Guest post: The fundamental fact of existence in a female body
Originally a comment by Lady Mondegreen on These questions take on new urgency.
Is there some set of core experiences distinctive of womanhood, some shared set of adventures and exploits that every woman will encounter on her journey from diapers to the grave?
What a leading way to put it. No, women won’t all have a “shared set of adventures and exploits.”
What we will share is the fundamental fact of existence in a female body as opposed to the other kind.
From that it follows that the vast majority of us will share at least some experiences unique to women. Menstruation, for example. The possibility of pregnancy. Pregnancy itself, and childbirth. From that follows the sociopolitical consequences of being female, which vary quite a lot by nation, ethnicity, and class but consistently over the past few millennia have meant subordination to those other people–the male-bodied ones.
Why have women historically been seen as subordinate, inferior, the second sex? It ain’t because we share “a set of adventures and exploits.” Biology, evolutionary psychology, and history all converge on an answer: It’s because we’re the ones who have the babies. We’re the ones who have the babies and males are the ones who want to the babies we have to be theirs. Add in the fact that we’re smaller and therefore can be bullied and the origins of male supremacist social structures are not hard to trace.
I doubt that chimps believe that females are inferior to males, but the males are dominant. (Bonobo females’ dominance over males is collective, not individual–sisterhood can indeed be powerful.) Our species developed language and our peculiar narrative tendency and then invented stories to account for a pre-existing state of affairs. Probably. (I’m skeptical about Golden Age tales of peaceful Matriarchal civilizations and Noble Savages living in perfect equality with one another and harmony with Nature.)
I’m oversimplifying. I could be wrong. But you don’t have to have an amateur interest in primatology and evolutionary biology to notice that there are some profound physical differences between the sexes, and that these differences have consequences. It strikes me, not for the first time, that people like Carol Hay, for all their “sex positivity,” must live in profound alienation from their bodies.
I’ve long suspected it’s more a matter of pre-agrarian societies requiring non-specialized labor, honestly. Tribal hunter-gatherers simply can’t afford specialists, because if the specialist dies, then the entire tribe loses whatever it was they did. So unless it’s based on biological necessity, everyone needs to learn a little bit of everything. Women hunt and gather, men hunt and gather. Both need to be able to build, craft and engage in whatever sort of tale-telling the group uses to pass on lore.
So while there almost certainly was some degree of sex-based oppression, it’s likely ‘only’ the primary sort (ie, sexual dominance), rather than the various other forms that got introduced once we had large enough populations that we could also add in gendered professions (while naturally giving all the good ones to the folks who were already dominating in the field of violence).
Since it’s something that they’ll never be able to do, TiMs want to be able to define “woman” by anything but the potential to bear children. Instead, they offer sexist gender stereotypes as source of definitional ideas, yet do not expect to have to do the sexist, stereotypical scutwork that is usually women’s lot. They’ll take the lipstick and frocks, but eschew the lower pay, cooking, and toilet scrubbing that are as much a part of gendered “womaning” under patriarchy as the made up fucktoys they aspire to be.
At the same time, TiFs, by demanding “inclusive” language that is actually “concealing” language, fulfill the useful role of subtracting the concept of female biology as the prerequisite for having babies. Since “men” can give birth, bearing children is now, according to trans activism, no longer an exclusively “woman” experience. It doesn’t hurt to let conflation of sex and gender do some of the work too. Has anyone offered a “trans” alternative as simple concise and non-circular as “Adult human female”? No. They’re not going to either, because that’s not the point. Clarity and simplicity would be counterproductive. The point of changing the definition of woman is not to replace it with a new one, but to leave the definition confused, confusing, and up for grabs so that even men can fit it.
Our species has a sexual dimorphism far more pronounced than that displayed by our closest primate relatives, the chimpanzees. Human males are significantly bigger and stronger than are human females, a characteristic of the species which must have been selected for in the course of our evolution, and possible reasons for it come to mind.
By way of contrast, males of some species are significantly smaller than the females (eg males of some spider and fish species) and for them, mating is a deadly serious business. Having assured, as far as possible, futures for their own individual genomes, those 8-legged Casanovas typically finish up serving their chosen bride till death they do part; which parting comes very soon after that first and only shag; and so they finish up serving her for one last time as a tasty post-coital snack. (Would she like fries with him?)
One hopes those Casanovas all die happy; well as happy as possible under the circumstances, and that their wives and mistresses move on through a succession of most agreeable similar liasons, dalliances and marriages however brief. Some no doubt dine their way through suitors, lovers and husbands galore. And must have been doing so since Adam was a boy.
Gorillas, on the other hand, dramatically dimorphic. I’ve known a few personally, and the difference is large.
And yet I have seen countless sites online that state humans are not sexually dimorphic. I suspect they have been taken in by trans language. If the TiMs are indeed women, and their bodies are women’s bodies, then dimorphism (sort of) disappears. I say sort of, because there are not enough TiMs to undo the average size differential, probably not enough to even move it significantly. All they really do is expand the range, and since, as they often point out, there are women over six feet tall, they may not even do that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Haining_Bates
Though there’s almost an overlap at the human high end, it actually looks like on the whole less dimorphic than chimps and bonobos:
So in the near future we can expect a TiM drive to recruit Sumo wrestlers…
On the other hand, there is still great species dimorphism between us and chipmanzees. Are CiPs a thing yet? (chimp-identifying people)
By the way, I just wrote to Kara Dansky to encourage her to run for U.S. President in 2024. Let’s see if I get a response.
What? Why?
.
Of course by that same logic, dimorphism sort of disappears in Gorillas as well. For all we know King Kong might self-identify as Queen Kong.
Queen Quong
Ophelia, what is the “What? Why?” responding to?
Annnnnd Dansky just responded to me. Without a serious devoted team to do all the legwork of promotion, it’s impossible for her to run on her own, and a half-assed campaign would just make our movement look bad. In theory, if someone would created a serious team to lay the groundwork, she would indeed consider running.
Your comment.
My comment “Queen Quong” was just playing with the words, for alliteration.
My comment about writing to Kara Dansky? Because wouldn’t it be nice to be able to vote for someone who’s not a misogynist rapist (Trump) or misogynist sexual assailant (Biden), someone who actually fights for women’s sex-based rights?
(I wanted to google “Tara Reade” to follow up on that, but I misremembered her name and googled “Tara Wolf”. Remember him?)
Interested in women to boot, so lesbian as well, right? And as far as the Lesbian Visibility Week, you really can’t get much more visible than a 50 foot ape climbing the tallest building (at the time) in the world.
Yes, your comment about writing to Dansky. It’s a bizarre thing to do.
In Dansky’s response, she said that I’m far from the only person that has encouraged her to run.
That doesn’t answer my question though. It’s bizarre to write to people encouraging them to run for president. I’m curious about your reasons.
Well, there is Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.
I agree. The focus on the presidency in the US is disturbing to me, because it’s done and because it is to some degree warranted. I live in Alabama, and even that benighted state gives me some good people to vote for, although not for president. I assume the situation is significantly better in New York. Why not encourage good people to run for office, even federal office, why does it have to be president?
Damn it, I started writing a whole comment here, but then my browser mysteriously closed and I lost it.
Basically: A few months ago I saw a post on Ovarit where a woman wrote that she couldn’t vote for Biden, nor for the Republican candidate in 2024 (especially if Trump again), and she mused that if all GC people could agree on a single write-in candidate, it could make a big splash, and she suggested, for example, Kara Dansky.
Then, a few days ago, a friend was pestering me about whom I would support to run in a primary against Biden, and I mentioned Dansky’s name. (This led to the conversation where he said that I was the equivalent of a climate-change denier.)
Then, just yesterday, I saw Graham Linehan’s interview with Dansky from last week, where she said that she could never vote for Biden and therefore she planned not to vote in the 2024 presidential election. So at that point I wondered if she knew that there were people out there who wanted her to run. So today I wrote to her and said that if she would run, I would vote for her and donate money (what little I have) to her campaign. A secondary function of this email was that this was also a way to make contact with someone I greatly respect.
In her response, Dansky mentioned that she had tried running for city council of DC last year, but she could not get any help with the day to day drudgery of running a campaign, none at all, so she had to withdraw her declaration of candidacy.
Ok, now it all makes sense. I recommend doing that in general – if you introduce a new idea for no obvious reason, give us some idea why. The single sentence by itself made no sense at all.
Myself, I’m more of Sackbut’s view. Why president? It’s a bit like Trump’s expecting a Nobel Prize.
GW: I know very little about US local politics, but…
I know the feeling. So I always draft into a continuous diary I maintain in Word, save it there, then cut and paste into this excellent site. Will also I am sure provide me with interesting reading in my dotage when I am wheeled off off to Butterfly Land (properly refernced of course) and for my grandchildren.
Yes, I see that.
In part there’s a selfish aspect for me: If Dansky would run for president, I’d be able to vote for her despite living in a different state (or rather, living in a state, since DC, where she lives, isn’t a state). I know of no GC political activists in my state or local region; if I would know of some, I would definitely encourage them to run for local or state office.
Well this whole thing is very you talking to yourself – a personal preoccupation. Not ideal for a general conversation. It’s like that business of using your own special grammar based on Latin, that I had to tell you to stop doing. So, again: try to keep in mind while you comment that you’re talking to people who aren’t you.
Duly noted, thanks.