Are you a Man? Are you a Woman? Or are you Neither?


sorabji.com: Who are you?: Are you a Man? Are you a Woman? Or are you Neither?
THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016).

By Bell_jar on Monday, April 24, 2000 - 01:21 am:

    so i'm writing this paper on Simone de Beauvoir's work _The Second Sex_ and Leslie Feinburg's novel _Stone Butch Blues_. jess the main character in feinburg's novel doesn't really identify with one sex in particular. since antigone just announced that he was a she... well... what do you think? do we have to be labeled as men and women. doesn't it just promote bad things to happen? hmmm....


By Gee on Monday, April 24, 2000 - 02:49 am:

    I'm not sure I understand this. It looks like you're suggesting that the things that make human beings different are the things that cause trouble for us. I disagree with that, because I think the things that cause trouble for us is that we're all a bunch of big jerks. as a species.

    instead of saying that everyone should be the same, wouldn't it be more practical to accept people's differences?

    not all labels are bad.


By agatha on Monday, April 24, 2000 - 04:18 am:

    antigone is not a woman. he lies like a rug.


By semillama on Monday, April 24, 2000 - 08:35 am:

    Actually, antigone is an "it".


By Margret on Monday, April 24, 2000 - 09:22 am:

    I like both those books. You want to add in a third book with a consistency of theme and the proposition of lesbians as a third gender? Go out and pick up "The Straight Mind," a compendium of essays by Monique Wittig.
    It's quite good, and bridges that theory/praxis gap of the other two books.
    I tend to call people what they want me to call them, whether it be s/he or Muffin or whatever.
    When referring to transgendered people to people who don't know them, I use the pronoun they've selected for themselves.
    I like it when people change their names to cool ones. Did I ever tell you I wanted to be a romance novelist under the pen name Candida al-Bicans? Anyone want to write romance novels with me? I've already mentally selected Agatha to do the cover art.


By Rhiannon on Monday, April 24, 2000 - 11:45 am:

    I've never read any gender theories, so I can't comment on any of that. (And it just occurred to me that I've sorely missed out by having attended this fine feminist institution for all these years and I've never once taken a feminist/gender study course. That's inexcusable.)

    Anyway.

    I've always felt kind of in between male and female. Leaning more toward female on the inside but acting more male. Meaning, not that I *feel* like a guy, but I just don't know how to *act* like a girl, according to our current social standards.

    Technically, since I am a girl, everything I do I do like a girl. I just don't fit into many female stereotypes. I'm more of a "head" person than "heart" person, for example. I'd rather beat someone up than cry when I get mad, for another example.


    And can I just say, I never understood why girls in my high school would want to hang out at malls to meet "guys." Not particular guys, mind you, just any random guys. "Y chromosome? Check. Let's go!" WTF? Guys aren't so special. They're just like girls, except different.


    (See what the final rush before graduation has done to my brain? I think like a twelve-year-old now.)


By Bell_jar on Monday, April 24, 2000 - 12:33 pm:

    i am suprised that margaret the spelling champ who noticed that i misspelled rousseau (which i realized too only after i made the post). any who she/he didn't realize that i misspelled feinberg. i seemed to be out of it on the spelling scene.

    anyway. i don't have a problem with being different based on having different sexual organs. i have a problem with the label of woman and man. female to me indicates a vagina. woman indicates a reaction to things. women are feminine they ... you know do girly things. men are masculine they do boyish stuff. feinberg's character isn't a man or a woman. jess (the character) is troubled because society gives (wish there was a neutral pronount to insert) a hard time because there is no identification with a particular gender.

    would you consider a label property? i believe i would. we strive to achieve the label of doctor, lawyer, X profession. we don't want to acquire a bad label. down with labels and property i say.


By patrick on Monday, April 24, 2000 - 12:39 pm:

    hey spider, where have you been?


By Margret on Monday, April 24, 2000 - 12:44 pm:

    It's Margret.


By semillama on Monday, April 24, 2000 - 03:36 pm:

    I prefer s/he/it, becuase of how you pronounce it.


By Rhiannon on Monday, April 24, 2000 - 04:16 pm:

    My computer killed itself, and I've been busy working and writing freaking papers and preparing for hellish oral presentations (it went okay today, and my prof. -- the one I adore -- said I did very well BUT [oh GOD!] he mentioned that paper I did on PTSD and Vietnam vets last year [which I believe was the first thing I ever wrote about on here]...I had hoped he had forgotten about that! Ack!) and so I have been unable to visit this little black place for quite some time.

    Sorta on topic:

    One of the nice things about going to a school like this is that every shade of the feminine-masculine spectrum is represented within one biological gender, from the really dainty girls to transgendered people. It has really helped me understand myself and humans in general. No one's a freak...we just all fall along different points of the same scale. We're all okay.


By Isolde on Monday, April 24, 2000 - 04:52 pm:

    I'm with Rhi on the not knowing how to act like a girl thing.
    I'm also repeatedly mistaken as a small man, which is really frustrating, since I don't really look like a man. (I will never forgive the boyfriend in high school who told me not to cut my hair because it would "make you look mannish.")
    Perhaps I just have gender identity issues?
    Who knows.
    Good luck with your presentations, Rhi.


By Antigone on Monday, April 24, 2000 - 09:41 pm:

    How do you know?


By Isolde on Tuesday, April 25, 2000 - 12:19 am:

    Good point.
    I always start thinking about it when I'm pursuing someone, though, which is why it came to mind...I watched Boys Don't Cry on the flight back home. That movie fucked me up. I mean, it's wonderful, but...Jesus.


By Bell_jar on Tuesday, April 25, 2000 - 01:21 am:

    i loved _boys don't cry_ i believe it was a life changing movie. since seeing it i've been doing lots of research on transsexuals and transgendered persons.

    in fact, i just interviewed tonight for a volunteer position with the university that would make me in charge of a group called concerned, active, and aware students. if i receive the position i hope to do an event drawing attention to the vast number of hate crimes committed toward transsexual individuals. it's something that people aren't well informed of, at least where i am from.


By Gee on Tuesday, April 25, 2000 - 03:39 am:

    labels aren't property. labels are adjectives and nouns.

    I've labeled Rhiannon as intelligent, but she does not yet belong to me. Someday she will, but not yet.


By semillama on Tuesday, April 25, 2000 - 09:11 am:

    Not if the RLO (Rhiannon Liberation Organization) has anything to say for it!

    We'll shut down every Tim Horton's in Canada if we have to!


By J on Tuesday, April 25, 2000 - 10:02 am:

    My dad always said I should have been the boy and my brother should have been the girl,and he was right.Like Rhi said,if someone hurt my feeling enough to make me want to cry,I just had to kick their ass,it was a pride thing.After I beat the shit out of them I would cry later,when nobody could see me,it was a pride thing.


By Rhiannon on Tuesday, April 25, 2000 - 06:41 pm:

    1) Thanks, Isolde. I think the presentations went okay.

    2) Gee, love, (G. Love?) just say the word and I'm yours.

    3) Sem, is the organization trying to liberate me, or am I trying to liberate others?

    4) J, I think there's a connection there....now that I don't care about people seeing me cry, I no longer want to beat them up.


By semillama on Tuesday, April 25, 2000 - 07:28 pm:

    Actualy, it's a front for a group of radical puppet makers whose platform is based on banning the import of cheap Canadian sock puppets, which would put them out of business.


By Antigone on Tuesday, April 25, 2000 - 08:00 pm:

    J, would you please beat the shit out of me?


By Gee on Wednesday, April 26, 2000 - 03:56 am:

    THE WORD.


    as for the RLO, bring it on. We'll have another Troy.


By Rhiannon on Wednesday, April 26, 2000 - 09:57 am:

    I always wanted to start a revolution.


By J on Wednesday, April 26, 2000 - 02:22 pm:

    Antigone you would have to sign something that says you won,t have any charges pressed against me,then you have to hurt my feelings..do you really want to go there?


By Gee on Thursday, April 27, 2000 - 01:48 am:

    I want to be Paris, because he was young and goodlooking. Semillama can be the old fart of a husband you're running away from.

    of course we'll have to tinker with the ending a bit.


By semillama on Thursday, April 27, 2000 - 08:50 am:

    I get to be Agamemnon? Cool.

    Who gets to be Eris?


By Margret on Thursday, April 27, 2000 - 09:29 am:

    I would like to opt in early for the role of Iphegenia if I may.


By cyst on Thursday, April 27, 2000 - 10:00 am:

    I'll try out for cassandra.


By cyst on Thursday, April 27, 2000 - 10:06 am:

    Iphigenia is best known as the daughter Agamemnon, leader of the Greek forces at Troy, had to sacrifice in order to appease Artemis. Agamemnon, or perhaps one of the troops in the Greek force of Menelaus (the brother of Agamemnon) offended Artemis, the virgin goddess of the hunt either by killing one of her sacred animals and/or by boasting immoderately that his hunting skill exceeded even that of Artemis. Artemis sent a contrary wind, which held the Greek fleet in the bay of Aulis, where it had assembled before sailing to Troy. The prophet Calchas divined that the daughter of Agamemnon would have to be sacrificed to atone for the offence. Agamemnon then summoned Iphigenia from home under the ruse that she was to be married to Achilles. When the sacrifice was about to be made, however, Iphigenia is miraculously transported to Taurus, a city on the Black Sea, and an animal sent in her place.

    It is interesting, and perhaps significant, that the story of Iphigenia's sacrifice is not mentioned in the Iliad or the Odyssey, despite there being ample opportunity and reason to do so. The earliest source for the story is in the report we have of the lost Homeric Cypria (which is usually thought to date one to two centuries after the Homeric epics). In the next source, Aeschylus' play The Libation Bearers (c. 460 BC), Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon, mentioned the killing of Iphigenia as part of her justification for killing Agamemnon upon his return to Mycene after the Trojan War. The two plays of Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis, and Iphigenia at Tauris, are centered on the story of Iphigenia. The story also gets minor mention in Hesiod's Catalogue of Women and Eoiae 71, which reports that she was changed into the goddess Hecate instead of being sacrificed.

    The complexity of Iphigenia's story is present in many of the heroines of Greek mythology. Many of them appear either to have been goddesses in earlier times--which powers they have lost in the historical period--or are so similar to known goddesses that they appear to be hardly more than a different name for the same divinity. Iphigenia is so closely associated with Artemis, that her name is frequently seen as a mere epithet for Artemis (H.J. Rose p. 119.), which justifies the suspicion that Iphigenia might have originally been another competing virgin goddess of the hunt, whose character and functions were subsumed by Artemis.

    ---------------------

    Cassandra was the most beautiful of the daughters of Priam and Hecuba, the king and queen of Troy. She was given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, who wished to seduce her; when she accepted his gift but refused his sexual advances, he deprived her prophecies of the power to persuade.

    At the end of the Trojan War, Cassandra foresaw the danger posed by the Trojan horse; the people of Troy ignored her warnings and the Greek soldiers hiding inside the horse were able to capture the city. During the sack of Troy, Cassandra was raped by the Locrian (or "lesser") Ajax, and was then given as a war prize to Agamemnon. She returned to Greece with Agamemnon, and tried to warn him of the danger which awaited him there; once again her prophecy was ignored, and both she and Agamemnon were murdered by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.

    Etymology
    "She who entangles men"


By Margret on Thursday, April 27, 2000 - 10:19 am:

    I've always had a bit of fondness for Orestes and Electra, too, and even Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Who don't I like? House Atreides and House Peleiades.
    Sartre's 'Les Mouches' is fabulous in the thematic expansion and resignification of this material.


By Rhiannon on Thursday, April 27, 2000 - 11:06 am:

    Wait, wait, wait...does this make me Helen? Because I want to be Athena.


By semillama on Thursday, April 27, 2000 - 12:51 pm:

    I always identified more with Ulysses anyway.


By Margret on Thursday, April 27, 2000 - 01:34 pm:

    Odysseus or Ulysses?
    Or the band Cream?
    Or James Joyce?
    Jeezis, Sem, can't you just say what you mean once in a while? Chrissakes.


By patrick on Thursday, April 27, 2000 - 01:39 pm:

    Nation of Ulysses?
    Ulysses S Grant?
    Eddie Grant?
    Electric Avenue?
    Take Me Higher?


By moonit on Thursday, April 27, 2000 - 04:30 pm:

    Sometimes I feel so dumb.


By semillama on Thursday, April 27, 2000 - 06:22 pm:


By Gee on Friday, April 28, 2000 - 03:58 am:

    man, nobody gets me.

    I was trying to say that Rhiannon is Helen, I'm Paris, and Semillama is Menelaus. Rhiannon has fled from Semillama and his cronies, into my warm and loving embrace.


    but fine, if you all want to just chose random figures, I want to be Anne Shirley.


By Rhiannon on Friday, April 28, 2000 - 07:58 am:

    Sorry, babe. I've had that one called since I was 9 years old. You can be Diana. Or Gilbert, if you're so inclined.


By Rhiannon on Friday, April 28, 2000 - 11:03 am:

    Wait, that's not nice of me. We can take turns being Anne.


By J on Friday, April 28, 2000 - 12:26 pm:

    I want to be Kim Bassinger cause she has that hot man.


By Margret on Friday, April 28, 2000 - 01:33 pm:

    If I can be ANYONE; well, then, I want to be Ole Golly.


By agatha on Friday, April 28, 2000 - 01:40 pm:

    i want to be harriet. then you could be my nanny.


By Rhiannon on Friday, April 28, 2000 - 01:57 pm:


By D.s. on Friday, April 28, 2000 - 04:44 pm:

    i want to be harriet, if you'll be peter. oh, peter...


By Isolde on Friday, April 28, 2000 - 09:06 pm:

    I'll be the couch!


By Gee on Saturday, April 29, 2000 - 03:15 am:

    on the days that I'm not Anne Shirley, I'll be Ramona Quimby. she was as cuteasabuddon.


By Jay Suzy Ann on Saturday, October 27, 2001 - 09:49 pm:

    By Jay Suzy Ann. Then I want to be Aphrodite once more again as I was once long ago for real. She is me and I am her and we are al together koo koo a choo the Beatles That or indeed the only female Librarian Of the Libary of and at Alexandria you know who I mean only this time they would not burn it down I would see too that this time but I am going to be Captain Kirk and also Captain Jeanway in my future lifes so look for me there as well plus I am going to be the Doctor Doctrix in a future time line as well. so will see you then later. Jay Suzy Ann my femm name right now in this time line. even tough I am in a male body once again I am still very much female inside and always will be because all life does begin as female anyway thats the way it really isAnd we always remain that way forever. even between lifes and inside always as well. later Jay Suzy Ann.


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