Oh Noez! What about Teh Menz? -Patriarchy isn't a dude's friend EITHER!

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Interestingly enough, until around shortly after the turn of the 20th century, children in America were dressed in unisex smocks and commonly referred to as "it" until they were three or four.

Yes, I remember my mind being blown when I was a kid when they told me that a baby wearing a long white dress in a photograph was my grandpa. 

And then there were the rituals of cutting off baby curls, graduating from short pants, etc. It's like nobody was born male then, they kind of grew into it.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Interestingly enough, until around shortly after the turn of the 20th century, children in America were dressed in unisex smocks and commonly referred to as "it" until they were three or four.

Yes, I remember my mind being blown when I was a kid when they told me that a baby wearing a long white dress in a photograph was my grandpa. 

And then there were the rituals of cutting off baby curls, graduating from short pants, etc. It's like nobody was born male then, they kind of grew into it.

Yeah.

I don't necessarily think it was a healthier time in general, just that may have been a healthier way of dealing with babies instead of shoving gender at them right off the bat.

Also, having caught up, I am saddened that the thread seems to have largely degenerated into pedanticism, butthurt, and us-vs.-them. It's probably time for me to bow out, because I largely feel that what I've had to say has been pushed out the window or swept under the rug. I might scavenge through for material for an essay so it doesn't go to waste.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Interestingly enough, until around shortly after the turn of the 20th century, children in America were dressed in unisex smocks and commonly referred to as "it" until they were three or four.

Yes, I remember my mind being blown when I was a kid when they told me that a baby wearing a long white dress in a photograph was my grandpa. 

And then there were the rituals of cutting off baby curls, graduating from short pants, etc. It's like nobody was born male then, they kind of grew into it.

Yeah.

I don't necessarily think it was a healthier time in general, just that may have been a healthier way of dealing with babies instead of shoving gender at them right off the bat.

Also, having caught up, I am saddened that the thread seems to have largely degenerated into pedanticism, butthurt, and us-vs.-them. It's probably time for me to bow out, because I largely feel that what I've had to say has been pushed out the window or swept under the rug. I might scavenge through for material for an essay so it doesn't go to waste.

Yeah. It's been fucked up for a couple of days at least. Glad you can salvage something out of all this.

[Freeky]

So you'd say no to surgery? That doesn't always work out well, in terms of the kid being happy as an adult.

No? I only just heard of it, it sounds pretty serious, so obviously something would have to be done just to fix the problem. Also being sexless would make for a miserable childhood because everyone would exclude you.

I would disagree. How often did other kids ask you to verify your sex before playing with you?

I was excluded for things just as arbitrary, or so I dimly remember. 

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Maybe I'm going to look like a huge asshole according to Paesior,

I am now operating under the ground rule that if someone wants to advance an argument, they should, despite what anyone may decide is an "unacceptable opinion".  If you can't talk about it without accusing the other side of being some horrible monster and/or bigot, then you probably don't have a very good argument yourself.

Fanaticism is just another way to not think.

Agreed. Though I will point out that I wasn't putting words into his mouth:

Hopefully he doesn't come back and say he was describing things that affect striaght white cis males because then he would "look like a huge asshole".

I'll point out that "look like a huge asshole" was in quotations because it was a direct quotation from Freeky who attacked me for interpreting your argument exactly as you were making it.

She said that you and Signora were making the same point and that if your argument were for cis white guys being oppressed, you would look like a huge asshole for undermining your own argument or something.

I guess you missed the part where I explicitly said I didn't disagree with that as a criticism of Signora's post and tried to clarify whether "these are all things cis guys are immune from" a typo or sarcasm.

But, fuck, why should anyone respond to attempts to communicate after being butthurt has served us so well this far.

It sounded to me like you had changed your mind since your earlier assessment.

And woe, imaginary butthurt also rained down on the thread.

That's okay though, it's a hot button subject and these sort of things are bound to happen.

Sorry for misinterpreting you there dude.

[Juana]

A lot of the time, I agree that the doctors are overstepping their bounds. Medical ethics right now doesn't even require that a doctor consult the parents about what to do with the baby. Which is ridiculous and wrong and I would sue the shit out of a hospital that gave my kid radical surgery without even fucking ASKING me what I wanted to do about it.

OK, no. What source did you get that information from? It's flat-out false, and I would use that to red-flag everything else from that source.

Between XX and XY which is relatively recent, I think? I might be wrong. I'll go look it up soon. And written by an actual doctor, too. Do you know when the rule changed, off hand?

Re: the asterisk, I meant to add things like androgyn insensitivity (complete or partial) and weird things like some of your cells being XX an others being XY. Am I the one using 'em and not expanding on them?


edited to fix capitalization.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

A lot of the time, I agree that the doctors are overstepping their bounds. Medical ethics right now doesn't even require that a doctor consult the parents about what to do with the baby. Which is ridiculous and wrong and I would sue the shit out of a hospital that gave my kid radical surgery without even fucking ASKING me what I wanted to do about it.

OK, no. What source did you get that information from? It's flat-out false, and I would use that to red-flag everything else from that source.

Between XX and XY which is relatively recent, I think? I might be wrong. I'll go look it up soon. And written by an actual doctor, too. Do you know when the rule changed, off hand?

Re: the asterisk, I meant to add things like androgyn insensitivity (complete or partial) and weird things like some of your cells being XX an others being XY. Am I the one using 'em and not expanding on them?


edited to fix capitalization.

If that book actually claims that it's not a violation of state and in some cases Federal law to perform elective surgery on infants without informed parental consent, view absolutely everything in it with heavy suspicion. The author being a doctor is meaningless. The laws protecting vulnerable populations from unconsented procedures have been evolving since the Nuremberg trials, but really got codified after the exposure of the Tuskeegee experiments and public outrage about eugenics programs (particularly the widespread sterilization of poor women and women of color) in the 1970's. There's a timeline on one of the government websites... I'll try to find it, it was part of my NIH Human Research Subject certification training. The only time informed consent can be waived is in the case of a life-threatening emergency.

Here's the timeline pertaining to informed consent in human research subjects:
http://history.nih.gov/about/timelines_laws_human.html

Some additional discussion of informed consent:

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=7.70.065
http://www.uic.edu/depts/mcam/ethics/ic.htm

There is muddy water when it comes to refusing treatment to children, however:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17181756

Note that this does not in any way mean that it is legal to waive the informed consent process for elective procedures for children, but rather that there is legal gray area when it comes to children or their guardians refusing medical procedures for children. This is particularly relevant in cases such as recent events in Oregon where children died due to parental refusal of treatment.

Thanks to ongoing open dialogue about gender and intersex, the model in the US is slowly shifting toward avoiding non-medically-necessary surgical intervention until the patient is able to make their own decision. This does create a conflict when parents insist on surgery where none is necessary. Colombia, of course, has had laws protecting intersex children from genital surgery for over a decade.
http://www.isna.org/node/97

[Roaring Biscuit!]

I was definitely more interested in the psychological effects of patriarchy on men, I mean, being taught that 50% of people on the planet are inferior to you is gotta have some effect on your friendships and stuff :/

Also, this study looks like it could be pretty interesting when it's done:

http://bigboysdontcry.weebly.com/index.html

[Verbal Mike]

Took me a bit long to catch up...

I just have a couple of thoughts I thought I'd share.

First, on the OP subject, there's one point I forgot to mention that I've thought about a lot and talked about with people. Basically, patriarchal patterns of courting dictate that the man typically make the first move. Aside from the fact that this leads many men to be overly aggressive in their advances, it also seriously bites for Nice Guys, i.e. men who aren't predisposed to advance courting. You're expected to do something you find difficult or odd and women will not typically actively advance on you if you don't. The whole way the two normative genders relate with one another - within a position of relative privilege compared to other gender/sexual identities – is totally out of whack and it sucks for everyone.

Second, even after all the shit here, I'm still glad I learned the "cis" terminology. It will allow me to refer to non-trans people as a group of our own rather than have to clumsily take trans people out of the equation. Sometimes a dichotomy is something you want to use in a discussion, and using it does not in any way preclude being aware of the more fine-grained reality. And better a lofty, detached-sounding intellectual word than one already laden with cultural connotations. What matters is how a word affects people, and most people haven't even heard this "cis" thing used once so it's not likely to offend or oppress people.

Third, I talked with a friend earlier about this a little, and I think an important distinction has been missing in some of this thread. I seem to recall someone already more or less pointing it out, might have been Rat. But anyway, the distinction is between culturally-conditioned self-oppression and interpersonal oppression. I.e., limiting/harming yourself because of ingrained cultural norms you are programmed to stick to, and limiting/harming others because of said programs.
I like where Roger was going with privilege only meaning you haven't been harmed in this and that way just yet. But isn't "privilege" as used in this context simply the difference between groups that are interpersonally oppressed more and groups that are interpersonally oppressed less? All groups self-oppress, some groups just also have other people oppressing them more. Privilege is about getting a bit less shit from others than some other group does.

Ultimately, it seems to me that self-oppression and interpersonal oppression are two sides of the same coin, and this is maybe something that goes right back to the heart of this thread's original topic. If you're busy stuffing your own life into a neat standard-issue box, you're likelier to expect others to do the same, and hence likely to oppress them for not acting like a standard-issue box resident. You can't truly stop being part of oppressing others while you are busy oppressing yourself in that same way. By following your White Man programming, you are both limiting yourself to a tiny box and taking part in policing literally all other people (your White Man peers included) to keep them in some box as well. If you see a box as the space in which life takes place, you're pretty likely to apply that principle to other individuals and to yourself at the same time.

Am I making sense here?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Second, even after all the shit here, I'm still glad I learned the "cis" terminology. It will allow me to refer to non-trans people as a group of our own rather than have to clumsily take trans people out of the equation.

YOU CAN'T LABEL ME!  WHAT ABOUT MY WHITE MALE AMERICAN PRIVILEGE?   

IT'S ALL RUINED!  RUUUUUINED!

PJ,
Tongue rammed through cheek.

[Verbal Mike]

... Roger's comments and experience of porn stars and how the life can seriously fuck them up ...

That sounds really worth reading, link?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

... Roger's comments and experience of porn stars and how the life can seriously fuck them up ...

That sounds really worth reading, link?

I think it's in horrorology.

BRB.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Crap.  Can't find it.

[Verbal Mike]

 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Pix might know.  I've long since lost track of 90% of what I've written here.