ignore this, it's about women and sexism ...

[Brad De Long]

>.
>
>I gotta jump in here.  Do really believe that giving birth or menstruating
>are necessary preconditions for being a woman in our society?  C'mon,
>think about this for two minutes.  In Kessler & McKenna's book
>Gender: An ethnomethodological approach, they point out that no one
>characteristic is an infallible indicator of whether you're
>male/female.  The only way that we are able to identify people as
>male or female is through social interactions.  In practice,
>the male/female distinction is a social one, just like race.
>
>Miles
>cqmv at odin.cc.pdx.edu

Then why did D. McCloskey have to go through a *long* and *painful* 
series of operations and hormone treatments to try to change her 
gender? Is it just that she's dumb?

Brad DeLong