Editorials & Other Articles

struggle4progress

(118,290 posts) Mon Jun 8, 2015, 02:24 PM Jun 2015

What Makes a Woman?

By ELINOR BURKETT
JUNE 6, 2015

Do women and men have different brains?

Back when Lawrence H. Summers was president of Harvard and suggested that they did, the reaction was swift and merciless ...

But when Bruce Jenner said much the same thing in an April interview with Diane Sawyer, he was lionized for his bravery, even for his progressivism ...

I have fought for many of my 68 years against efforts to put women — our brains, our hearts, our bodies, even our moods — into tidy boxes, to reduce us to hoary stereotypes. Suddenly, I find that many of the people I think of as being on my side — people who proudly call themselves progressive and fervently support the human need for self-determination — are buying into the notion that minor differences in male and female brains lead to major forks in the road and that some sort of gendered destiny is encoded in us ...

People who haven’t lived their whole lives as women, whether Ms. Jenner or Mr. Summers, shouldn’t get to define us ...

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/sunday/what-makes-a-woman.html

3 replies

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What Makes a Woman? (Original Post) struggle4progress Jun 2015 OP

And as a response... MicaelS Jun 2015 #1

That was an excellent read, and it's refreshing to see the areas of emphasis geek tragedy Jun 2015 #2

It is very loaded terminology being used. salib Jun 2015 #3

MicaelS

(8,747 posts)

1. And as a response...

Reply to struggle4progress (Original post)

Mon Jun 8, 2015, 04:05 PM

Jun 2015

What Makes a Woman? A Trans Woman Responds to a Mid-20th Century Era Feminist

geek tragedy

(68,868 posts)

2. That was an excellent read, and it's refreshing to see the areas of emphasis

Reply to MicaelS (Reply #1)

Mon Jun 8, 2015, 04:21 PM

Jun 2015

and some productive dialogue.

Particularly interesting was this transwoman's calling out of the "abortion isn't a women's issue" nonsense that comes from some transmen.

salib

(2,116 posts)

3. It is very loaded terminology being used.

Reply to struggle4progress (Original post)

Mon Jun 8, 2015, 04:46 PM

Jun 2015

"woman"
"man"
"female"
"male"

Seems to me that some are arguing that there is a clear distinction between male and female, yet these same claim somehow one can migrate between these two distinct states. That could be seen as contradictory, or at least leaving one open to challenge.

Perhaps it is important to understand why doest thou protest so much?

It does not have to be a bad thing, just maybe consciousness raising.

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