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On the transgender wars

03.25.2022 by Tank Green //

I was five when I grasped the difference between biological sex and gender. My best friend dumped me when we started primary school because he realised I was a girl. I was so hurt and confused: I was the same person, but because our relationship was now embedded in a larger, gender stratified community, I was now seen as something less. Someone less. Someone different. Someone he could no longer be best friends with.

What the experience told me was that my body had socially ascribed meanings that didn’t have anything to do with me, the person inhabiting the body. That I still liked climbing the same trees, riding the same bikes, playing in the same dirt, and with the same trains, was irrelevant. What mattered was that my body was different to his which now meant that there were different expectations on and of me, expectations I did not agree with nonetheless.

Many years later, I did a year of a Women’s Studies degree where we learned basic stuff around the difference between biological sex and gender. Basic facts it seems that most of society has not grasped, so let me have a go because it’s really quite simple. Biological sex is the facts of our bodies (female, male, intersex), and gender is the meanings ascribed to those bodies (women, men, non-binary).

It is abundantly clear that vast swathes of society do not grasp that sex and gender are not the same thing. I believe this lack of understanding is precisely what has led to the transgender wars. I also believe that hardline zealots on both sides are obscuring the debate, and creating more animosity and confusion.

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Categories // Thoughts Tags // gender, transgender

On “male feminists”

03.12.2022 by Tank Green //

I occasionally update my bio page to reflect whatever I am concerned, or feel strongly, about at the moment. However, one thing which has remained the same for many years now is the following statement: there is no such thing as a male feminist.

Around the time I first wrote that paragraph, I came across this article and broadly agreed with it, but especially so this quote:

Although I believe that men can be pro-feminist and anti-sexist, I do not believe we can be feminists in the strictest sense of the word. Men, in this patriarchal system, cannot remove themselves from their power and privilege in relation to women. To be a feminist one must be a member of the targeted group (i.e a woman) not only as a matter of classification but as having one’s directly-lived experience inform one’s theory.

The quote is attributed to Brian Klocke of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism, and it struck me with its utter clarity in the same way that coming across the non-profit Men Can Stop Rape did twenty-odd years ago. Both the quote and the mission/name of the charity strike at the heart of the issue/s: rape will stop happening when men stop doing it; men can never be feminists because they are not women. So men cannot be feminists, but they do have a responsibility to address their predatory and destructive behaviour.

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Categories // Thoughts Tags // ethics, gender, politics

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