls minds and bodies, I'll call them HIM and SIR.
Samantha Michelle
+Mancheeze & I don't blame you. Most of them are disgustingly misogynistic.
Mancheeze
+Samantha Michelle
Hell yeah Sam. One of them said he wanted to slit Greer's throat on Twitter. ANother man said if Hitler was trans he should be housed in a women's prison cuz feelz.
Samantha Michelle
+Mancheeze There's a bunch of male prisoners coming out as trans so they're moved to female prisons. It actually worked for one of them! Its just so sad how much the US or the world doesn't care about women.
jessica
ridiculous generalizations, often based on anecdotes. absurd scare mongering. the tendency to take obscure scenarios and speak of them as though they're common occurrences. a complete disinterest in any kind of civil rights. baseless name calling.
this stuff isn't worth countering.
regardless, i know i can't get through; that it's a waste of time. but i just really wish you would align yourselves properly with authoritarian conservative reactionaries and stop parading yourselves as leftists. that's what really bugs me.
i mean, i'm used to these kinds of arguments from the right, and it's easy enough to just throw them away as nonsense. but, it's just frustrating to have to deal with this over and over again on the left, because it doesn't have the slightest thing to do with actually getting to a hierarchical-free society - it's just placing walls between people, and cementing hierarchical divisions rooted in trivialities.
Samantha Michelle
+jessica Let me ask you something. What are you doing right now in your life that you can't do if you id as a male/man? This is a serious question. No hatred or ill will towards you.
jessica
+Samantha Michelle
it's a strange premise to suggest that there are things i could do as a female that i couldn't do as male.
what do you do in your job that you couldn't do as an astronaut?
Samantha Michelle
+jessica You're not a female. You're male. What are you doing now that you can't do if your gender aligned with your birth sex. Stop being confrontational.
jessica
+Samantha Michelle
it's a stupid question, based on a flawed premise. there's no answer to it. there are not things that one gender can do that the other can't. but, that has nothing to do with why people transition.
you're taking a position of biological determinism, which is a religious perspective.
people are not born male or female, it's something that develops as they age based on a complicated mixture of agency and experience, and is entirely fluid throughout one's life. we can change genders as many times as we like, and as often as we like. that is the irreversible conclusion of the understanding that gender is not a biological fact, but a social construct - it must be arbitrary, and subject to modification in whichever way we want.
if i were basing my life decisions on the level of some kind of homo economicus, in order to "rationally" maximize utility, i would likely have not made this choice. it hasn't made it easier for me to find employment. it hasn't made it easier for me to build relationships. you cannot understand how humans think with this broken neo-liberal economic model. humans make decisions in more complex ways than this.
Jane S
Hmm. I am going to call every girl here who's denied that trans women are women.... men. Because trans women are women, and if's perfectly acceptable for you to call these women men, then it's perfectly acceptable - and I have every right - for me to do the same with you men too. Who are you to have some supreme, exclusionary attitude and to bandy about generalizations like you can see into the minds of everyone (and, of course, that all trans people are aggressive and bad)? And the ignorance and perpetration of misinformation I've seen here astounds me.
See how it feels when someone ignores who you are? And I won't hear arguments about biology and supremacy. You know my stance on it.
And for this point:
"What are you doing right now in your life that you can't do if you id as a male/man? This is a serious question. No hatred or ill will towards you." - you're missing the point BY FAR. You've answered your own question. There's NOTHING she couldn't do (except get less pay because she's a woman, put up with abuse coz she's a trans woman, and be in a marginalised group she shouldn't have to be in if people were less strict about gender), which shows it goes beyond mere shallow things like hobbies and jobs. Trans women need to transition. It's not about "Oh, being a female looks fun. I think I'll have a go".
If you believe men are misogynistic/sexist/agressive/etc (I won't go into this point), why would trans women (in your eyes "men") want to put themselves in not just a gender that has less privilege, but also to go lower than that in some people's eyes? A class that gets vicimised and abused. Surely that should tell you something about why they have to do it? Trans people aren't exactly thought of well unfortunately in some of the population. I hope that changes asap. The trans women I know freely, HAPPILY gave up male privilege because, as I've ALWAYS seen, they didn't want it, they didn't want any part of being seen as a man or having power over fellow women. They just want to fight for equality alongside other women.
Sigh. But I know we're just going back and forth about this. Makes me so sad.
Mancheeze
+Jane S Men keep their privilege when they wear skirts. Bruce Jenner COUGH!
You men can take off women face, WE WOMEN ARE WOMEN and are rooted in our female bodies and lives.
GO ahead, call us men, if you need to lash out at women like a typical male. We're not buying it.
You can repeat like a mantra over and over 'trans'women' are women' but it doesn't make it so.
Jane S
Mancheeze, you're mixing up Caitlyn's status as a celeb with her being influential because of what you perceive as being male.
And by calling me male too, you're guilty of lashing out in the way you just defined as male (which it isn't, by the way. Women can lash out in frustration and anger and hurt too - that's called being human - I've seen you lash out plenty here). By your supremacist reckoning bio females are females, and since I unfortunately fit your definition, you just made a fetal assumption, as you are wont to do.
Mancheeze
+Samantha Michelle
I love how transactivists think if they call us men, which is supposedly the worst thing you can do to them, that we'll fall apart on the spot.
We're much tougher than that. We're the sex class that gets killed at birth for being female in rural India. We're the sex class that is usually sexually assaulted before we're 15 years old.
We're the sex class that is sex trafficked, are the majority of the world's poor.
It's through this kind of bullshit they pull that you really get the clue that they have no idea what being a woman is, and never will.
Jane S
Except that they stand a higher risk of it by being a trans person. And they live with bigotry and prejudice and exclusion and abuse.
And lol, you really think people haven't tried counselling trans people? See, this is what makes me see that you have absolutely no idea at all about trans people and haven't cared to read up. Of course medicine would look to simple explanations like those first! Trans people had decades of all types of "help" - counselling (which didn't work because you can't counsel someone's gender out of them), electrocution (in the waaay past), lobotomy, injections of the hormones of their "sex" (which ruined the trans people mentally - imagine someone giving you a huge dose of testosterone!). The only proven method is to let these people transition. It is, so far, the only thing that alleviates their gender dysphoria, as THE MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS STATE.
jessica
+Jane S
jane, you're using language people try to avoid, but i think you're getting to the heart of it. i see two fundamental issues that need to be overcome by the radfems to have them worked back into the feminist mainstream.
1) the first is acceptance, and that much is obvious.
2) but, the second is maybe more fundamental, and that's coming to terms with their own femininity, or lack of it. we all agree that they have the right to reject certain things that are connected to femininity. they have agency, they can do what they want and shouldn't be judged for it. and they will freely acknowledge that sex and gender are different things. but, they then have a hard time in taking that final step and fully disconnecting themselves from the gender they're rejecting. it's maybe easily summed up in the statement: if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck then it's a duck. but maybe it's also true that if it refuses to look like a duck and refuses to quack like a duck, then it should conclude that it doesn't want to be a duck, and should stop pretending it's a duck, and certainly refrain from policing who is a duck and who isn't.
if femininity is a social construct, then identifying as female needs to happen on the level of the social construct, rather than the chromosomal level. and, on that recognition an obvious truth appears: the vast majority (not all) of these anti-trans radfem "activists" are not women, because they reject the characteristics in the social construct. they have specific genes, and that's one thing. but, they don't live their lives as women, in the sense of upholding ideas within that social construct.
they way they're doing this - where they acknowledge the separation of sex and gender, and then argue it remains fundamental in determining the identity of trans people - is very much just simply a massive contradiction. but, you've also pulled out why they hold to this: it's precisely because a choice to reject this privilege (and i'm a little skeptical about the depth these theories apply in, but i do realize systemic gender inequality) upends their gender model, which sees femininity as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy. in their mind, choosing to transition is equivalent to signing one's self up for slavery. to acknowledge something emancipatory (even if it's on a level outside of the ideals presented in utilitarianism, or liberal economic theory) in the process is to completely contradict everything they've been arguing for for decades. there's no way out of this for us - it's a direct and entirely rational consequence of their concept of how society functions, and can only be resolved by abolishing the contradictions in their system of thought. as we all know, that rarely happens - and never happens over the internet. as i've pointed out: you'd might as well be arguing with creationists, or climate change deniers. the debate is coming from the same kind of perspective: one that is rooted in an ideology. all anybody is going to get is the same stale assertions, the same debunked claims, the same absurd argumentation that is grasping at straws to hold to a belief system.....
to put it another way: it's understood that a big part of homophobia is dealing with repressed homosexual desires.
i think a big part of what we get from these radfems is repressed gender issues.
but, that's not meant as an insult, it's meant to be expressed as articulating an epiphany that needs to happen. i'm not about to define anybody's oppression, and i can completely understand feeling oppressed by a gender role.
but, perhaps the best way out - for everybody - is for these radfems to discard their oppression by discarding their identification as women, taking the truth of it by the horns and bravely moving forward as men.
Mancheeze
+jessica
gender repression? Is that the new word of the day?
We'll never stop being women. You're a man. Not a woman.
Deal with it dude.
jessica
+Mancheeze
it might be a little hard for ideologues to relate to, but i tend to think for myself. i'm sure it's in print somewhere or other.
Jane S
+jessica
It's interesting what you say. And yes, I see a lot of people defining what traits and actions are women's and then also delclaring what they think are men's - and yet they display qualities they have previously defined as masculine, which by their reasoning makes them men... yet they reject that cos they "are biological women". And yet, I also see these same people declaring that women and men are the same because they say there isn't such a thing as a male or female brain.
I know you and I differ on the sex of a brain, which is fine and we are both entitled to our opinions (I hope it's okay for me to state mine - I mean no offense AT ALL), but I do strongly think that brains are wired towards one or the other in the parts that control gender. I do believe, though, a whole spectrum exists in that female brains can lean towards masculine traits (I love DIY, building computers, beer, etc). I'm still a woman and I would NOT want to transition into a man (I love being a girl and I love my body), but I don't fall towards the girly end of being a girl. Conversely, I believe men can range from the feminine to the masculine. That, however, still means they have the brain that matches their body - like mine. Where I see the problem is, is when the brain and body don't align and you get people who display uncharacteristically opposite-sex traits but don't feel connected to the body they're in, with feelings that go way deeper than just surface traits and actions. My very close trans friend often talks of the past, of how she felt (often) subconscious feelings of hate towards her old name, towards the role she was in, towards her masculine body. She reacted viserally and negatively and unthinkingly to things we all take for granted - like her name, as I said. It wasn't just that she loved what could be defined as female pasttimes or traits. She made herself physically ill through repression while trying to fight against it (illness gone; CBT and psychologists all say that's normal to happen through repression).
I wish so much she'd been born the way she should have been, but I can only support her journey and make it as painless as possible. Science is increasingly showing that she was born that way, from all manner of tests, and bigger studies are already happening. She finds no shame in that. It's not shameful. In fact, she finds it liberating to hear what she has known inside - that she is a girl, completely naturally. But no, I don't mean you, don't worry - I have no idea of your circumstances and I wouldn't presume to know. You feel how you feel, and I respect that. :)
So anyway, it's an interesting idea about gender repression. I've read studies on the concept of straight guys who are too vocal about gays - and what the science actually shows. I do wonder if another big part will be that some women have been abused/downtrodden by men (we all have experienced white man privilege in action on women) and through this some can form an unhealthy, blinded hatred of what men represent and are, and lump them altogether. Sure, I have huuuge issues with how males have shaped society and we find ourselves living in a patriarchy in this day and age (which I hope we're slowly leaving for more equality). And, because of this hatred, it will be almost impossible to see through it and see that they should reject their biased beliefs that trans women are men and to accept, openly and without prejudice, more women into the fold.
Big hugs, deathtokoalas! (Though I'm telling you off for saying that about koalas! :D)
jessica
+Jane S
yeah, i think that it's a part of the repressive aspect, and it's largely tied into social expectations and even what this strand of feminism teaches.
i think what you're saying about the brain is kind of true (in the sense that certain parts of the brain react to certain socializations), but where you're going wrong is the question of whether it's hard-wired or the result of plasticity. again, you're claiming "studies have shown..", and i don't doubt you believe that - because you've read "studies have shown...." however many times that it's just not challenged anymore. but, i'm going to have to again challenge you to actually find those studies. what you're going to actually find out is the opposite: that our brains are tremendously malleable, and change dramatically relative to experience. it's more of a tabula rasa than not. the conclusion is that the changes in brain chemistry you're referring to are a consequence of gendering, rather than the cause of it.
another way to think of it is that our brain has defined hardware that is determined by genetics, but that the software is mostly developed as a consequence of life experiences. things like sexual orientation and gender identity would largely fall under the software category.
i don't think that makes the phenomenon less real, or that it's a reason to argue the way that radfems argue. but, it's what the science actually says, here - nothing is hardwired, and it's all fluid and subject to change repeatedly over the course of our lifetimes.
the other thing you have to work in is that, in real people, it's going to be all mixed up. this idea of "female response" is a statistical idea - a certain percentage of things would be correlated, and it will be slightly different for everybody. most people are going to fall into these grey areas on a normal curve (30-70%), regardless of how they choose to identify. where you place the boundaries down ends up rather arbitrary, and, because it's all so plastic, is subject to change over the life time of any specific individual. the most masculine guys are going to get a 10-20% female response and you're never going to find anybody at all with a 100% "female" brain chemistry. you're rarely going to find anybody with responses in the 90s, even. so, then, is 75% "female"? 65%? you see what i'm saying.
the traditional approach is that gender is a spectrum. based on personality tests that i've done, i'd guesstimate myself as about 70% female, which is going to be roughly the norm in cisgendered women - however seriously you want to take that idea.
so, does that mean you can "cure" this? in the abstract, probably. but, you'd have to bring in basically nazi tactics. if you were to tie me to a chair and brainwash me, clockwork orange style, you could program anything at all into me. you could program me, or anybody else, to be sexually attracted to anything: suvs, lamp posts or, yes, even the despicable koalas. you can brainwash people into identifying as anything, too - apples, llamas, rocks. the question isn't whether it's possible, it's whether it's ethical. the movement to treating transgendered people with hormones isn't rooted around whether it's possible to convert them into their biological sex role, but whether it's moral to destroy somebody's personality through invasive, forced procedures. it's a question of agency and free will.
Mancheeze
+Jane S
Yes, but for the last time: Women are adult human females. That experience is rich and diverse and feminism is about that, not about men's feels.
Mancheeze
+Samantha Michelle Haha. Yep, and they push porn and prostitution as if that's what women all aspire to. It's sickening.
jessica
+Mancheeze
we eat babies, too.
Mancheeze
+jessica Don't be an idiot. You're a man being an idiot now.
jessica
+Mancheeze
actually, i'm not even truly human - i'm a demon in human form.
Paul L
+Jane S How would people who don't have the option to have the procedure but who want it, ie in countries without a free health service, or people who lived just 60 or 70 years ago ? (ie before the procedure was first carried out )?
Jane S
So all you trans haters insisted science (peer reviewed science, not pseudoscience) was wrong because of a brain's plasticity, so I come along and show how the brain's structure can't actually be changed via plasticity and therefore study's that show trans people's brains match their chosen gender is deemed worthless (lol) because "Women are adult human females. That experience is rich and diverse and feminism is about that, not about men's feels." It's like you're deliberately obtuse. You're so blinded by prejudice, you wont see anything else.
I couldn't even tell you that many trans women (yes, every one I know, and loads more I bet - it's logical) don't actually have or relish those "male memories". They're left not being able to identiy with any of those earlier memories because that self was simply an act. The first time they became a true person - with feelings and able to express themselves honestly and openly - was once they came out and stopped living a lie. One girl I know says it's weird coz she doesn't have a childhood - and she never expected that. She has memories of people reacting to what they thought was a boy, but because she is not one, the memories don't connect. It's a common feeling and a lot are traumatised by the disconnect to the point that they suffer from things I'm not even gonna describe because it's pointless to you. You won't ever hear it. You read anything that suits you - "one complaining cos they weren't sexually degraded" - and THAT sticks. The rest... forget it. To read what actually happens to them, and the fact that they ARE women, is too human for you and it doesn't chime with your bigoted opinion of them being harsh, misogynistic men.
At least I'm happy knowing this "fad" won't go away. In fact, there was just a news article I read yesterday on how - because of all the coverage and awareness - more people than ever are coming forward as having gender dysphoria. As much as it's a horrid condition and I feel for those affected, I'm glad the world is waking up to their plight. :) There are so many understanding people fighting back to haters. We're on the brink of something. We're on the path to acceptance, like with gays and lesbians and anyone who doesn't fit the standard box. It's about time the world moved on from being static and sexist. Inclusiveness is the way forward.
Anyway, I am leaving this video now. deathtokoalas, good luck with everything. You are supported and loved. But I still say koalas shouldn't be confused with a dinosaur lady with outdated beliefs. :D:D:D
Jane S
+Paul L
Before I go, I noticed this. For those suffering very strong gender dysphoria, with no way out, I'm sad to say the options don't look good. 1 in 3 trans people commit suicide here, especially if they don't have support of the financial means to make the necessary changes to rid themselves of their body dysphoria. It's not a "choice" for a lot - it's a "need". They can't stand it there. I feels wrong - as I would think if I had a penis. Unless they had some hope, or hope of money, it doesn't look good. My very close friend is struggling enough with being a trans woman right now, after Greer's comments, and she suffers every day with her body dysphoria.
I wish that weren't the case, anyway, about the suicides. Some people have less dysphoria and can cope better. But some have it very bad and can't stand their genitals, face, etc, and looking into a mirror is a traumatic experience. I can't speak for all trans people; I can only speak for those I know and for the many I've read about or spoken to.
Mancheeze
+Jane S Many times surgery doesn't even help because there's a ton of comorbid psychological disorders.
The medical community is in for a huge wake up call.
jessica
+Mancheeze
it was actually delisted as a psychological condition a few years ago and replaced with "gender dysphoria" - which is a feeling of being socially ostracized for gender nonconformity. that is, the medical community no longer considers transsexualism itself to be a medical condition at all (neither genetic nor psychological), it is now actually viewed entirely as an arbitrary and harmless choice just as homosexuality is, but it recognizes that it may lead to psychological trauma as a consequence of social prejudice, which may require treatment.
i personally agree with the change in the dsm on a purely pathological basis, but, until hormones are available in the open market, we're going to need to rely on doctors for prescriptions, and that's what the medical literature really needs to be written around.
This all comes about because feminism has insisted for decades that gender is a performance rather than something that dwells in the brain. She has no choice but to say this otherwise she would have to admit that there is such a thing as the female brain.
Hoisted on her own petard.
Jane S
+sourcescience That's a really interesting, valid point I hadn't considered. Gender expression - the "we" that we display to the world to express ourselves - isn't the same as gender identity. Greer is confusing the two.
Mancheeze
+sourcescience No. That's not what feminist analysis says.
Jane S
But I've heard it said, too. One of the points is that there is no difference in brain and so women are capable of what men are - and yet, women are capable anyway - it doesn't matter whether you have a female or male brain in the parts that define gender identity. That doesn't interfere with intelligence. I know a girl who is smarter than most people. Society teaching girls that they shouldn't aim as high as boys is the problem imo. :)
sourcescience
+Mancheeze rubbish. That is the heart of feminism. If you don't even understand that then you know nothing.
Mancheeze
+Jane S That's what gender is, a social prescription that oppresses girls, for being female. You tell girls to wear pink, wear heels, and be submissive. that's what gender is.
Gender identity is also meaningless as it's just a 'feeling' in someone's head that can be anything so defines nothing.
Mancheeze
+sourcescience That's not an argument.
sourcescience
+Mancheeze You're correct it isn't. Since you didn't post one of your own I followed your lead.
sourcescience
+Mancheeze If gender is socially prescribed then are M-F transsexuals still male?
Mancheeze
+sourcescience yes. Why wouldn't they be? Nobody changes sex.
sourcescience
+Mancheeze ah, so you too are a transphobe. How predictable.
Mancheeze
+sourcescience Not an argument. Just a slogan and a slur. Maybe if you transactivists could argue a point you wouldn't have to try silencing academics who have more knowledge in their pinky than you do on the whole.
I suppose I'm asking for some critical thought but there's none to be found.
sourcescience
+Mancheeze I did argue in my original post. Your response was essentially "no it isn't". I'm not a transactivist either, but thanks for labelling me and thus being guilty if the very thing about which you complain.
Just because nobody understands you doesn't mean you're a genius.
Mancheeze
+sourcescience Still can't argue a point.
Men are not women. Fact. No evidence to the contrary.
Tamsin Mc Cormick
+sourcescience I think that the transsexual experience and evidence undermines some main tenets of feminism . The "hard wired" stuff versus the social construct are certainly nailed. The MTF experience has all of that and some feminists don't like the rug being pulled from under them !!
Mancheeze
+Tamsin Mc Cormick There is no evidence to suggest men who play dress up to get an erection has any biological basis. None.
Alexander Todoroff
+sourcescience You, and almost everyone under the sun, only get half of the argument.
Yes gender is fluid social construct. But a social construct is coercively enforced. Thus, it's not just about choice but about how society enforces gender. Women suffer differently than trans. Trans women that are born into a male association will benefit in a world where male is the preference. It's really not hard to validate some of Greer's position by this.
BuFFoTheArtClown
+Alexander Todoroff What world is this that male is the preference? Not this one. Hasn't been, if ever.
Jane S
The point you're missing is that it isn't a fetish. It's not even transvestism, which some trans girls abhor because it sounds similar and is confused by some people with transgenderism. The argument that it's a fetish has been debunct, especially by the WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the largest association of medical professionals who provides care for transgender people). Do you have a fetish for dressing up in every day female clothes, Mancheeze? No? Yeah, that's cos - like trans girls - YOU ARE A GIRL. You don't get sexually excited by it. I have not known a single trans girl who got excited by wearing female clothes. What I have seen, however, is happiness that they can finally wear what they should have worn all along had they not been forced into the wrong puberty and told to fit a role they hated (that of pretending to be a "man"). Trans girls I know despised having to work out how they were supposed to act to fit what people saw them as (i.e. men), cos the role doesn't come naturally to them. One girl spent her whole life forcing herself to walk in an exaggerated way, with a scowl that was ridiculous cos she thought that's how men were supposed to walk, which was a conscious effort EVERY SINGLE DAY OF HER LIFE, before she got the courage to admit she couldn't keep up the act anymore.
Samantha Michelle
+Jane S You don't need to be a woman to wear dresses/feminine clothing. Clothes have no gender.
Jane S
You're missing the point.
sourcescience
+Alexander Todoroff so you contend that there is no such thing as a male or female brain?
sourcescience
+Mancheeze Oh dear. Let's spell it out for you one final time. I made an argument. You disagreed but made no argument of your own. Now you demand that others make an argument.
Do you see it yet?
Jane S
+Alexander Todoroff
"Trans women that are born into a male association will benefit in a world where male is the preference." - But that's wrong. The trans women - women - were only forced into playing along with men until they get the courage to come out. I haven't met a single trans woman who relishes that men have the privilege in life. They want women to have it too, as I do. They want to be accepted as the women they are, to fight alongside women. Yes, I only speak for the ones I've known and met - but that's still an awful lot. I've seen people say trans women are "so angry" ("like men" apparently, as if you can over generalise like that!), but every time I've seen it, it's been when a trans person is sticking up for trans hate or fighting a (sadly) losing battle against women who think they're not women. Anyone would get frustrated at fighting a losing battle when there shouldn't be a battle at all.
Hannah White
+Jane S Why should women be forced to think that MTF are genetically female? Of course it's a losing battle, because that expectation is unrealistic and not based on anything real.
Mad Walrus
+Mancheeze A lot of trans women like to wear pink and high heels.
Samantha Michelle
+Mad Walrus Because they think femininity = womanhood. When it does not.
Mad Walrus
+Samantha Michelle They think? Or feel?...
Jane S
Maybe this will make you rethink, Mancheeze. I don't wish for anything other than you to consider these words with an open heart, to read it all fully and to put aside, while you read it, any wrongdoing or abuse you got or felt from a minority who felt victimised or sad or backed into a corner (we've all felt like that, particularly lesbians or bis, etc - and yes, I have a girlfriend). Honestly, I have met nothing but wonderful trans women who have never, ever said a bad word to me. They are my sisters:
"To date, this is the largest genetic study of transsexualism conducted."
"There is a likely genetic component to transsexualism, and genes involved in sex steroidogenesis are good candidates. We explored the specific hypothesis that male-to-female transsexualism is associated with gene variants responsible for undermasculinization and/or feminization."
"A recent study on female-to-male transsexuals identified a CYP17 single nucleotide polymorphism that was significantly associated with the occurrence of transsexualism (14). These individuals have a higher serum testosterone level than control female subjects, the converse effect of what is suggested in our study of male-to-female transsexualism. The effect we identified was weak; thus it seems highly likely that male-to-female transsexualism is due to multiple genetic factors."
"It is possible that a decrease in testosterone levels in the brain during development might result in incomplete masculinization of the brain in male-to-female transsexuals, resulting in a more feminized brain and a female gender identity."
"In conclusion, our findings indicate a significant association between male-to-female transsexualism and the long polymorphism for the AR repeat. This finding links the androgen receptor and further implicates genes in the steroidogenesis pathway as playing a role in male-to-female transsexualism. We speculate that reduced androgen and androgen signalling might contribute to the female gender identity of male-to-female transsexuals. Further studies including replication in other populations, larger patient collections, and analysis of other polymorphisms, both for the genes studied here and other sex steroidogenesis genes, should be undertaken."
"Increasingly, biomedical research is implicating biological factors. Co-occurrence among twin pairs, father-son pairs, and brother-sister pairs (7,8) raises the question of whether gender dysphoria is heritable. Anatomical studies show that certain brain structures in male-to-female transsexuals are more “female-like” in volume and neuronal density (9,10). Furthermore, the response to the odor of male and female steroids in male-to-female transsexuals was more similar to that of control women than control men (11). Other studies suggest that sex steroids influence gender identity."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3402034/
There is a far bigger study underway by the same researchers. Words like "likely", "highly likely" and "significant" mean something if a scientist uses them. :) :) :)
Mancheeze
+Jane S Any study of adults will not show innate mechanisms or structures because brains have neuroplasticity ie. it changes w/ environmental influence.
So no. none of this 'research' is applicable.
Again, you have to do fetal or newborn studies to show this. So far, they've found no differences.
There is no female or male brain. Been debunked years ago.
Jane S
+Mancheeze
Okay, I take that point and see that unless you can have proof that an actual newborn is identified as, say, MtF, you won't believe. Have you considered, though, that the many transgender kids out there (we'll go with your argument and say that they were not born as MtFs) are still, then, female because - for whatever reason is/has caused the brain to switch, the effect is the same. The brain of the person is now female. Therefore, she is a female in all the ways which matter (like, I couldn't care less if a female has three breasts, no breasts, a penis, both genitalia, etc - she's still a woman).
And I know you'll be thinking that there is no such thing as a male or female brain (which hasn't actually been proven or disproven to date) - again, I think you're right, barring the obvious that male brains are larger and heavier. I think you can't get a brain that's completely one or the other (I stand to be corrected though, if science proves it). I do think that connections can be wired differently in certain things, but on the whole, a brain is still a brain. I do, however, think that there are areas that store a person's gender identity - the areas that are coming up again and again in studies on transgender people as matching their gender identity rather than their biological sex. The fact that scientists are able to see that these areas are different for each sex means that these areas are different. And if a trans woman matches other women's brains in these scientifically tested areas, unlike actual men, for all intents and purposes, they have female parts to their brain - and they feel female. And that's what science has proven repeatedly, that these brain areas correlate with a trans person's chosen gender.
So taking your first point again, no matter how a person gets their brain rewired, whether in the womb or not, the brain is still not the same as the sex of their body in the parts that are measurably different.
Some people would argue that gender is not binary anyway, which means all of this is moot. Which I also agree with. People should be allowed to be who they want to be without having to explain themselves (sadly, that doesn't really happen in this day and age).
Samantha Michelle
Female is a sex identifier. There is no such thing as female or male brain. & brain studies were done on people who had FULLY TRANSITIONED already, so ofc the synthetic hormones they are full of had an effect on the brain. Gender as you all are using it is a feminine personality. One doesn't actually ever identify with a woman because none of them even know what a woman is. They just want women bodies.
Mancheeze
+Jane S No. Men who wear dresses and perform stereotypical feminine behaviours are not female.
'I do, however, think that there are areas that store a person's gender identity - the areas that are coming up again and again in studies on transgender people as matching their gender identity rather than their biological sex. '
No evidence for that and again, using adult brains means you can't say what mechanism or how or what actually changed that part or function of the brain.
The fact of the matter is it's simply a psychological condition, not a brain condition.
Gender is binary. There's masculine and feminine. Male trans simply switch how they present, they go right into the opposite box and they also do it in such a way that they reinforce the worst stereotypes about women ie. that women love to be fucked wearing lingerie and that porn and prostitution is good for women when it's not.
We don't allow people to do 'blackface' and get away with it but somehow it's ok to do this to women.
I don't think so.
jessica
+Mancheeze
see, the thing is that some girls choose to wear pink heels and avoid conflicts. i'm more about pink cons myself, but i also do a lot of walking.
i have agency. girls do, too. by taking that away, you're being a misogynistic piece of shit that is reducing the intelligence of girls to pretty things with silly ideas put in their heads.
jessica
+Alexander Todoroff
see, it's the socially coerced part that is misogynist.
girls make their own choices. i made my own choices. i wasn't brainwashed by a patriarchy trying to enslave me, and neither are your sisters that happen to like fluffy, pink things.
that's their choice. they made it, out of their own free will. and, you're being a piece of shit in denying them agency and telling them they have no thoughts of their own except the ones put in their heads by men.
jessica
+Jane S
well...
transwomen can sometimes be excited by sexy clothes, just like ciswomen can be.
it's less that it's been debunked, and more that it's been split off. we understand that these are two different things, and we don't conflate them anymore.
but, rad fems are stuck in the 60s. they've ignored everything that's happened since, which is massive amounts in this field. don't bother expecting a coherent, modern argument out of them - it's not coming.
Mancheeze
+jessica
It's obviously not coming from you either.
You have no evidence so you bash women who know men are men.
Not surprised.
jessica
+Jane S
jane, there's no male or female brain. i don't have a genetic condition, and find the suggestion that i'm a genetic defect to be insulting.
there's nothing "wrong" with me.
i've simply made a choice to take hormones and live as a female, because i want to. and, that's reason enough.
Mancheeze
+jessica You aren't female nor do you live like one.
You have ZERO in common with women.
jessica
+Mancheeze
i have no evidence of what, exactly? i haven't made any claims.
i don't think there's a contradiction in realizing that transwomen are not ciswomen, and still acknowledging us as women. there can be two different types of women.
black people are not white people. but, they're both people.
jessica
+Mancheeze
i think what's more accurate is that you're not a woman, and don't live like one - and have nothing in common with women.
Mancheeze
+jessica No. I AM a woman.Born female, XX. menstruate, been raped b/c I'm a woman so don't tell me I have a female brain or that men can ever know womanhood.
jessica
+Mancheeze
see, this is typical of radfems - they think womanhood is defined by being raped. it's just another word for slavery. they're completely unable to see past their own negative experiences, or see any of the positives. frankly, and by definition, there are no positives. to the radfem, all enjoyment in life comes from abolishing the feminine. to them, this is emancipation. they claim they wish to abolish gender, but it's funny how their idealizations always look like a society with uniform masculinity across the board. read between the lines - and, in fact, often on the lines - and what you learn is that what they truly want is for everybody to inhabit a male gender role. to them, this is the essence of freedom - to be men.
they claim to be on the left, but that sounds like ayn rand, to me.
and, it's deeply misogynist.
but, she was raped. so, none of this matters; she was raped, so therefore she is female. i have not been raped (this rather callous presumption is actually true), so therefore i am not.
these people are near the end of their cycle. they're already irrelevant. the boomers are just beginning to be gripped by death. they'll be gone altogether, soon.
Samantha Michelle
+jessica You're not a woman because you are a transwoman. if you're a woman then what are you transitioning from? Also she made no claim of being a radfem. You all just love to call anyone that doesn't buy into the gender cult a radfem/terf.
jessica
+Samantha Michelle
it's not hard to understand. i'll try a mathematical formula for you, maybe you might get it then.
let c be the set of ciswomen.
let t be the set of transwomen.
then W, the set of women, is defined by the union of c and t.
that is, W = c U t.
i do not claim to have been born with a female brain. that is absurd. i acknowledge that gender is non-biological and entirely fluid.
rather, i will argue that i have every right to wake up on thursday morning and decide i'm going to transition, and that you have an obligation to acknowledge it, or face the social consequences of being ostracized - as greer has.
Samantha Michelle
+jessica Lol no one has an obligation to accept your identity. Women and transwomen are seperate. You can do all you'd like with your body, and I will never challenge your right to do so. Everyone around me knows my stance, even my trans friends. I haven't been ostracized yet. Its almost like people can actually be around someone that has a different opinion than they. Who knew?
jessica
+Samantha Michelle
yes, you do - as white people have an obligation to accept people of colour, and straight people have an obligation to accept queer people.
transwomen are a subset of women. ciswomen are a subset of women. together, they make up women. ciswomen are only a part of women. transwomen are only a part of women. they are not the same thing. but, the category of women is incomplete, unless it includes both. do i have to explain it a fourth time, or do you understand it yet?
you're on the wrong side of this debate. and, you have a choice - you can correct your derogatory and discriminatory perceptions, or you can find yourself dealing with lost job opportunities, lost friends and lost family - and sitting around wondering why.
that's how social change happens in democratic societies. we just expunge the anti-social members.
Samantha Michelle
+jessica Trans activists love threatening people. Lol nothing's going to happen to me because of my opinion sweety. I'm not the one actively killing and harming trans people. I treat them as humans like any other person. But simply allowing trans people to transition and mutilate their bodies with surgery just because "I'm this cos I said so" does not seem humane at all to me. Sounds like its allowed simply because its profitable. Threatening violence and suicide because people disagree is proof of mental instability. & I will always question gender so that future feminine men won't have to id as women just because they grew their hair long and prefer wearing feminine clothing.
jessica
+Samantha Michelle
well, good luck explaining that to your boss when they're firing you because you're using the wrong pronouns.
Samantha Michelle
+jessica I literally never misgender them. What are you going on about?
jessica
+Samantha Michelle
i hope that casual readers have fun working their way through that contradiction.
Samantha Michelle
+jessica Explain to me how calling someone their birth sex is misgendering? Didn't you just say sex and gender are different things? :3 Tsk tsk.
Mancheeze
+Samantha Michelle Good catch.
Gender is a hierarchy, a social role that puts women at the bottom.
Feminists hate gender and want it thrown in the trash. Girls shouldn't have to buy pink toys. Ya know?
jessica
+Mancheeze
no. misogynists and misandrists hate gender and want it thrown in the trash. feminists celebrate gender, promote the agency of women to make independent choices and reject authoritarians that want to tell other people what to do.
Samantha Michelle
+Mancheeze Exactly! We are just trying to abolish gender. We do not want harm to come to trans people.
jessica
+Samantha Michelle
will you then abolish all the fashion decisions you don't like, all the religions you don't like and all the political perspectives you don't like?
feminism is about gender equality. it is not about the abolition of gender.
Jane S
It's misgendering and you can get fired for it if you repeatedly do it, because you should respect the gender the person has chosen to be regardless of your inner prejudice. And +jessica, as I've said elsewhere here, I also respect gender fluidity and non-binary. A person is free to do what they want as long as it's not harming others (which is isn't). Sex and gender are more than XX and XY. You obviously had very strong reasons to do it, so who am I to question you?
However, while yours might have been a choice, please consider that there are girls (and boys) who didn't get that choice. Reading your words, part of me wonders if actually there's more than one set of "trans women" (I'd rather just call you women, but for the purposes of this discussion...), those who chose to transition for whatever reason (i.e. gender fluidity), and those who didn't get a choice and who reject, completely, the idea that they "chose" to do it. They rejoice in the studies which say they were born that way (and they are peer-reviewed studies, not pseudoscience as one commenter on the other thread said). One girl I know, who I care very deeply for, has often cried because she had no choice that she's in this position, now treated like dirt because she is a girl. She couldn't live lying to herself anymore. She had been fighting against it her whole life but it just wasn't going away. As she says, she wasn't brave - she did what she had to. She had no choice, because she got to a point where she couldn't face the idea of living anymore if she didn't transition. She hated being seen as a man, treated like a man, called a man's name, and had to pretend to fit in with men.
And +Mancheese, as much as we have very differing opinions on the trans issue... I'm sorry to hear you were raped. It always sickns me that there are people who do that (to women, men and children). It's obvious there's a lot of anger there, and I can understand why. No one should have to go through that. It can ruin lives and change a person. I have a close family member who had that happen to her by a stranger in an alley. hugs Don't let it keep angering you though, or you will never know peace. I see that with my family member. It's ruined her life, and she's not able to get past it. :( I hope that came out okay. I'm not the best at wording things. I mean well though, and I just wanted to offer some support.
jessica
+Jane S
i don't know how you can argue with a straight face that opening your mouth and swallowing hormones isn't a choice.
there's a lot of things that go into how our personalities develop, and most of it is subconscious. but, there is no biological basis for personality - that is a consequence of experience. and we all make the choice to transition or not, no matter how compelling it is.
there's not a debate around this. the person you're describing required counselling first and foremost in making a decision about what kind of life they wanted to live. they weren't born with an innate condition (transsexuality cannot be explained by creationism).
i don't doubt that you honestly think there are peer-reviewed studies that support your argument. it's a wide spread (mis)perception, and it makes sense that it is in a calvinist society. it's predestination.
in fact, there are not.
you can dispute me by finding these studies and posting links. i have to warn you that i may debunk what you post, though.
Mancheeze
+Jane S I don't have to respect a man that doesn't respect me by doing 'womanface' and then forcing into my private spaces.
jessica
+Mancheeze
there's no more use in arguing with these people than there is in arguing with racists that continue to stress for segregation. they have no capacity to absorb new information, adjust to changing realities or grow with society. they're completely absorbed in a blinding ideology that they will never, ever break free from. they must simply be left behind.
if you look it up in a history book, you'll see that this is exactly the same argument that the klan used against integration.
Samantha Michelle
+Jane S They have the right to be called the proper pronouns and I do so! But just because you believe you're a woman doesn't mean you're entitled to woman spaces. & everyone doesn't have to cater to your delusion. You have a right to choose your gender, and people have the right to reject it. Gender is a social construct. Sexuality and sex are not.
jessica
+Samantha Michelle
again: this idea of "women spaces" is not valid. i refuse to have this discussion. i reject the premise.
there are no white spaces. there are no catholic spaces. and there are no female spaces.
putting up a fence is an invitation for people to tear it down.
Mancheeze
+Samantha Michelle
I only call certain people by the pronouns they desire. The rest I don't. Until transactivists stop forcing their way into women's and girls minds and bodies, I'll call them HIM and SIR.
Samantha Michelle
+Mancheeze & I don't blame you. Most of them are disgustingly misogynistic.
Mancheeze
+Samantha Michelle
Hell yeah Sam. One of them said he wanted to slit Greer's throat on Twitter. ANother man said if Hitler was trans he should be housed in a women's prison cuz feelz.
Samantha Michelle
+Mancheeze There's a bunch of male prisoners coming out as trans so they're moved to female prisons. It actually worked for one of them! Its just so sad how much the US or the world doesn't care about women.
jessica
ridiculous generalizations, often based on anecdotes. absurd scare mongering. the tendency to take obscure scenarios and speak of them as though they're common occurrences. a complete disinterest in any kind of civil rights. baseless name calling.
this stuff isn't worth countering.
regardless, i know i can't get through; that it's a waste of time. but i just really wish you would align yourselves properly with authoritarian conservative reactionaries and stop parading yourselves as leftists. that's what really bugs me.
i mean, i'm used to these kinds of arguments from the right, and it's easy enough to just throw them away as nonsense. but, it's just frustrating to have to deal with this over and over again on the left, because it doesn't have the slightest thing to do with actually getting to a hierarchical-free society - it's just placing walls between people, and cementing hierarchical divisions rooted in trivialities.
Samantha Michelle
+jessica Let me ask you something. What are you doing right now in your life that you can't do if you id as a male/man? This is a serious question. No hatred or ill will towards you.
jessica
+Samantha Michelle
it's a strange premise to suggest that there are things i could do as a female that i couldn't do as male.
what do you do in your job that you couldn't do as an astronaut?
Samantha Michelle
+jessica You're not a female. You're male. What are you doing now that you can't do if your gender aligned with your birth sex. Stop being confrontational.
jessica
+Samantha Michelle
it's a stupid question, based on a flawed premise. there's no answer to it. there are not things that one gender can do that the other can't. but, that has nothing to do with why people transition.
you're taking a position of biological determinism, which is a religious perspective.
people are not born male or female, it's something that develops as they age based on a complicated mixture of agency and experience, and is entirely fluid throughout one's life. we can change genders as many times as we like, and as often as we like. that is the irreversible conclusion of the understanding that gender is not a biological fact, but a social construct - it must be arbitrary, and subject to modification in whichever way we want.
if i were basing my life decisions on the level of some kind of homo economicus, in order to "rationally" maximize utility, i would likely have not made this choice. it hasn't made it easier for me to find employment. it hasn't made it easier for me to build relationships. you cannot understand how humans think with this broken neo-liberal economic model. humans make decisions in more complex ways than this.
Jane S
Hmm. I am going to call every girl here who's denied that trans women are women.... men. Because trans women are women, and if's perfectly acceptable for you to call these women men, then it's perfectly acceptable - and I have every right - for me to do the same with you men too. Who are you to have some supreme, exclusionary attitude and to bandy about generalizations like you can see into the minds of everyone (and, of course, that all trans people are aggressive and bad)? And the ignorance and perpetration of misinformation I've seen here astounds me.
See how it feels when someone ignores who you are? And I won't hear arguments about biology and supremacy. You know my stance on it.
And for this point:
"What are you doing right now in your life that you can't do if you id as a male/man? This is a serious question. No hatred or ill will towards you." - you're missing the point BY FAR. You've answered your own question. There's NOTHING she couldn't do (except get less pay because she's a woman, put up with abuse coz she's a trans woman, and be in a marginalised group she shouldn't have to be in if people were less strict about gender), which shows it goes beyond mere shallow things like hobbies and jobs. Trans women need to transition. It's not about "Oh, being a female looks fun. I think I'll have a go".
If you believe men are misogynistic/sexist/agressive/etc (I won't go into this point), why would trans women (in your eyes "men") want to put themselves in not just a gender that has less privilege, but also to go lower than that in some people's eyes? A class that gets vicimised and abused. Surely that should tell you something about why they have to do it? Trans people aren't exactly thought of well unfortunately in some of the population. I hope that changes asap. The trans women I know freely, HAPPILY gave up male privilege because, as I've ALWAYS seen, they didn't want it, they didn't want any part of being seen as a man or having power over fellow women. They just want to fight for equality alongside other women.
Sigh. But I know we're just going back and forth about this. Makes me so sad.
Mancheeze
+Jane S Men keep their privilege when they wear skirts. Bruce Jenner COUGH!
You men can take off women face, WE WOMEN ARE WOMEN and are rooted in our female bodies and lives.
GO ahead, call us men, if you need to lash out at women like a typical male. We're not buying it.
You can repeat like a mantra over and over 'trans'women' are women' but it doesn't make it so.
Jane S
Mancheeze, you're mixing up Caitlyn's status as a celeb with her being influential because of what you perceive as being male.
And by calling me male too, you're guilty of lashing out in the way you just defined as male (which it isn't, by the way. Women can lash out in frustration and anger and hurt too - that's called being human - I've seen you lash out plenty here). By your supremacist reckoning bio females are females, and since I unfortunately fit your definition, you just made a fetal assumption, as you are wont to do.
Mancheeze
+Samantha Michelle
I love how transactivists think if they call us men, which is supposedly the worst thing you can do to them, that we'll fall apart on the spot.
We're much tougher than that. We're the sex class that gets killed at birth for being female in rural India. We're the sex class that is usually sexually assaulted before we're 15 years old.
We're the sex class that is sex trafficked, are the majority of the world's poor.
It's through this kind of bullshit they pull that you really get the clue that they have no idea what being a woman is, and never will.
Jane S
Except that they stand a higher risk of it by being a trans person. And they live with bigotry and prejudice and exclusion and abuse.
And lol, you really think people haven't tried counselling trans people? See, this is what makes me see that you have absolutely no idea at all about trans people and haven't cared to read up. Of course medicine would look to simple explanations like those first! Trans people had decades of all types of "help" - counselling (which didn't work because you can't counsel someone's gender out of them), electrocution (in the waaay past), lobotomy, injections of the hormones of their "sex" (which ruined the trans people mentally - imagine someone giving you a huge dose of testosterone!). The only proven method is to let these people transition. It is, so far, the only thing that alleviates their gender dysphoria, as THE MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS STATE.
jessica
+Jane S
jane, you're using language people try to avoid, but i think you're getting to the heart of it. i see two fundamental issues that need to be overcome by the radfems to have them worked back into the feminist mainstream.
1) the first is acceptance, and that much is obvious.
2) but, the second is maybe more fundamental, and that's coming to terms with their own femininity, or lack of it. we all agree that they have the right to reject certain things that are connected to femininity. they have agency, they can do what they want and shouldn't be judged for it. and they will freely acknowledge that sex and gender are different things. but, they then have a hard time in taking that final step and fully disconnecting themselves from the gender they're rejecting. it's maybe easily summed up in the statement: if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck then it's a duck. but maybe it's also true that if it refuses to look like a duck and refuses to quack like a duck, then it should conclude that it doesn't want to be a duck, and should stop pretending it's a duck, and certainly refrain from policing who is a duck and who isn't.
if femininity is a social construct, then identifying as female needs to happen on the level of the social construct, rather than the chromosomal level. and, on that recognition an obvious truth appears: the vast majority (not all) of these anti-trans radfem "activists" are not women, because they reject the characteristics in the social construct. they have specific genes, and that's one thing. but, they don't live their lives as women, in the sense of upholding ideas within that social construct.
they way they're doing this - where they acknowledge the separation of sex and gender, and then argue it remains fundamental in determining the identity of trans people - is very much just simply a massive contradiction. but, you've also pulled out why they hold to this: it's precisely because a choice to reject this privilege (and i'm a little skeptical about the depth these theories apply in, but i do realize systemic gender inequality) upends their gender model, which sees femininity as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy. in their mind, choosing to transition is equivalent to signing one's self up for slavery. to acknowledge something emancipatory (even if it's on a level outside of the ideals presented in utilitarianism, or liberal economic theory) in the process is to completely contradict everything they've been arguing for for decades. there's no way out of this for us - it's a direct and entirely rational consequence of their concept of how society functions, and can only be resolved by abolishing the contradictions in their system of thought. as we all know, that rarely happens - and never happens over the internet. as i've pointed out: you'd might as well be arguing with creationists, or climate change deniers. the debate is coming from the same kind of perspective: one that is rooted in an ideology. all anybody is going to get is the same stale assertions, the same debunked claims, the same absurd argumentation that is grasping at straws to hold to a belief system.....
to put it another way: it's understood that a big part of homophobia is dealing with repressed homosexual desires.
i think a big part of what we get from these radfems is repressed gender issues.
but, that's not meant as an insult, it's meant to be expressed as articulating an epiphany that needs to happen. i'm not about to define anybody's oppression, and i can completely understand feeling oppressed by a gender role.
but, perhaps the best way out - for everybody - is for these radfems to discard their oppression by discarding their identification as women, taking the truth of it by the horns and bravely moving forward as men.
Mancheeze
+jessica
gender repression? Is that the new word of the day?
We'll never stop being women. You're a man. Not a woman.
Deal with it dude.
jessica
+Mancheeze
it might be a little hard for ideologues to relate to, but i tend to think for myself. i'm sure it's in print somewhere or other.
Jane S
+jessica
It's interesting what you say. And yes, I see a lot of people defining what traits and actions are women's and then also delclaring what they think are men's - and yet they display qualities they have previously defined as masculine, which by their reasoning makes them men... yet they reject that cos they "are biological women". And yet, I also see these same people declaring that women and men are the same because they say there isn't such a thing as a male or female brain.
I know you and I differ on the sex of a brain, which is fine and we are both entitled to our opinions (I hope it's okay for me to state mine - I mean no offense AT ALL), but I do strongly think that brains are wired towards one or the other in the parts that control gender. I do believe, though, a whole spectrum exists in that female brains can lean towards masculine traits (I love DIY, building computers, beer, etc). I'm still a woman and I would NOT want to transition into a man (I love being a girl and I love my body), but I don't fall towards the girly end of being a girl. Conversely, I believe men can range from the feminine to the masculine. That, however, still means they have the brain that matches their body - like mine. Where I see the problem is, is when the brain and body don't align and you get people who display uncharacteristically opposite-sex traits but don't feel connected to the body they're in, with feelings that go way deeper than just surface traits and actions. My very close trans friend often talks of the past, of how she felt (often) subconscious feelings of hate towards her old name, towards the role she was in, towards her masculine body. She reacted viserally and negatively and unthinkingly to things we all take for granted - like her name, as I said. It wasn't just that she loved what could be defined as female pasttimes or traits. She made herself physically ill through repression while trying to fight against it (illness gone; CBT and psychologists all say that's normal to happen through repression).
I wish so much she'd been born the way she should have been, but I can only support her journey and make it as painless as possible. Science is increasingly showing that she was born that way, from all manner of tests, and bigger studies are already happening. She finds no shame in that. It's not shameful. In fact, she finds it liberating to hear what she has known inside - that she is a girl, completely naturally. But no, I don't mean you, don't worry - I have no idea of your circumstances and I wouldn't presume to know. You feel how you feel, and I respect that. :)
So anyway, it's an interesting idea about gender repression. I've read studies on the concept of straight guys who are too vocal about gays - and what the science actually shows. I do wonder if another big part will be that some women have been abused/downtrodden by men (we all have experienced white man privilege in action on women) and through this some can form an unhealthy, blinded hatred of what men represent and are, and lump them altogether. Sure, I have huuuge issues with how males have shaped society and we find ourselves living in a patriarchy in this day and age (which I hope we're slowly leaving for more equality). And, because of this hatred, it will be almost impossible to see through it and see that they should reject their biased beliefs that trans women are men and to accept, openly and without prejudice, more women into the fold.
Big hugs, deathtokoalas! (Though I'm telling you off for saying that about koalas! :D)
jessica
+Jane S
yeah, i think that it's a part of the repressive aspect, and it's largely tied into social expectations and even what this strand of feminism teaches.
i think what you're saying about the brain is kind of true (in the sense that certain parts of the brain react to certain socializations), but where you're going wrong is the question of whether it's hard-wired or the result of plasticity. again, you're claiming "studies have shown..", and i don't doubt you believe that - because you've read "studies have shown...." however many times that it's just not challenged anymore. but, i'm going to have to again challenge you to actually find those studies. what you're going to actually find out is the opposite: that our brains are tremendously malleable, and change dramatically relative to experience. it's more of a tabula rasa than not. the conclusion is that the changes in brain chemistry you're referring to are a consequence of gendering, rather than the cause of it.
another way to think of it is that our brain has defined hardware that is determined by genetics, but that the software is mostly developed as a consequence of life experiences. things like sexual orientation and gender identity would largely fall under the software category.
i don't think that makes the phenomenon less real, or that it's a reason to argue the way that radfems argue. but, it's what the science actually says, here - nothing is hardwired, and it's all fluid and subject to change repeatedly over the course of our lifetimes.
the other thing you have to work in is that, in real people, it's going to be all mixed up. this idea of "female response" is a statistical idea - a certain percentage of things would be correlated, and it will be slightly different for everybody. most people are going to fall into these grey areas on a normal curve (30-70%), regardless of how they choose to identify. where you place the boundaries down ends up rather arbitrary, and, because it's all so plastic, is subject to change over the life time of any specific individual. the most masculine guys are going to get a 10-20% female response and you're never going to find anybody at all with a 100% "female" brain chemistry. you're rarely going to find anybody with responses in the 90s, even. so, then, is 75% "female"? 65%? you see what i'm saying.
the traditional approach is that gender is a spectrum. based on personality tests that i've done, i'd guesstimate myself as about 70% female, which is going to be roughly the norm in cisgendered women - however seriously you want to take that idea.
so, does that mean you can "cure" this? in the abstract, probably. but, you'd have to bring in basically nazi tactics. if you were to tie me to a chair and brainwash me, clockwork orange style, you could program anything at all into me. you could program me, or anybody else, to be sexually attracted to anything: suvs, lamp posts or, yes, even the despicable koalas. you can brainwash people into identifying as anything, too - apples, llamas, rocks. the question isn't whether it's possible, it's whether it's ethical. the movement to treating transgendered people with hormones isn't rooted around whether it's possible to convert them into their biological sex role, but whether it's moral to destroy somebody's personality through invasive, forced procedures. it's a question of agency and free will.
Mancheeze
+Jane S
Yes, but for the last time: Women are adult human females. That experience is rich and diverse and feminism is about that, not about men's feels.
Mancheeze
+Samantha Michelle Haha. Yep, and they push porn and prostitution as if that's what women all aspire to. It's sickening.
jessica
+Mancheeze
we eat babies, too.
Mancheeze
+jessica Don't be an idiot. You're a man being an idiot now.
jessica
+Mancheeze
actually, i'm not even truly human - i'm a demon in human form.
Paul L
+Jane S How would people who don't have the option to have the procedure but who want it, ie in countries without a free health service, or people who lived just 60 or 70 years ago ? (ie before the procedure was first carried out )?
Jane S
So all you trans haters insisted science (peer reviewed science, not pseudoscience) was wrong because of a brain's plasticity, so I come along and show how the brain's structure can't actually be changed via plasticity and therefore study's that show trans people's brains match their chosen gender is deemed worthless (lol) because "Women are adult human females. That experience is rich and diverse and feminism is about that, not about men's feels." It's like you're deliberately obtuse. You're so blinded by prejudice, you wont see anything else.
I couldn't even tell you that many trans women (yes, every one I know, and loads more I bet - it's logical) don't actually have or relish those "male memories". They're left not being able to identiy with any of those earlier memories because that self was simply an act. The first time they became a true person - with feelings and able to express themselves honestly and openly - was once they came out and stopped living a lie. One girl I know says it's weird coz she doesn't have a childhood - and she never expected that. She has memories of people reacting to what they thought was a boy, but because she is not one, the memories don't connect. It's a common feeling and a lot are traumatised by the disconnect to the point that they suffer from things I'm not even gonna describe because it's pointless to you. You won't ever hear it. You read anything that suits you - "one complaining cos they weren't sexually degraded" - and THAT sticks. The rest... forget it. To read what actually happens to them, and the fact that they ARE women, is too human for you and it doesn't chime with your bigoted opinion of them being harsh, misogynistic men.
At least I'm happy knowing this "fad" won't go away. In fact, there was just a news article I read yesterday on how - because of all the coverage and awareness - more people than ever are coming forward as having gender dysphoria. As much as it's a horrid condition and I feel for those affected, I'm glad the world is waking up to their plight. :) There are so many understanding people fighting back to haters. We're on the brink of something. We're on the path to acceptance, like with gays and lesbians and anyone who doesn't fit the standard box. It's about time the world moved on from being static and sexist. Inclusiveness is the way forward.
Anyway, I am leaving this video now. deathtokoalas, good luck with everything. You are supported and loved. But I still say koalas shouldn't be confused with a dinosaur lady with outdated beliefs. :D:D:D
Jane S
+Paul L
Before I go, I noticed this. For those suffering very strong gender dysphoria, with no way out, I'm sad to say the options don't look good. 1 in 3 trans people commit suicide here, especially if they don't have support of the financial means to make the necessary changes to rid themselves of their body dysphoria. It's not a "choice" for a lot - it's a "need". They can't stand it there. I feels wrong - as I would think if I had a penis. Unless they had some hope, or hope of money, it doesn't look good. My very close friend is struggling enough with being a trans woman right now, after Greer's comments, and she suffers every day with her body dysphoria.
I wish that weren't the case, anyway, about the suicides. Some people have less dysphoria and can cope better. But some have it very bad and can't stand their genitals, face, etc, and looking into a mirror is a traumatic experience. I can't speak for all trans people; I can only speak for those I know and for the many I've read about or spoken to.
Mancheeze
+Jane S Many times surgery doesn't even help because there's a ton of comorbid psychological disorders.
The medical community is in for a huge wake up call.
jessica
+Mancheeze
it was actually delisted as a psychological condition a few years ago and replaced with "gender dysphoria" - which is a feeling of being socially ostracized for gender nonconformity. that is, the medical community no longer considers transsexualism itself to be a medical condition at all (neither genetic nor psychological), it is now actually viewed entirely as an arbitrary and harmless choice just as homosexuality is, but it recognizes that it may lead to psychological trauma as a consequence of social prejudice, which may require treatment.
i personally agree with the change in the dsm on a purely pathological basis, but, until hormones are available in the open market, we're going to need to rely on doctors for prescriptions, and that's what the medical literature really needs to be written around.
at
07:00
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
Rudolph Von Galen
Young Justin is not ready to lead. He is no match for Vladimir Putin. That should soon become apparent. I believe he is Canada's last Prime Minister. Canada is finished.
Brian Critchley
the elections over Rudolph, you can stop repeating the tired party line. no one belives it.
jessica amber murray
i like this response, because it jumps directly to what i was going to post.
the "no negative campaiging" thing is a nice narrative and all, but it doesn't hold up to much scrutiny. you could maybe argue that the liberals took the high road in their attacks, and people responded to it well.
but, i seem to remember this line - "nobody believes you" - as being often repeated, and rather pivotal.
www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/10/25/justin-trudeau_n_8382304.html
Young Justin is not ready to lead. He is no match for Vladimir Putin. That should soon become apparent. I believe he is Canada's last Prime Minister. Canada is finished.
Brian Critchley
the elections over Rudolph, you can stop repeating the tired party line. no one belives it.
jessica amber murray
i like this response, because it jumps directly to what i was going to post.
the "no negative campaiging" thing is a nice narrative and all, but it doesn't hold up to much scrutiny. you could maybe argue that the liberals took the high road in their attacks, and people responded to it well.
but, i seem to remember this line - "nobody believes you" - as being often repeated, and rather pivotal.
www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/10/25/justin-trudeau_n_8382304.html
at
06:15
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)