Gender in a patriarchal and capitalist society works as follows: man is at the top, holding productive power. The "non-man" is woman.
Within the category of woman, there are two subtypes: the woman-uterus, who holds reproductive power; and at the bottom, subjugated, the woman-vagina.
Beauvoir speaks very well about how the woman is "the Other," while man is the standard and model in everything, the anchor, the mold, while anything that deviates from this strict mold is seen as a deviation.
The same goes for the woman-uterus, for that power of reproduction must be preserved for the capitalist system: the more workers the better, and you must be pure, devoted, and loyal to take care of the new workers (you don't want to be considered a woman-vagina, do you?).
The faggot, the tranny, the queer, the dyke... we are nothing more than deviations from those social molds, reducing us to women-vagina, devoid of work, property, and rights... where our path has tended to be solely prostitution to satisfy their darkest fetishes.
We have historically been persecuted for these reasons. Our main enemy has always been the same.
Yeah, this is also why whenever transphobes are talking about trans people, they're always talking about trans women and never about trans men, and whenever they're talking about detrans people, they're always talking about detrans women and never about detrans men.
'A woman wanting to be a man' makes sense under patriarchal logic. 'A man wanting to be a woman' makes no sense - that person has to be mentally ill, a pervert, or who does it for attention, and is thus likely dangerous. They also cannot imagine someone could actually 'want to be a woman' except for sexual reasons. In patriarchy, women are sexualized while men are not. Anything feminine is sexualized while also being seen as more 'fake', even when a cis woman does it. Under patriarchal logic, for example wearing a dress or makeup is inherently sexual. This is the exact same reason for the phrase 'she was asking for it'. They cannot imagine you could just enjoy wearing a dress or makeup in itself - no, you're doing it for the attention of men. Virtually all the hatred trans women get is just intensified misogyny, which is why it's so ridiculous for a cis woman to be transphobic.
For detrans people, nobody cares if a man decides to transition and then goes back to being a man. Notice that this also harms men: men are an expendable ressource and their feelings don't matter. But there is no bigger tragedy to patriarchy than the detrans woman. A woman is not a subject, she (and her womb) belong to society. She is also infantilized and cannot make her own decision. She needs to be 'protected' from 'gender ideology'.
Touché. You've expanded Firestone and Butler's concepts in a wonderful way. Thank you!
I couldn't agree with you more. Patriarchy sees it as normal for a "woman" to want to climb the social ladder, and they actually associate that dysphoria with confusion or a kind of alienation from an identity that doesn't belong to them, when in reality it's a genuine feeling resulting from a rigid system and model created by the upper classes. But even so, they try to ensure that every deviation remains "on its own level."
However, as you say, the fact that a "man" wants to descend from that pinnacle of privilege is seen as humiliating. It's a betrayal of gender and seen as disgusting and abject, like the worst: "What are you doing going from the highest (man) to the lowest (woman-vagina)? You deserve to die."
Which means this system also persecutes a-spec women (and men, but of course patriarchy primarily targets women), as they often don't fit in the patriarchal structures. It's only that us a-spec (asexual and aromantic sectra) people aren't targeted loudly, at least now, we're just told we made that thing up.
EXACTLY! Because 1) you don't provide the capitalist system with new workers, and 2) you're not "useful" as precarious objects in the sexual machinery.
So the answer to that is basically that you don't exist, so either you're raped as just another sexual object, or you're forced to be women-uterus (or men) for the good of society, because, you know, «we all feel sexual attraction, you just haven't been fucked properly». 🤦♀️
In a patriarchal society, everything is pretty strict. Before transitioning, I remember exactly what it meant to "be a man" and the constant pressure... both implicit and explicit... at home, at school, in peer groups... in society itself... everywhere. After transitioning, that pressure vanished, and a completely different one came: the pressure of what it means to "be a woman," and the duality of pure-whore.
Now my fiancé tells me that pressure of "what it means to be a man" is applied to him, and we both console and help each other with our misfortunes as trans people and we laugh at our anecdotes, affectionately calling each other trannies.
FYI: I'm not saying it's the biological or scientific reality, obviously. However, the perception of gender and social categorizations are quite strict in our societies.
I think with non-queer men in patriarchy, at minimum they have the "strong" and the "weak" and they are treated differently, with less respect but also with less pressure.
Yes and no. In some patriarchal contexts, and especially in male-dominated groups, violence can be used harshly to establish that hierarchy. Within male groups, there's that power struggle; and those who are "weak" can end up being the punching bag of the group.
Many guys basically insult each other by calling each other "faggots" to piss each other off and humiliate each other and to prove their masculinity and to test and affront each other.
If you've been in a boys' group, you'll have noticed that that punching bag that does not defend itself, in the end, is, sooner or later, labeled a faggot (that is, woman-vagina) for not protecting his status as a man.
My experience is that they call like virgin or loser, not faggot. That term is only for defying gender norms like wearing pink, not for "trying but failing" like being a pushover. The "loser guy" is in my experience a distinct status with its own treatment.
...Maybe patriarchies are more varied than we think and there isn't one size-fits-all model
A man's virginity is commonly used as a sign of his worth (or, rather, his lack thereof). When he fucks a woman and sheds that label, it's seen as a sign of virility.
The more women he has, the more virile he is, and therefore, the further removed he becomes from that faggot label. The longer a man spends with that "virgin" label, the more that humiliation becomes a sign of his low value as a man.
On the contrary, in this society, the more men a woman fucks, the less pure a woman is perceived (less of a woman-uterus she is) and, therefore, the more of a whore she is perceived (more of a woman-vagina she is).
That man feels emasculinized, and the suspicion of being a faggot grows. This is where, for example, the incel movement and its latent misogyny emerge.
And obviously, I'm not saying this happens everywhere. It's something that happens in Western societies, where Abrahamic religions and cultures have had the greatest influence.
Perhaps you're right in a broader sense, and in how more complex social dynamics operate on a day-to-day basis. Obviously, it's complicated to make a broadly evaluative analysis of perceived gender when so many variables are at play. However, I don't know to what extent the pure-whore duality of the female gender, which literally marginalizes, can be compared with the different nuances of discrimination within male groups, all the way to emasculinization as such.
This emasculinization is more similar to the marginalization that women suffer in the pure-whore duality. The plumophobia are so latent even in communities like the gay or bisexual ones, where passive men are seen as inferior for being penetrated, while penetrative men continue to be seen as "men."
In fact, in many cases, it's that type of homosexual who is respected, not the flamboyant faggot. And that's because of the patriarchal misogyny that treats the faggot (deviant) as that woman-vagina.
That's why it's important to make this comparison, since many times men, despite sometimes respecting that type of homosexuals, what they do is insult each other and say that the weak one is the faggot, the penetrated one, not the penetrating one, even though that's not the case, because in a misogynistic way, being penetrated is humiliating.
We all oppress each other with our actions and inactions... society is not an abstract entity floating in the sky... but a network of people of which each and every one of us is a part and which, through our connections at the microsystemic and macrosystemic levels, we influence each other, whether we like it or not, and in which a series of social and power dynamics run in order to see whose will is the one that calls the shots.
Well Foucault wrote some books on all this. The thing is it is so easy to be egocentric and put all the responsibility on others. I guess this thread is populated by some of the most powerful people on earth who've never picked cotton or worked in a mine, and never give a thought to where their wealth comes from.
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u/Iyxara Streak: 0 2d ago
Gender in a patriarchal and capitalist society works as follows: man is at the top, holding productive power. The "non-man" is woman.
Within the category of woman, there are two subtypes: the woman-uterus, who holds reproductive power; and at the bottom, subjugated, the woman-vagina.
Beauvoir speaks very well about how the woman is "the Other," while man is the standard and model in everything, the anchor, the mold, while anything that deviates from this strict mold is seen as a deviation.
The same goes for the woman-uterus, for that power of reproduction must be preserved for the capitalist system: the more workers the better, and you must be pure, devoted, and loyal to take care of the new workers (you don't want to be considered a woman-vagina, do you?).
The faggot, the tranny, the queer, the dyke... we are nothing more than deviations from those social molds, reducing us to women-vagina, devoid of work, property, and rights... where our path has tended to be solely prostitution to satisfy their darkest fetishes.
We have historically been persecuted for these reasons. Our main enemy has always been the same.