General status of gender relations vs. Quibbles

[James Baird]

>
> It is inaccurate to speak of "gender phenomena" as simply
> "social/discursive phenomena."  Gender is an effect of oppression, just as
> race is.  No oppression, no gender.  No oppression, no race.
>


But isn't this a case of Humpty Dumptyism, declaring that words mean what
you say they mean, neither more nor less?  You define "gender" as something
socially constructed by oppression.  Fine. But that definition has nothing
in common with what the average person thinks of when they think "gender".
Maybe I just have a hard time because, while I can come up with a (no doubt
extremely flawed) picture of what a society without the concept of "race"
would look like, I can't do a similar thing with "gender".  There are
physical differences between the sexes, and those differences go deeper than
skin color.  Absent some kind of major changes in the human animal, how do
you construct a society in which those differences do not affect one's
social experience?

Jim Baird


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