I love his books. But there he goes, getting all naive and narrow:
Novelist Ian McEwan recently summed up the impulse to see two categories: “Call me old-fashioned,” he told an audience, “but I tend to think of people with penises as men.”
I’m 9 years younger than McEwan, which I guess makes me one of those young whippersnappers. I’m still kind of peeved at this tendency to ascribe certain regressive views to entire generations, as if old people get excused from simple humanity, and are all done with learning and growing. I’m not planning on turning into a simple-minded fool in the next few years (not that it can’t happen!).
But right now I can say I don’t think like Ian McEwan.
I tend not to think about people’s penises, or lack thereof.
I’ve met thousands of people, and so far, none of them have introduced themselves by showing me their genitals. I don’t think that would be a particularly helpful revelation, anyway; I’ve found a bit of conversation to be far more revealing.
I tend not to characterize people into one of two groups by the degree of enlargement of their embryonic genital tubercle, either. That seems a kind of crude and useless taxonomy. In general, lumping humanity into men on one side and women on the other seems like a useless distinction that ignores a tremendous amount of nuance.
I’m going to start thinking of people in terms of their blood groups. I really should start hanging out with more type O people, in case there is a tragic accident and I need a transfusion. I’m incompatible with those A and B people, and those ABs, just forget it. But at least I’ve divided humanity into four arbitrary subsets, rather than a mere two.
Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to think of type O people as potential blood donors.
That’s not dehumanizing, is it?
Oh no! I do not know my blood type, so I do not know if you will associate with me or not!
That’s great. While you’re ignoring all the effects of socialization in a world that quite explicitly enforces divisions based on physical characteristics, maybe you can tell us how you don’t see color, either.
Throughout my life, I’ve found the preceding is almost always going to be followed by something objectionable. It’s also a way to declare you’re done with thinking, can’t be bothered to keep up, no, not at all. I disliked “call me old-fashioned” when I was young, but it turns out I seriously loathe it now that I’m in my late 50s.
“Useless” might be a bit much; e.g. the line between”helpful” and “creepy” is in a different place when men interact with men vs. women.
Gotta love the transphobic double standard: either gender is socialized ergo it isn’t real; or it is socialized and immutible, therefore I am still a man. Heads you win, tails I lose! Gmcard, those “physical characteristics” you propose aren’t strictly binary, and as PZ said, you generally don’t conduct your day to day with your genitals in the open. Or maybe you do and trans women are just convenient scapegoats.
Get stuffed, fuckwad.
gmcard:
? I don’t ignore all the binary socialization in the world, and I don’t think PZ does, either. That said, over the past something something years, I have learned to subvert the binary, to look past it, and to think in terms of [brain] gender, not physical, so I don’t end up assuming something stupid about any given person. No, it’s not perfect, and neither am I, but as more people (especially younger ones) think in terms which are non-binary, change will happen. It is happening.
And adding to mine @ 6:
Like PZ, I don’t care what people may or may not be packing in their pants, skirt, or whatever. That’s not the bit which interests me when it comes to meeting people. I’m interested in what they say, how they think, how they see the world.
PZ, do you have any time for categorizing sex biologically based on prevalence of mtDNA passed onto progeny?
Incidentally this has little if anything to do with the above discussion, I was just curious about your thoughts on that idea.
No, I don’t ignore the influence of gender. But gender is totally irrelevant to almost all of my interactions with other people, so it’s silly to categorize them that way. It’s about as silly as putting them into little boxes based on blood type.
Think of a “student”. Male or female? Are your conversations with them centered on their sex?
Think of a “grocery store clerk”. Do you need to see their crotch before you can figure out how to proceed?
What about “house painter” or “lawyer” or “soldier” or “politician”? What does knowing the shape of their genitals add to the conversation?
There certainly are situations where sex is incredibly important, if you’re discussing women’s experiences with men, for instance, it becomes a defining property. But you know, I can go through life working with other people and in 99.999% of the cases, don’t need to know what’s in their pants. Or their blood type. And they don’t care about what’s in my pants, either.
You might think other people don’t care about what’s in your pants, but the Republican party would beg to differ.
So, my twin brother refers to me as “spare parts.”
There are two kinds of people in the world — those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t. (I can’t remember who said that first.)
Well, that’s how the Red Cross sees us. I get regular calls from the RC, but none of my non O- friends or family do.
So, not only is he comfortable with bigotry about gender and genitals, but he’s oblivious to being an agist…hmmm. Well, there goes our myth of “with age comes wisdom.” I’m the same age as McEwan…in fact, a little over a month older. While there are many aspects to aging you have to accept, you don’t have to be old fashioned, in other words, narrow minded. As I’ve aged, I’ve been fortunate to learn more about the diversity and complexity of humans than I could possibly have known when I was young, even a few years younger. At this point in my life, a rigid definition of boy/girl now seems immature to me…so much so, I find the phrase “opposite sex” meaningless.
*waves irrelevantly at bcwebb*
What is with the sudden right wing obsession over “bathroom bills”? I don’t remember this being even a point of widespread discussion until a few months ago.
It’s almost like, realizing the marriage equality argument was finally lost, the AFA had a crisis meeting and said “guys, we have to get our heads together and figure out a group that it’s still more-or-less socially acceptable to victimize”.
@16: Rasalhague
You pretty much answered your own question.
Nux: Immortan! Immortan Joe!
[Immortan Joe turns and looks at Nux]
Nux: He looked at me. He looked right at me.
Slit: He looked at your blood bag.
Nux: He turned his head. He looked me straight in the eye.
Slit: He was scanning the horizon.
Nux: No, I am awaited. I am awaited in Valhalla!
http://www.reelparables.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/universal-blood-donor.png
I am IMMENSELY popular at the blood bank and, based on your categorization, you would LOVE to have me around. You see, I am O-NEGATIVE and therefore a universal donor!
I don’t think anything can come of it, though; we’re both in committed relationships already.
@16: There’s some coordination via Liberty Counsel, per Vox: http://www.vox.com/2015/11/23/9770610/liberty-counsel-mat-staver-kim-davis
Dan Savage’s theory is similar to yours: being explicitly anti-gay has rapidly become socially unacceptable, so now the culture warriors have shifted to anti-trans since that’s not as well defended.
He also thinks (and I agree) that having the right-wing pick up this issue is just going to bring it to our attention, thereby ultimately speeding up trans acceptance. If the right wing wants to provoke culture war, they shouldn’t be surprised when the left wing shows up and wins!
I suppose if he left it there I could relate a bit – I, for instance, find it considerably more challenging to remember to use gender-neutral pronouns with the non-binary people I know who have, shall we say, very prominent secondary sex characteristics (or, if that construction’s problematic, “emphatically estrogen-influenced figures”). But this just means correcting myself more often. >.>
Blood types and personality is actually a thing in Japan:
http://www.issendai.com/rpgs/takemywings/bloodtypes.htm
I am exactly McEwan’s age (OK, seven months younger but we have both left Route 66 behind) and I have no hesitation in saying to him: “You’re old-fashioned.” I don’t like relitigating ancient history but I do think that we should keep on learning throughout life. If something makes you want to grumble like this, examine your reaction. Without then calling my hippie self old-fashioned (moi?!), I’d probably have said the same in the 1970s. But I have learned a thing or two since.
I do agree with @20 & Savage that this one is bubbling up and we’ll win this one too.
OK, I am mildly intoxicated (it is late evening here, so there, I are allow3d, also I’ve just come home from a Thing at which there was free wine) so I will express it thusly: PZ I fucking love your wicked sense of humour. And “Call-me-old-fashioned” is an arsehole move (almost as bad as Call-me-Dave is over here in Britlandia).
Took tea and biscuits to the Junior Doctors’ picket line at my local hospital this afternoon; they’re getting quite a lot of support it seems. Srs bsns vs the union-wrecking, all-privatising government here in Blighty …
Also, too, I am AB+ve, so you won’t want to be associating with the likes of me! :-)
Call me old fashioned, but I think of folx with assholes as human. Everything else is details. (asshole)
@25 That be some new-fangled thinkering. You been listening to that Keith Richards?
http://handmademusicclubhouse.com/forum/topics/keith-richards-five-strings
Mr. Myers:
How is this any different than clueless white folks who say “I don’t see race?” Lumping humanity into white folks and people of color is not a “useless distinction,” it’s a material fact that allows people of color to talk about their structural oppression.
If you can see that, why can’t you see that refusing to talk about “men” and “women” as categories denies women the right to talk about their structural oppression?
Nothing in PZ’s definition preempts that. But you appear to exclude those who are LGBT and don’t fall into the binary definitions. Their voices also need to be heard. Are you listening?
I’d certainly hope people “don’t see gender” when they look at me. Given that I’m NB, the fact that people see fit to shunt me into one category or another based on appearance causes me a great deal of emotional strife.
Also I’m seeing an awful lot of TERF dogwhistles. I wonder if someone linked to us.
“I’m going to start thinking of people in terms of their blood groups.”
Transfusion medicine guy here: That quote really made me giggle, irony intended or not, because of the whole gigantic spectrum of variants and complexity of alleles just within the ABO blood group itself: A1, A2, A3, Ax, A Bantu, A1B, A2B, B(A), Bombay, and on and on…. I am a type A2 but those damn dirty A1 types can suck it.
I don’t think PZ was suggesting that there is no such distinction. He was suggesting that those aren’t the only two categories.
Cressida:
No one has refused to talk about that. It might have been helpful to read the comments first. Siobhan at #5, mine at #6 and #7, and PZ’s at #9 might have cleared things up a bit.
As for denying women the right to talk about structural oppression, that’s a whole lot of bullshit, and it smells to high, well, you know. This is coming across as TERF nonsense.
Again, this was addressed in the comments. It’s different because people don’t generally have their genitals hanging out, and even if they did, that’s not necessarily an indicator of their gender. How often is gender crucial to your perception of someone? Does it matter if the plumber who shows up is a woman rather than a man? Or would it be more important to discuss your plumbing problem? Would it matter if the plumber who showed up was androgynous or genderqueer? Or would their ability to fix your problem be more important?
It seems to me that fixating on the binary is a way to successfully oppress marginalized people while claiming to be oppressed yourself. It’s exclusive, not inclusive, and I want no part of narrowing my vision and mind to such a tiny tunnel.
Yeah, it seems very much like this is orchestrated and very much targeted at finding some new group that they can otherize. I’m not entirely clear on the motivation, though. Do these people have a burning need to have some group to hate on? Or is it just a cynical ploy to rile up their target audience and keep contributions flowing in to their organizations, with trans people just collateral damage in their fundraising efforts? Either way, fuck these people.
I also agree that this will ultimately promote greater acceptance in the long run. Unfortunately, though, that might not be that much comfort to all the trans people now finding themselves the target-du-jour of these assholes.
To be fair, we’ve always been the target-du-jour of these assholes. The amount of safety I feel has not significantly decreased due to current events. Granted, it was already at “I would literally rather piss myself than risk going to a public restroom” levels of fear, but that’s neither here nor there.
geez, you people and your straw men. Fine, replace “refusing” with “purposefully avoiding.” The point remains the same.
I’m really sorry. I just hope that the prognostications are right, and that current events really do mean that the situation will improve markedly, sooner rather than later.
PZ : “as if old people get excused from simple humanity, and are all done with learning and growing”
No, but if you look at it empirically that is often the case. Not all of corse, far from it. Many retain the ability to learn and grow throughout their life, while others get set in their ways before they turn 30.
I’m not saying we should accept this without protests, but at the same time I think it’s far more important to change the minds of the coming generation. These old farts will die off soon enough, so F them and their antiquated opinions. To some extent I think society evolves one funeral at the time.
@36
Indeed, but only insofar as it remains just as incorrect a statement as it was the first time.
@Rasalhague
I think that like many other psychological tendencies this has multiple purposes, and I’m going to expand out of Ian McEwan’s statements into other things currently happening related to trans people. When you otherize someone or a group of someones, you can change the social attention related to all sorts of things.
*Social dominance and control in general. Authoritarians can have a general instinct to assert authority for its own sake. As an example consider the willingness of some people to control the tastes and preferences of others simply because they do not match their own. I say this as a person with authoritarian tendencies that tries to monitor the excesses of having such a psychology.
*Maintaining current implicit social alliances/allies. Certain men and women want to be able to count on getting support from other similar men and women in society when they assert their authority.
*Establishing/maintaining (their) preferred social roles and behavior for biologically male and female people. Role-modeling of “proper ways of doing things” is being violated and they are sensitive to that.
*Scapegoating social problems, in this case the paranoia about sexual predators in bathrooms is leading them to focus on non-predators trying to use the bathroom, instead of the predators in our society at large. This is similar to all that focus on Muslim terrorists that allows people to ignore xenophobic bigotry and in-group behavior that is functionally identical to that terrorism.
*Etc…there is always something else I find later. We tend to make the things evolution provides for us “useful” in many ways.
@Cressida
I can see that you are worried about being unable to speak about the oppression that you have experienced due to gender roles as they have been historically proscribed. Wanting a society that allows the diversity that exists to be expressed is not the same as disallowing you the opportunity to talk about how those proscriptions have negatively affected you.
What you see as “purposefully avoiding” is “choosing to pay attention to in a specific social context”. That seems little different from men showing up in comments to change the subject when women want to talk about what they experience. PZ has talked about and signal-boosted the experiences of women talking about the gender-related structural oppression that they feel.
When it comes to the importance of gender in most social interactions I agree it’s not really that important. Do I care if the waiter is male or female? No, not as long as I get what I ordered.
But on some level it does make a difference. Perhaps due to social constructs, but still. In a work place I’ve always preferred a fairly even distribution of the sexes, it usually improves the work environment. I’ve worked in both male and female-dominated environments, and the difference is noticeable.
While sex does play a part (a little bit of harmless flirting can really liven up the work place) I think the most important factor is diversity, having a wide variety of personalities tends to even things out rather than reinforce each other. So in that respect gender isn’t important. It’s just that most people fall clearly in one category or the other, so it’s a simple label to work with.
@40 – thanks for the additional info. That’s enlightening, if a little… depressing.
@Rasalhague
There are possibilities in there for dealing with the status quo, but it involves using what nature gave us. The same instincts are in “us” as a side in a political conflict and I think that what matters is having some ethics about it. Exercising authority is at times appropriate, identifying political allies (and being identifiable by allies) is something that can be organized for use at any time in public or online, criticizing the tastes of others with reason can be done (and arguable is being done), and being able to manipulate where the group attention is with reason that is not downright evil (pointing at predators instead of their prey).
I can see why it can be depressing, but there are tools in there and I have a feeling that social solutions will involve accepting and learning control in the long term.
Once my sister asked me to get her credit card out of her billfold to pay for gas, since I offered to pump because she was driving us somewhere. I saw her blood donor card and said, “Well, you’re just A plus at everything you do!” She was a straight A student and in college or grad school at the time (can’t remember which) so she found that comment quite amusing.
“I’ve met thousands of people, and so far, none of them have introduced themselves by showing me their genitals.”
– P.Z. Myers