Right, I don't mean to question your ability to accept other peoples' self-identified sex/gender, and I definitely don't want to question your right to lay claim to sex while abandoning gender, because that would be horribly hypocritical of me (also, rude). What I'm trying to suss out is why we're having this conversation rather than a feminist one in which we could all agree that sex determining behavior is a bad thing (and I think we all would agree on that). I'm not going to lie; your phrase — the term "irrelevant" particularly – hit a raw nerve; and while I know you don't mean that statement in the way that I've seen it used before, my first response is still to say "ow" and to look at you funny. Which might be why both myself and dharma_slut (I think) reacted the way we did – with uncertainty about whether or not you thought gender-as-construct made illegitimate different alignments of sex – because it's so common to see arguments that go from gender-as-construct to "and you trans people are just wishful thinkers", or whatever.
Which is not to say that you're "not allowed" (seriously, not my place anyway) to say that gender is irrelevant to you, because I actually I find that rather heartening! I am just trying to explain why my knee jerk reaction involved raised hackles.
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Date: 6 Mar 2010 04:01 pm (UTC)Which is not to say that you're "not allowed" (seriously, not my place anyway) to say that gender is irrelevant to you, because I actually I find that rather heartening! I am just trying to explain why my knee jerk reaction involved raised hackles.