Ten points to anybody who can tell me what my underlying argument is.
Yes, I keep score.
I suspect that you are trying to illustrate the invidious impact of stereotyping on perception. However, since you quite openly discuss stereotypes, I suspect your true aim is a bit more oblique. In fact, I'm willing to lay my nonexistent cyber-money that you are trying to illustrate the absurdity of assuming one can understand -- truly "get" -- the experiences and perspectives of members of another group.
HOWEVER, I would caution you not to push too far on this because if people begin to feel it's hopeless, this understanding, that may be all many need to throw their hands up and say "I'll never get it, why bother?"
While it's true we cannot understand, the attempt is vital.
First things first - this article needs a redraft and bad. It will get it in due course.
You're right that the impact of gender stereotypes on perception was in there, but it was more a means to an end. What got me riled up here was the idea that it was in any way interesting or provocative for a man to 'identify as female', as if gender was the biological category. The fact that the process would be meaningless without the very labels it claims to challenge just adds to the horror.
The attempt to recategorise himself as a black woman was my take on the comical lengths I've seen men go to just to overcome the 'limitations' of standpoint feminism. It's the same mindset that led to the existence of 'conservative feminism' - people are trying to modify a sociological theory by arbitrarily adding themselves in name alone to a long-suffering underclass
I agree - the point is that you can't ever really comprehend the experiences of others. You just have to accept this, then trust them and try to find common ground.
Nicely done. I shall send this out to a few 'black lesbians'.
Yeeeeeeeehaw...I love getting things right.
Well S., I hope I've read the situation well enough that I manage to elicit from them a knowing smirk. It's why I write these things.
Oh and yeah, I seem to have inadvertently given it a slant that shows my annoyance at men who think they can 'own' feminism, or are somehow better equipped to lead the movement than women are.
There's a difference between using social power as a vector and using it to steamroll everybody else's opinions because you can't quite grasp why porn is bad.
I identify as a cat, but the other cats in the house keep going through the catflap and wandering off without me. It's not fair.
Ah! The fanatical adherence of cat-flap designers to their prototypical ideal of the constructed social category 'cat' is made ever clearer.
Fight the power, Jo.
Those cats! It reminds me of Rudolph. They all shunned him til he did them a favor. Why can't reindeer be more inclusive?
Do you engage in online RP? It could be the means to actually be harassed/stalked/insulted on an everyday basis and experience a bit of it, though, you can always log out, they can't. Gamers community is highly misogynistic/racist/homophobic, they sure will show you the sheer hatred a second class citizen gets.
Commenting by HaloScan
