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- Xref: sparky soc.women:19766 alt.feminism:4597 soc.men:19450
- Newsgroups: soc.women,alt.feminism,soc.men
- Path: sparky!uunet!caen!sdd.hp.com!apollo.hp.com!netnews
- From: nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson)
- Subject: Re: Self Appreciation (was: Re: Elle MacPherson causes rape?)
- Sender: usenet@apollo.hp.com (Usenet News)
- Message-ID: <BxvJp7.12o@apollo.hp.com>
- Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 19:05:30 GMT
- Distribution: usa
- References: <1992Nov17.022402.28700@adobe.com> <1992Nov17.163629.1172@mr.med.ge.com>
- Nntp-Posting-Host: c.ch.apollo.hp.com
- Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Chelmsford, MA
- Lines: 45
-
- In article <1992Nov17.163629.1172@mr.med.ge.com> wendy@sundown.mil.wi.us writes:
-
- >The pain of being transexual is almost to much to bear. Many Transexual
- >people kill themselves over the internal conflict. We are branded as crazy
- >by many who have no idea of how we feel. I have never thought or dreamed
- >like my male friends. I have had to force myself (with great difficulty) to
- >act and react like a male. My therapist says the hardest part will be to
- >drop the male shell I have hidden myself in (so that I could survive as a
- >male).
-
- There is at least one branch of feminist thinking that tends
- to downplay the concept that gender roles are anything more
- than the results of socialization. These people believe that
- any suggestion that there are innate differences in affect
- or intellect to be highly questionable and in any case that
- such suggestions, or research that would tend to focus on
- such things, are politivally incorrect. (a couple of decades
- ago the concept that gender differences were mainly socialization
- was a common theme among many feminists; I don't know whether
- it still is.)
-
- How do those who hold this view square it with the opinions
- of posters like the above? Transexuals will frequently claim
- that they "feel like" a member of U sex in a V body. Indeed,
- interesting philosophical questions are raised by just asking
- what it means to "feel like" a member of a certain gender.
-
- I am a male. I am physically attracted to females, which makes
- me heterosexual. I have a variety of personality characteristics
- and might feel happy, sad, driven, angry, elated, wistful, melan-
- choly, silly, and so forth at various times. Yet despite all
- of this I'm not sure what it "feels like" to be a man. That is,
- I can't associate any of these feelings with "maleness" and
- obviously I don't know what it "feels like" to be female, either.
- So why/how does the above poster think she (he? --what's the
- correct pronoun?) does?
-
-
- ---peter
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