This is that Dr Joseph Hartland who experienced the Incident of the Fingernails because people asked questions when he Explained Gender to them.
“Deconstructing gender is vital, gender is a form of oppression, it was one of the colonial pillars, and what it creates is essentially inequality for feminine people or feminine-presenting people.”
No, for female people. Not “feminine,” not “feminine-presenting”; female.
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17 responses to “One of the colonial pillars”
I believe it was the late academic Maria Lugones who created the “Colonialism invented the gender binary” idea.
https://twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1112281961626783744
So when this guy says gender is “one of the colonial pillars”, he postulates the insulting notion that indigenous people in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania had no idea about human sexual dimorphism until the Europeans came along.
It really was unkind of Europeans to introduce gender dimorphism to those free and innocent peoples.
If I were in charge of whatever group hired this quack, I’d demand my money back.
He has no business working anywhere but at a McJob.
We “sceptics” usually maintain that any theory, whether in the “hard” or “soft” sciences and disciplines must have an empirical basis, right? So it seems to me that history and anthropology would have something to say about any effect of colonialism on indigenous peoples’ ideas about sex and gender. Do any of the academic gender theorists who claim that the English, French, Spanish and Portuguese imposed the concepts of “men” and “women” on the natives cite evidence from history or anthropology? Heck, by now we should at least have a letter or journal entry from some conquistador, missionary, or settler expressing shock and dismay that the local savages not only deny the One True Faith, but the existence of men and women. Yes?
Anyone?
Crap.
*… That the English… cite evidence from history or anthropology that they imposed the concepts of “men” and “women” on the natives?
I am surprised that a senior lecturer would give such a shoddy presentation at a medical school in the UK. I think the General Medical Council needs to take a look at what’s going on in Bristol.
Same. It seems so childish and amateurish.
The country that was not colonised by Europeans is Thailand.
Has Dr Joseph Harland visited it to check out whether the Thais regard sex as a spectrum?
I’d be willing to entertain the hypothesis that local ideas of gendered sex roles were subverted and supplanted by those of the colonial power in question, much as local religious and spiritual traditions were eroded (if not actively suppressed) by those of the colonizers. In cultures that were more sexually egalitarian, this was probably bad news for women. Otherwise it was probably more like local, “mom and pop store” patriarchy being plowed under by “Walmart” patriarchy. Differently shitty, but still shitty for women.
The best documented effect colonisation had on sex is the imposition of Christian “sex mores” on sexually liberal people. These new rules were enforced in the usual ways; loss of privileges, imprisonment, and, of course, rape.
Also this
https://twitter.com/PubtestThe/status/1595908673934884867?s=20&t=iTv4Co8eXg3jhf_EPNfu5A
Bruce #4.
This has always thrown me as well. Surely anyone encountering another culture that had no concepts that could map onto our ‘man’ and ‘woman’ would be fascinated and record the fact?
KB Player @8
Thailand has kathoeys, sometimes called “ladyboys.” Historically they were mostly effeminate gay men. I doubt they thought of themselves as literal women, but of course I can’t say for sure. In a video I’ve seen of a ladyboy interacting with a tourist, the former calls himself a man (to the tourist’s apparent surprise.)
When the Awakened speak of utopian pre-colonial sex-spectrum-affirming peoples, what they’re really talking about are cultures like Thailand, or some American Indian nations, that had social roles for effeminate men. They seem to conflate a lot of different cultures into an imaginary Garden of Eden full of Noble Savages who think the way they, the 21st century Woke folk, do. Everybody’s equal (except the sex spectrum-y people may be more equal than others.) In reality, there’s no reason to suppose that these men (they were almost always men) were always treated especially well, and it’s noticeable that, in North America, at least, these social categories tended to occur in societies that were conspicuously NOT sexually egalitarian.
https://culturallyboundgender.wordpress.com/2013/03/09/toward-an-end-to-appropriation-of-indigenous-two-spirit-people-in-trans-politics-the-relationship-between-third-gender-roles-and-patriarchy/
There are also the “Sworn Virgins”, or burrnesha , of the Balkans. These are women who dressed and lived as men (often to escape an unwanted marriage, without causing a feud with the family of the suitor).
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/05/women-celibacy-oath-men-rights-albania
I can imagine that these starry-eyed dreamers longing for a past that never existed would have found the reality of living in the actual societies they idealize a bit of a shock.
They sure as hell wouldn’t be enjoying the sort of unearned power, influence and privilege they’ve managed to acquire in this society.
And as for the evils of the West, who’s to say that millions of women wouldn’t benefit from, some “Western” influence in their lives? How about all of those women subjected to the shackles of “guardianship?” Child marriage? The death penalty for sexual “misconduct?” The list is far too long. Not that we don’t still have a long way to go (and not that we haven’t had our own lhistory of similar horrors), but I think we’re at least a bit “ahead” in this regard compared to too many places on Earth. While there are plenty of things one might fault “The West” for, I don’t think that our concept of human rights falls in that category.
Sort of like the “natural” everything of many environmental activists, who imagine our ancestors lived in perfect harmony with nature, and both nature and humans were blissfully happy.
I wonder where people ever got the idea that saying something occurred in our ancestors, or in any pre-modern society, or in some imagined utopia version of their own believes, must mean it is the correct and morally superior way to live?
If you can’t argue what you believe in the present, placing it into a utopic past doesn’t give you a better argument. Unfortunately, it works all too often; religions have been doing it forever.
If the indigenes really hadn’t figured out sexual dimorphism then perhaps “white man’s burden” as a concept has been wrongly maligned.
I on the other hand think no human ethnic grouping is that stupid…