We're starting to get pretty far afield of the original essay. And I'd like to bring us back around to the original topic, but there's a lot in here that I think is important to discuss in a wider context. I'm going to try to remain brief though, and then pull us back around to my intentions with the original essay, which I feel has been badly taken out of context.
AMVGuide wrote:Well, I meant that we generally assign gender based on sex-- if sex can be determined via the traditional test. And the majority of the time doctors can say "It's a boy" or "It's a girl."
They
do say, but the question is
should they. "Boy" and "girl" are social constructs. They cannot be medically pronounced from on high.
...save for those that wish to fight for their unique identity the rest of their lives.
Wishing has nothing to do with it. It's fight or live in perpetual discomfort. For some it is fight or die.
It just seems more reasonable to adopt oneself into one of those 'boxes' as you put it; especially when the label is only as meaningful as the social construction that created it
It seems reasonable to you, sure, but for some it is not reasonable at all. This is a key component of the issue being discussed earlier: what is not a problem for you may still be a problem for others.
I want people to refer to me as "he," for the very fact that I know they cannot be talking about the girl sitting next to me.
I'm not sure where you're going with this. Are you saying that if you
didn't have a girl sitting next to you, the pronoun "he" would be meaningless to you, and you would be fine with, "she?" Does your personal pronoun only become important in distinguishing from female-identified persons? What about in the presence of other male-identified persons?
I'm confused.
Because, to be hung up on terminology does not allow one to move past it.
Defining terms is incredibly important, otherwise the discourse does not progress. You cannot effectively dismantle what you do not understand, and you cannot replace it with something better without understanding why the original structure was deficient in the first place.
aesling wrote:I agree that we can all work on our sensitivity, awareness, and maturity, but I already said that we need to talk to people on a case-by-case basis instead of making a thread that's likely to make the people who don't already agree with you feel super defensive. That's not really going to change minds. Unfortunately I have to leave for work, so I can't really go into this more.
I think there's some confusion over how this essay was conceptualised and why it was posted. What I'm gathering is that you believe it to have been the result of some recent specific argument or event or moderating decision in which I was involved. But that's a guess, a pretty big one on my part, because I really don't have any idea to what you're referring. I thought I may have had an idea, but now I'm really sure I don't. I promise you, I really have no idea who these "people who don't already agree with [me]" are or why this essay would have them "feel super defensive." I am not thinking of any one single person or any specific group of people.
In any case, if I am reading between the lines correctly, and that is what you are implying here, allow me to say in no uncertain terms that the genesis for this essay long predates any specific, recent events or moderating decisions. I've been meaning to write this essay for months, at least. It has been an issue I have witnessed and experienced for years. Although there have been a few recent incidents which sparked a return to my notes on this subject, the essay itself has been in bits and pieces for a while. It is absolutely not a response to any one specific event, or even a few recent events. It is a feminist critique of many, many events over my entire time as a member of the Org.
This is an essay, not a revenge thread. You might think of it as an academic article or blog post, one which has comments enabled. It was always my understanding that General AMV was the place for essays/articles that dealt with AMVs or the AMV community. The one thing that sets this article apart versus previous articles by other members, or even by myself, which have been posted here is that it is a feminist critique, obeys certain intertextual rules of feminist discourse (which is why "feminist critique" is so clearly stated in the title), and is for me, something like the latest in a series of articles dealing with issues within feminism. While I have shared no other essays/articles here, I ask that those editors who are readers of my work (like Otohiko and CorpseGoddess) not to betray the compartmentalisation of my pseudonyms, while also backing me up when I say that this type of essay is pretty par the course for the type of work I do. But why should looking at experiences within AMV spaces from a feminist lens be disallowed? What rules have I broken?
In large part the essay
was a call "to talk to people on a case-by-case basis." If you're already doing that, that's awesome! I'm genuinely relieved to hear that, but this essay wasn't meant for you (or at least, not you individually), it was meant for the entire community. All of us. And identifying that misogynistic behavior is an issue, at least for some of us, and makes AMV spaces
unsafe, at least for some of us, seems to me to be no different than other issues we've identified as problematic in these spaces. Have we not discussed issues of image? Of reputation? Of elitism? Have we not tried to clarify how we treat the new and the uninitiated? Have we not given feedback on how we would like the format of the forums and the database to better reflect changes in technology and attitudes of different internet "generations?" Are we not concerned with ethical issues of fairness, and the rules and structure of AMV contests? Why is a feminist break down of misogynistic tendencies any different? Why is it
unwelcome? It is a valid approach.
I do not understand how addressing issues "case-by-case"
necessitates not discussing these issues in non-specific aggregate. Why can we not do both?