I was wondering. What's the difference between #2 raised girl, and #3 choose to be girl? Is #3 different because they choose to become girl when they are adults? Ir was a hoot that she just didn't get "patriarchy". -ClareL
Yes, I suppose it is a bit of an arbitrary distinction, isn't it? But yes, it comes down to when they started living as girls. Glad you liked the 'patriarchy' thing. I thought it was a nice touch...
Honestly, I thought it was rather stupid. Patriarchy being the feminist term for everything they don't like about society and feel like they can blame on men, so basically everything.
You'd think they'd actually teach them more than buzzwords from an ideology that was dated when the depopulation event happened in the first place.
That's like blaming 19th century sociological issues on Tyranny. Honor duels were a thing because Tyranny.
This was a pretty good caption, but these kinds of anachronistic ideological potshots really hurt my suspension of disbelief.
Especially since she had okayish explanations for it. I mean she doesn't seem like a random dizz without a clue who just repeats something she's heard sometime ago and never understood. She actually seems to have a pretty good idea of what's going on.
Anyway, so basically type #2 is raised as girls. Are they like pre-chosen and produced with hormonal boosts or something? Or are you just suspending gender as an inborn thing for this setting?
Meanwhile the third type seems to be boys who realized that being a girl might be better for them. I wonder how that actually works. Basically they figure they don't like boyish stuff that much and people slowly introduce them to more and more girl stuff?
Hey there, Unsurprisingly, I disagree with you about the Patriarchy. I think we have very different definitions and ideas about what Patriarchy means. For what it's worth, I don't think it's a perfect term or analysis - but it's the one in current use, and it'll do for the most part. Patriarchy isn't a formal system of government, like, say, Monarchy (which is part of why I consider the term misleading). It's an ideology, a set of ideas. I don't think you can deny that western culture has a set of widely held ideas about gender (girls wear dresses, like sewing, are inherently inferior to men, men like fighting and putting up shelves). The examples I've given are a bit over the top, but there are more subtle/useful examples - the fact that women are under greater pressure to look good for men, for example. The idea of patriarchy states, however, that these ideas/beliefs a) help reinforce the status quo regarding gender, and b) this status quo is one where social and political power is generally held by men. So, there are some aspects of the idea of patriarchy - particularly as it's commonly (mis) understood - that I'd argue with, but I think it's basically a valid idea. And I think part of the patriarchal ideology is the idea that women are inherently inferior to men and that no man should ever do anything remotely feminine for fear of being forever tainted and emasculated. Which is why, in the early days after the depopulation event, there was an extreme reluctance to volunteer for feminisation. Anyhow, I'm glad you liked the caption overall :) As for the question of how the three types are defined... The distinction between type 2 and 3 is quite blurry, and it depends on the individual's experience, really. In some cases the parents would decide they want that kid to be a girl and raise them accordingly, unless they object. In other cases they'd raise them in a fairly gender neutral way and give them the choice to change (back) repeatedly as they grow up. Whether to intervene with hormones depends really on how certain they are they want to be a woman when they grow up, I guess. As for the question of 'gender as an inborn thing' - in the real world, there's some evidence that gender identity becomes fixed at a very early age - a few months, IIRC. But this is a) based on a very small number of cases, and b) occurs in a context of our real world society, where gender is more or less strictly tied to physical sex. The question of innate gender becomes very different in a world where most women were born male...
I was wondering. What's the difference between #2 raised girl, and #3 choose to be girl? Is #3 different because they choose to become girl when they are adults?
ReplyDeleteIr was a hoot that she just didn't get "patriarchy".
-ClareL
Yes, I suppose it is a bit of an arbitrary distinction, isn't it? But yes, it comes down to when they started living as girls.
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked the 'patriarchy' thing. I thought it was a nice touch...
Honestly, I thought it was rather stupid. Patriarchy being the feminist term for everything they don't like about society and feel like they can blame on men, so basically everything.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think they'd actually teach them more than buzzwords from an ideology that was dated when the depopulation event happened in the first place.
That's like blaming 19th century sociological issues on Tyranny. Honor duels were a thing because Tyranny.
This was a pretty good caption, but these kinds of anachronistic ideological potshots really hurt my suspension of disbelief.
Especially since she had okayish explanations for it. I mean she doesn't seem like a random dizz without a clue who just repeats something she's heard sometime ago and never understood. She actually seems to have a pretty good idea of what's going on.
Anyway, so basically type #2 is raised as girls. Are they like pre-chosen and produced with hormonal boosts or something? Or are you just suspending gender as an inborn thing for this setting?
Meanwhile the third type seems to be boys who realized that being a girl might be better for them. I wonder how that actually works. Basically they figure they don't like boyish stuff that much and people slowly introduce them to more and more girl stuff?
Hey there,
ReplyDeleteUnsurprisingly, I disagree with you about the Patriarchy. I think we have very different definitions and ideas about what Patriarchy means. For what it's worth, I don't think it's a perfect term or analysis - but it's the one in current use, and it'll do for the most part.
Patriarchy isn't a formal system of government, like, say, Monarchy (which is part of why I consider the term misleading). It's an ideology, a set of ideas. I don't think you can deny that western culture has a set of widely held ideas about gender (girls wear dresses, like sewing, are inherently inferior to men, men like fighting and putting up shelves). The examples I've given are a bit over the top, but there are more subtle/useful examples - the fact that women are under greater pressure to look good for men, for example. The idea of patriarchy states, however, that these ideas/beliefs a) help reinforce the status quo regarding gender, and b) this status quo is one where social and political power is generally held by men.
So, there are some aspects of the idea of patriarchy - particularly as it's commonly (mis) understood - that I'd argue with, but I think it's basically a valid idea. And I think part of the patriarchal ideology is the idea that women are inherently inferior to men and that no man should ever do anything remotely feminine for fear of being forever tainted and emasculated. Which is why, in the early days after the depopulation event, there was an extreme reluctance to volunteer for feminisation.
Anyhow, I'm glad you liked the caption overall :)
As for the question of how the three types are defined... The distinction between type 2 and 3 is quite blurry, and it depends on the individual's experience, really. In some cases the parents would decide they want that kid to be a girl and raise them accordingly, unless they object. In other cases they'd raise them in a fairly gender neutral way and give them the choice to change (back) repeatedly as they grow up. Whether to intervene with hormones depends really on how certain they are they want to be a woman when they grow up, I guess.
As for the question of 'gender as an inborn thing' - in the real world, there's some evidence that gender identity becomes fixed at a very early age - a few months, IIRC. But this is a) based on a very small number of cases, and b) occurs in a context of our real world society, where gender is more or less strictly tied to physical sex. The question of innate gender becomes very different in a world where most women were born male...