i hope you decide to play roger. you unilaterally decided to start the game and then decided to unilaterally leave the court without ever once doing anything *I* asked, which was demonstraate that you understood some of the reasons for sex/gender distinctions, read the berdache three gender post, and most important show me that you understood carrol. i think that if i have to reconsult your argument, then i deserve that much. i did nothing to you to personally hurt you unless you think being told you are wrong backed up by an argument is personal damage. i aslo expect respect for my theoretical and political commitments, some of which we share. that is, last summer you spent three lenghty posts a day for a couple of weeks arguing about bourgeois v marxist categories for measuring surplus value and the dual theory of labor [i think?][ . you insisted on defining concepts and you insisted that they be discussed in terms of references to texts and theories. i expect that here. and yet you think you can engage in the "look and see it's obvious" argument --just as people say about many assertions wrt marxist theory. and furthermore, one of the things you argued against doug last year was that, despite the fact that he came up with the same numbers, or conclusions using bourg data, you told him that he was still fundamentally wong to use that data and concepts. i am arguing precisely the same thing: you need a feminist approach here and you need to ditch the language you use and how. youneed t understand how saying the things you say have very real consequences for limiting your analysis and for how you perceive the world.
you made an assertion that i have refuted on several fronts. i deserve the respect of addressing my arguments. otherwise, i guess we know how you play tennis.
>Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>> You will find that even in strictly physical terms distinctions of
>> sex are not clear cut. It is equally possible to argue (on biological
grounds)
>> that there is one sex or two.
lets' start with carrol. can you base an argument for two sexes on biological grounds and refute an argument for one sex on biological grounds. in order to do so, i think you need to first start by defining the biological sex. what is it or what are they? how do you account for gould's argument? fausto sterling? lacquer? for the contempoary existence of many cultures that have no biological category, but 2 or more genders, that have two biologies and two genders, or that have two biological categories but 3 or more genders?
if you want to say it's nonsense then i think you need to read the argument and then say that it's nonsense. you have fundamentally misread carrol in the first place. he made no claim that reproduction was trivial. he claimed that defining *gender* according to reproductive capaciteis is trivial and wholly political. expecting you to take these scholars into consiration is no more unreasonable than correcting doug by referecen to marxist texts. for it isn't a question here of competing theories; rather you've asserted that feminst theories are inadequate in the face of common sense and observation. [hence why i pointed out that bit about several classes v. two]. why is it that you can get away with using your "common sense" is okay. why is it that common sense here is adquate and see the obviousness of biology better than that same common sense can see class?
again why do i have to prove i know marx backward and forward and you do not have to have read one lick of anything whatsoever when it comes to biology, genetics, hormones? at least rob pointed to a body of theory, as inadequate as that may be.
>>Try it yet another way. Kelly's interlocutor admits that women aren't
>>pregnant all the time and that many women don't ever have children,
>>while all women sooner or later are unable to have children any
>>longer. So a classification of "women" based on this pregnancy is
>>really pretty trivial -- unless he wants to claim that certain forms of
>>activity or certain social relations should be denied to those who are
>>merely (at some point in their lives) potentially capable of pregnancy.
>>THis is really wild. If no political/social decisions are to be made
>>on the basis of the division, why make it?
>
>What nonsense.
you say the above is nonsense. firstly, i think you need to translate. what do you think carrol said?
then can you explain how it is *not* trivial [and therefore POLITICAL] to define women as beings who get or can get pregnant or who menstruate. or can you explain how it is not trivial to define a man as someone who doesn't/.can't get pregnant and can't mensturate? [again women/men is gender and it refers to all the social and cultural characteristics and traits we assoiate with women and men]
There is a simple way to show the existence of more than one sex.
>Reproduction of the species is possible only by the physical coupling of two
>different population cohorts (what some of us call the male sex and the
female
>sex), because each of these cohorts brings to that coupling different
substances
>that only they possess, and which are necessary to create offspring.
here's a translation: in order for the human race to reproduce we need to inject the egg with sperm.
but what you have said above is far more than necessary and it is also far to little than is actually necessary.. first you insisted on bringing in *physical* *coupling* despite the fact that you say you know that this is no longer necessary. you insist on coupling despite the fact that there is no reason why there needs to be only two present. there could be many many more present in the exchagne of eggs and sperm. but okay, that was just for a laugh, and doesn't matter that much and of course we're talking minimal requirements aren't we? but i couldn't help think of some dogs i've observed. weeeooo.
and yet, if your objection to having more than two present to ensure for reproduction is that you want to be parsimonious then i guess you should have considered that before you typed the above. you've added in this stuff about physical coupling that is just unecessary.
you may think this is a quibble. it is not. it is very important because it speaks to how you think and the assumptions that you make. just as rob's claims that sex is binary is an assumption and not empirical or rooted in anything other than his claims that sex/gender is based on childbirth and menstruation. it is no more different than calling blacks black today as opposed to negros. and it is no different than insisitng on good definitions in marxist theorizing or research.
secondly, you have posited that reproduction of the species is solely about the coupling of a posessor of sperm and the possessor of egg. how's that? isn't there so much more to ensuring reproduction of the species? is that bare minimum really enough? why limit it arbitrarily. why say that biological characteristics associated with the fertizliation of an egg by sperm is the limit? is there not other things that are required--like 9 months in womb or the equivalent [you ack. this later, but why did it take you so long?] and forther, is it enough to ensure reproduction fo the species given that one of the interesting things about human beings is that we are born too soon? and this means that repdroduction is about so much more than the fertilization of egg and sperm and incubating it to birth.
it is wholy arbitrary to define reproduction on this limited a basis. [you'll notice here that this is a similar argument made against restricting the calculations of the costs of labor power to the basic requirements of the costs of eating bread to sustain his physical body [[that was the example you were using last summer re calculating the costs, no? you acknowledged that it took so much more but that it was too complicated to deal with in the argument] this is interesting that you haven't felt the same demand to deal with this objection here. that you did not have the foresight to forestall this objection here in the same way you did in the summer of the labor theory of value and calculations of surplus value.
You can
>claim that blue, yellow, and green are really all the same color, despite
the fact
>that green exists only as the union of blue and yellow, but you would be an
>idiot.
actually green and blue and yellow ony exist because their are blue skies and green leaves and yellow daffodils. colors don't exist independently. [that was a quibble but it is very much related to the subtance attribute debate in philsophy and so somewhat related here]
least someone uninterested in defining terms in such a way as to
>communicate.
>Speaking of Carrol, he can only deny the foregoing biological fact by
claiming
>that species reproduction is trivial--a political decision, he says, which
humans
>can decide to do or not.
the reason why i doubted that you'd read carrol or the book review or my forward of the stuff on three genders was this comment. this comment reveals that you did not understand in the first palce. carrol did not say that reproduction was trivial. carrol said that defining womanness on her capaicty to have a child was trivial because plenty of women are women without having a child. the problem here roger is that you don't understand the sex/gender distinction.
sex can be based on chromosomes, genital structure, and/or hormonal makeup.
it is somewhat arbitrary in that regard. it is conceivable to mark male from female on the basis of hormonal makeup and end up classifying what are males in terms of genetic structres as females instead.
gender [woman/.man; femininity/masculintiy]--a social and NOT a physiological concept.. gender refers to a complex set of characteristics and behaviors prescribed for a particular sex by society and learned thru the socialization experience.
so re-read carrol again understanding what he said this time and please explain to me how it is that it is NOT trivial to define what it means to be a woman or man based on biological sex --chromosomes, genital structure and hormonal make up. is there anything about biology that makes a woman a woman? a man a man? that is, is there any reason we should base how we socialize people to become people by grounding their identities in biological sex organs and capaicties?
you say you are not basing identity on that. thenyou should agree with carrol actually. he's not saying reproduction is trivial at all. he's saying gender based on reproductive categories is trivial. in the same way it is trivial--and very political--to base race on the search for a biological or genetic basis or to base it on physical features. can you tell me how i and carrol, yoshie, miles,, doug, catherine, dennis, are wrong?
But, do I even have to say this, nothing is more
>fundmenatal to the existence, or understanding, of a species than its
>reproduction.
you say that reproduction is fundamental and vital to the existence of the species. you say that it is fundamental to understanding the species. why? we need to breath and have a biolgoical sys. to do that. we need to eat and have a biological system to do that. why is reproduction more important than breathing? than eating? and, again, why is reproduction limited to the fertilization of an egg by sperm?
again, precisely what would be entailed in reproduction? if you can answer that in marxist debates and expect others to, then my demand here is not unreasonable.
Think Marx, Carrol. You don't understand capital (as a social
>relation) until you understand its system of reproduction (self expansion).
so by this you mean we can't understand humans until we understand how we reproduce. okay. can you flesh it out for me. how do we reproduce?
>And Carrol, your attempts to trivialize the importance to the question of
sexual
>identity of a woman's ability to give birth, which a man does not possess,
>because women don't have it throughout their life, and some cannot
accomplish it,
>is more sophistry. Consider this. There are pockets of noncapitalist
production
>throughout the US
this is a stumper. i'm assuming you're referring to places that aren't capitalist. were they economies that existed prior to capitalism or are they economies that developed recently within capitalism if they developed prior, then why don't they have an identity other than non capitlist?
>> Does that mean that the US is not capitalist? It is not
consider this: the grand majority of a woman's life has nothing to do with reproduction in the limited way you've defined it. she spends an insignificant amount of time having her egg fertizlied, indubating it, going through childbirth, preparing for it or recuperating from it. why are you suggesting that her reproductive capacity defines her identity then? why is it so important to associate woman with reproduction? why can't it be that, say, a woman is a woman because she works at a job. we all work don't we? all of us have to labor in some capacity to live--we have to cook and clean up after ourselves, wash our bodies, get ourselves water, attend to health needs, keep ourselves warm or cool. so isn't working -laboring to sustain our daily lives--also an equally important and probably more important way of defining what it means to be a woman --esp since she does that for far more of her life than anything else.
>defined by capitalist social relations?
>Of course a woman's ability to nurture within her body and give birth to a
fetus
>may become less important to reproduction some day. What I am attacking
is the
>reasons you give for claiming it is trivial now.
it is entirely trivial now. there is nothing about my capacity to have a child that shapes my life in any necessary way. i don't need to look at my biolgoical sex characteristics or ever use them in my life.. you insist on defining women [gender, the social] in terms of the biological when even today this is not so at all. and pointing out that gender is arbitrarily based on biology today is imperative if we are ever going to move beyond it. carrol's claim in this regard is actually pointing out how the decision to define "women" or "men" in terms of their relations to the act of reproduction is wholly political, a wholly social decision and there is not logical reason why we must do so. nothing. the only thing it does my biological features do is present me with menstruation each month, necessitate that i have a way to soak up the blood somehow. having the capacity doesn't necessitate anything else in my life. nothing. i don't even "have" to go to the physician to have my uterus checked or anything. there's no imperative for that. breast cancer happens to both men and women. and both men and woman have deseases associated with their sex organs. so i'm not more at a disadvantage in the disease regard than a man who doesn't give birth. none of this shapes my life in much of a way at all.
and that it does has nothing to do with having a womb or the capacity to bear children. it has an effect on me because peole have, over the years, insisted on associating woman-ness with the capacity to bear children. this is what you are doing now. that is why you are wrong. even though you think you are liberated in saying that it could go away, that you've chosen to argue that sexual reproduction is somehow more important than breathing or eating to the reproduction of the human race, you've made an arbitrary decision that wouldn't have been made had you drawn on a feminist framework.
reproduction can't happen with no breathing and with no eating and so to say that reproduction is the most fundamental thing here is a bit of a stretch. and further, delimiting the process of reproduction to that of egg fertilization by sperm is arbitrary. wholly arbitrary and absolutely not enough to ensure for reproduction of the species--precisely because we are the humans we are.
kelley