DagSeoul: Positions, Populations, Punk, Poetics

Highly recommended reading.

dagWeek in Review: Catherine Brennan Lurks

dagseoul:

Because Catherine Brennan is lurking on my blog and giggling about it, let’s look, again, at her definition for what she calls gender identity: “We support the following definition of ‘gender identity’-–a person’s identification with the sex opposite her or his physiology or assigned sex at birth, which can be shown by providing evidence including, but not limited to, medical history, care or treatment of a transsexual medical condition, or related condition, as deemed medically necessary by the American Medical Association.”

Shitty binaries lead to shitty arguments that create shitty definitions used to construct shitty law.

Specifically, the above confines female to that which is the opposite of male and so doing reaffirms traditional patriarchal sex and gender discourse that historically insists to be female is to be other than male apparently to insure men who identify as women can’t be legally considered female. And for what purpose? I don’t think it is at all clear.

Is this the future female subject? —a legal subject of the state composed against all other subjects for her benefit?

Talk about patronizing heteronormative rhetoric.

How does this sort of rhetoric “not harm females”?

Because Catherine Brennan is lurking on my blog and giggling about it, let’s look, again, at her definition for what she calls gender identity: “We support the following definition of ‘gender identity’-–a person’s identification with the sex opposite her or his physiology or assigned sex at birth, which can be shown by providing evidence including, but not limited to, medical history, care or treatment of a transsexual medical condition, or related condition, as deemed medically necessary by the American Medical Association.”

Shitty binaries lead to shitty arguments that create shitty definitions used to construct shitty law.

Specifically, the above confines female to that which is the opposite of male and so doing reaffirms traditional patriarchal sex and gender discourse that historically insists to be female is to be other than male apparently to insure men who identify as women can’t be legally considered female. And for what purpose? I don’t think it is at all clear.

Is this the future female subject? —a legal subject of the state composed against all other subjects for her benefit?

Talk about patronizing heteronormative rhetoric.

(Source: dagseoul)

How does this sort of rhetoric “not harm females”?

interruptions replied to your post: For Her, Seeing is Believing: Patriarchal Feminist Theory (White People Problems)

Check out the def they provide of “gender identity” at note xxix in the communication the FAQ is about. Apparently only trans people have one.

Thanks for the head’s up. I hadn’t read all of it, but it’s craptastic stuff. From the get-go, I realized Brennan is confused about what she’s writing about regarding gender and sex, males and females, men and women. Certainly, she knows how to define concepts for herself and against others. (By the way, I wonder if she realizes how horribly narrow her definition of female is?)

Brennan’s definition for gender identity is constructed to address what she refers to as “transgender or transexual people (by people, I think she means people-born-with-a-penis) and “without harming females”:

We fully support anti-discrimination protections for transgender and transsexual people that do not run rough-shod over laws that protect females.  We support the following definition of “gender identity” – a person’s identification with the sex opposite her or his physiology or assigned sex at birth, which can be shown by providing evidence including, but not limited to, medical history, care or treatment of a transsexual medical condition, or related condition, as deemed medically necessary by the American Medical Association.” Such a definition would protect the classification of sex, while simultaneously providing a cause of action for discriminatory practices on the basis of a persistent and documented “gender identity.”  We welcome people who fit into this definition into space segregated by sex in recognition of their perceived need for access and in the fervent hope that we can achieve such protection for identifiably transgender or transsexual people without harming females.

I don’t mean to be funny, but I have to wonder if Brennan believes all females are people? In the above definition, I get the sense all males and all men are people no matter how you choose to define “male” and “men”. It seems that’s an unstated assumption. But if all females are women but not all women are females—because some women are males who don’t identify as men—then are all females people? I’m confused.

Horrible, horrible writing representing narrow and conservative thinking. She is a reactionary for sure, but her feminism seems to adopt and adapt the worst aspects of white masculinity’s regressivity.

(Source: tiocfaidharlulz, via philosophy-of-praxis)

On The Lucky and Those Who Bear the Burden of Luck; Or, On Men and Women

I’m luckiest guy in the world to have a partner who supports me. I’m a bipolar manic who spends his days writing and reading. And when I work, I teach. Poor and propertyless all my life. She thinks I’m a catch. But let’s be honest, she’s the catch. I’m a real pain in the ass. And without her, I’d be alone with all the baggage that attaches itself to mental illness in the United States and Korea.

My mom, too, she encouraged me to write, to be creative. It’s been women who have helped me every step of the way. Men merely tolerated me. The women who were my professors when I was an undergraduate literally saved my life. They likely don’t know it, but their counseling and encouragement rather than rejection eventually led to my entrance into a good doctoral program where I was able to shine.

And, I have very cool friends who tolerate my madness and encourage my talent. I’m only as capable as those who work and play with me. We’re all in this together.

KBR is hiring! Apparently, gang-rape, harassment and humiliation—and the lawsuits that follow—are good recruitment tools.

From Mother Jones:

According to a company press release, war megacontractor KBR was voted one of the 50 top companies for women by readers of Woman Engineer magazine, one of several diversity-recruitment mags published by Long Island, New York-based Equal Opportunity Publications. “The readers of Woman Engineer magazine selected the top companies in the country for which they would most prefer to work or believe are progressive in hiring woman engineers,” KBR said in its statement. The company came in at No. 46.

thegayrepublican:

This is the most stupid thing i have ever seen.

NO NO NO Gay Republican NO.

The GOP is using women, images of women, women’s health, reproductive health, and other nasty feminist things as tools to cause a stir amongst its vocal minority the socially conservative far-right wing motivating them to picket, protest, hand out images of aborted fetuses, and scream and yell about the immoral left and feminism gone awry. This pisses off the activist left. Much social debate occurs, the media picks the story up and runs with it.

Meanwhile the GOP writes bills, riders, amendments, and lengthy, complex legislative proposals meant to cut the heart out of social welfare programs to cover its tax and regulatory reform for the wealthiest Americans and their corporations.

You’re correct: it isn’t a war on women. It’s a war against the hardest working, most oppressed, most needy, youngest, oldest, and most deserving Americans using the images of women on behalf of the wealthiest, least needy Americans. It’s a war on most of us, not women, making it a hateful and sexist culture war because it focuses on one aspect of women’s rights when so much more is at stake. You’d have to be a crazy anti-woman zealot to believe the GOP is really out to get women; I mean, really want the GOP to defund something awesome like Planned Parenthood that helps so many for so little and to believe that is something good for the GOP to do, among other social reforms it’s pushing.  But, you know, the GOP doesn’t give a shit about women’s rights, women’s health, women’s issues, and how these issues affect all of us.

In other words, the GOP uses women and specific health issues in a horrible and misleading fashion. Just like the Republican Party uses homosexuals. And I’m not just talking on holidays and airport restrooms, honk honk.

Republicans are Liars and Scam Artists

ryking:

“Republicans are ready to shut down the government over Title X funds for Planned Parenthood, despite the fact that PP does not use federal funds for abortion. While that will curtail access to basic health services for millions of American women, Planned Parenthood isn’t the only reproductive health organization that would be harmed. Republicans also want to eliminate funding for the United Nations Population Fund because they believe that like Planned Parenthood, the UNFPA funds abortions with taxpayer money. Only as Mark Leon Goldberg explains, that’s not true at all — the UNFPA isn’t even allowed to provide abortion services. Not only that, but while Planned Parenthood provides badly needed health services in the U.S., the UNFPA serves populations that are in considerably greater need of aid…”

— Like Planned Parenthood, But Global

Well, you know. We could talk about the lies American conservatives tell about Planned Parenthood.  But we might mention that this bullshit about abortion is merely a cover for their more right wing corporatist actions. The GOP’s social conservative agenda is cover for its corporatist agenda.

Support Planned Parenthood in your community with your body and your cash, but don’t forget to protest, with all your energy, the redistribution of wealth and property to the richest Americans and the regulation of the economy on behalf of corporations.

(Source: diadoumenos)

(via kalemason)