Some gross, reductive, naturalizing maternal industrial complex
Kate Manne’s next in the series is even loopier. To recap, the first was
Cis women confusing “erasure” with not being at the center of a discourse is fast becoming one of my pet peeves. Why not be inclusive of everyone who menstruates? There is no good reason. Obviously.
Same when it comes to pregnancy and breast/chestfeeding. The truth is, we *all* gain when these activities aren’t essentialized and made into part of some gross, reductive, naturalizing MIC (maternal industrial complex).
Gain? Gain what? What do I gain from being told that it’s not only women who menstruate, get pregnant, and breast feed? What, exactly, do I gain from that? All I’m conscious of gaining is fury and disgust, and I’m already well supplied in that department, between Trump and Brexit and DOCTOR Rachel McKinnon.
And why is it “gross”? Why is Kate Manne, author of Down Girl, calling it “gross” to point out that women are the people who do all the hard graft of making human beings? She sounds like a snotty little boy on the playground. It’s not “gross” that women (and women only) get pregnant, and it’s not gross to say that women (and women only) get pregnant.
That’s one infuriating byproduct of the trans nonsense: it’s training women, even feminist women, to echo that kind of disgust at the female.
It’s better, she says, without argument.
Being inclusive around all procreative activities is better for trans men and non-binary folks who participate in them; it’s better for cis women who don’t or can’t; it’s better for trans women who typically can’t; and it’s better for cis women who do, absent bad ideology.
Better how? Better why? How is it even possible to be “inclusive around all procreative activities”? Women can’t inseminate and men can’t gestate. It doesn’t matter how “inclusive” we all are; we still can’t swap all the repro jobs back and forth at will. And as for bad ideology…look in the mirror, pal.
Replies are scathing.
I don’t think she means ‘gross’ as in ‘icky,’ but ‘gross’ as in ‘over broad and lacking in nuance.’ Thus the complaint about reductionism.
If so, she seems to be confusing a definition of a biological category (women: the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs) with someone in that category being valued only for their biological functions (“women are nothing more than walking uteruses.”) That’s like thinking that saying that elephants are an animal with tusks promotes ivory poaching. They’re ever so much more than their tusks! And if someone takes their tusks, they’re still elephants!
At least other animals have tusks. There really aren’t other sexes which menstruate.
True about “gross,” but she should have the sense to realize that words drift, so to speak. It’s not a very adult word (I use it myself for that reason: it’s funny because a kiddy word), and readers are likely to think it popped into her mind because she thinks all this womany stuff is gross.
Just after saying “Gross!”
Chestfeeding? Makes have breasts too…
BKiSA, if they acknowledge that, they can’t make up a new word to make women feel guilty and ashamed about when they use the wrong one.
Exactly what I was going to say, Blood Knight. If women can have penises, as we keep being told, then surely men can have breasts.
I’ll pretty much agree to anything if it gets people to stop saying “chestfeeding”.
#4 #6
When expanding the concept of womanhood to include penis-havers, the anatomy in question remains a penis; but when it comes to breasts, rather than expanding manhood to include breast-havers, it is the term breast that is thrown out in favour of something that includes men. Interesting! Womanhood needs to be expanded as a concept to include penis-havers, but manhood does not have to be expanded to include breast-havers… In all cases, it is female biology and the concept of femaleness itself that has to give ground.
This word substitution, more than most, really gives the game away.
My favourite tweet of many, many excellent ones:
Prophet Joe
@ProphetJephri
Replying to @kate_manne
Im so glad that you do not make law or affect culture or human civilization. You and your useful idiots pander to a demo which is accelerating the speed of our collective eye roll to a point i fear a singularity of disdain will swallow our universe