In a Medium article about the gender problem in freelance writing, author Linsey Grosfield cites observations made by Guardian writer Lou Henirich in which he refers to women’s news sections as “pink ghettoes.” While his analysis was pretty on-point, I found it ironic that on the Guardian’s website, Women is a subsection of Life and Style–sandwiched right between Family and Home & Garden.
Yes, apparently being a woman is a lifestyle decision about as sacred as deciding which all-natural pesticide to use in your vegetable garden. But this sentiment has a kernel of truth in it. When being a woman is nothing more than a “feeling” you really can lump it in with the season’s latest fashion trends.
If we reduce gender to a decision like which outfit to wear, what are we saying about what it mean’s to be a woman? Like the video highlighted in purplesagefem’s post, gender is no more a choice than ethnicity or age. You can feel like you’re 7 years old all you want, but it’s gonna raise a few eyebrows when you try to invite your fellow seven-year-olds over for a play-date.
So sure, you can choose to be a woman just like you can play with other children if you feel like a child just like you can be white if you feel white. No, we don’t need to judge people but it’s healthy to question the validity of one’s chosen “identity;” further, it’s absolutely necessary to question that person’s motives and what, if anything, they might be getting out of it.
a rain and a gale 
Also when one reduces “woman” to “identity” it can be lumped in with all the other “identities,” and “identity politics” be dismissed wholesale as narcissism, without any consideration of the existence of actual axes of oppression or other kinds of social bias. The result is a kind of militant “get over it” attitude that is disturbingly common on the left, acting as it does to silence people and reinforce hierarchies and enable abusive behavior.
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Absolutely! Well said! I like “militant ‘get over it’ attitude” <~ sort of an oxymoron but so true!
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It’s something I just realized recently during a foray into a (depressingly misogynist) leftist blog. I had to leave when they started quoting Camille Paglia at me.
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I feel ya,I can’t withstand conversations when people start quoting like it’s some damned sermon. I want to hear your thoughts, not somebody else’s. I think that’s part of the problem–people just regurgitate information instead of analyzing it and deciding for themselves.
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I don’t object to people quoting people at all. I do object to quoting female authors sneering viciously at women who talk about being rape victims, and attempting to present this as feminism. It leaves me feeling ill. I consider Paglia morally corrupt and have for 25 years.
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Woman is a biological fact, not an identity! Identity politics is absurd!
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Being a woman is a lived biological and sociocultural experience. It is not a performance and it is not the same as being a nonconforming man.
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Apparently some people did not get that memo…. 😦
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yeah, well their perceptions are not others’ realities.
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