she gave it to me with great ceremony indeed. never did read it, though i kept it and even i carted it along on my move to floreeedaaa. i don't deny gender differences along some of the bases you describe, but i cannot see where they matter altogether that much when it comes to dating/marriage among hets. it clearly plays no role among queers and yet the fetishization of certain body types and youth exists there as well. how would it be that gay men desire younger, studlier partners if they have an overwhelming urge to plant their seed and reproduce their glorious genetic endowments? so why should it matter among hets?
honestly, i wasn't even thinking over your recent post when i typed what i typed this a.m.
kelley
At 02:57 AM 11/25/1999 +1100, you wrote:
>G'day Kel,
>
>You write:
>
>>furthermore you completely MISS my point. it's not about who posts or how
>>often, it's about how people respond to race and gender analyses. it's
>>difficult to have discussions of gender because it is so easily attributed
>>to autonomous personal preferences, biology and genes such that structural
>>analyses are often challenged on those bases. it is unacceptable *in
>>leftist circles* to attribute race disparities to naturalized phenomena;
>>structural analyses are already common currency and are assumed to be the
>>right way to discuss those issues.
>
>Er, does a leftie have to pretend there is no physical difference between
>men and women - pretend that part of what makes the gender experience might
>not have to do directly with the bodies into which we're born? I mean, I
>don't pretend this is the be-all and end-all of the issue of sex/gender
>(after all, people in our age group have seen meanings go a long way in
>these things, changing real experience in fundamental ways, no doubt). But
>we'd need better arguments than we have (to my knowledge, anyway) to throw
>appeals to nature out the door altogether.
>
>'Sex' and 'race' might not be of the same order of label. I may have
>trouble unbundling gender categories from sex categories ('where history
>begins and ends' is a poser), but I daringly propose that there are some
>objective differences between you and me, which are independent of meaning
>systems, and should be factored into thinking about how we'd like the world
>to be ('sex', never mind wherever and whatever it is, constitutes the
>limits of Butlerism, for mine - I can't choose to perform birth-giving or
>menstruation, for instance - not convincingly, anyway). I still haven't
>seen 'race' defined such that I can understand it, and tend to think that
>line of distinguishing humans doesn't just lead to racism, but is itself
>entirely a construct, the very deployment of which is effectively racist in
>the first instance.
>
>So I wasn't challenging structural analyses, just proposing a little
>common-sensical complementary/supplementary approach to the task of
>explanation. We're not gonna convince anyone out there that their womb
>is *wholly* a discursive phenomenon, eh?
>
>Er, I feel a bit silly writing this, but your post made the compunction to
>explain myself irresistible.
>
>Cheers,
>Rob.
>
>
>
>