Gender Balance in the English Department

[KatjevanLoon]

Jun 22, 2011 1:49:29 GMT -5 @Ynnek said:

Please read the entire thing in full-context.

"I believe that if you are born a man, you are a man. If you are born a girl, you are girl. If you decide to change genders as an individual, then that is up to you."

Basic gender identity in children doesn't develop until around age three. You are not born with a gender identity. You are born with a biological gender. Therefore, transsexualism, requiring a person to develop a gender identity first, does not come about until later, after birth. Until then, you are the gender you have been assigned. This is not transphobic. This is documented and explained.

btw, your own argument still holds no water.

Natal sex (ie, the appearance of genitals and presence or non-presence of reproductive organs) is not the same thing as gender.

Babies are born babies. Not men or girls or women or boys. They are babies. They have genitals, but peoples' obsession with the genitals of infants is pretty disturbing, and genitals do not necessarily have anything to do with gender.

Please read the links I gave you for some context.

Your argument is still transphobic and cissexist.

[Fuck Yeah Dion]

Jun 22, 2011 1:49:29 GMT -5 @Ynnek said:

Please read the entire thing in full-context.

"I believe that if you are born a man, you are a man. If you are born a girl, you are girl. If you decide to change genders as an individual, then that is up to you."

Basic gender identity in children doesn't develop until around age three. You are not born with a gender identity. You are born with a biological gender. Therefore, transsexualism, requiring a person to develop a gender identity first, does not come about until later, after birth. Until then, you are the gender you have been assigned. This is not transphobic. This is documented and explained.

btw, your own argument still holds no water.

I think you're confusing gender, sex, and gender identity here.

[Deleted]

For the sake of clarity:

Human beings are born with a combination of X and Y chromosomes. These combinations are labelled 'sexes'. By far the most common combinations are XX and XY, and these have been labelled 'the female sex' and 'the male sex'. These combinations are so prevalent that throughout the vast majority of human history people whose sex does not conform to one or the other have been conditioned or surgically modified to conform to one of these two categories. In addition, collections of ideas have formed about how people behave/should behave according to their sex. These are called genders. Whether the genders have any intrinsic reality is debatable, but they are so innate to our society that they are often key in how people define themselves.

I'm in no way defending the position that sex controls anything other than certain body features, and I'm not defending transphobia or cissexism or the gender binary. I just think that education is a far more powerful tool than condemnation, and that we shouldn't necessarily assume that Ynnek is being offensive on purpose, as frustrating as it might be to have to explain things like this over and over again.

[Ynnek]

"I think you're confusing gender, sex, and gender identity here."

You can't confuse biological gender.

Just to clarify that we have the same definitions:

1) Gender: is the distinguishing characteristics of male and female.

2) Gender Identity: is what individuals identify as their own gender.

3) Sex: the state of being male or female.

"Babies are born babies."

Babies can also be assigned gender before birth.

"They have genitals, but peoples' obsession with the genitals of infants is pretty disturbing, and genitals do not necessarily have anything to do with gender."

Genitals have a lot to do with gender and gender identity. I think that's the main reason why a number of transsexuals have gender realignment surgery.

What is the point of this anyway, is this a side-thread?

[Annie Ozone]

The point is, you're being a troll. By deliberately coming in and refusing to educate yourself and using your own definitions (which nobody here agrees with and which make no sense, scientifically speaking) you are invading a space that has previously been safe and causing this board to go off-topic. Read the links katje's provided. Then read them again. Then look up "cisgender privilege" on google.

Also, there is no such thing as biological gender, because gender is an inherently social construct. Sex is biological; gender is social. Print out this stuff you've been spewing and hand it to a bio and a sociology professor. See which one starts laughing first (my bet's on the bio, unless ze's a white male).

PS: .018 of 6 billion is 108,000,000 people. That is, over a hundred million people are intersex by your statistics. I think that's a significant number, don't you?

[Ynnek]

John William Money coined the term 'biological gender.' He was a psychologist, sexologist and author, specializing in research into sexual identity and biology of gender. I doubt the term is laughable.

He also said, "The term "gender role" appeared in print first in 1955. The term "gender identity" was used in a press release, November 21, 1966, to announce the new clinic for transsexuals at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was disseminated in the media worldwide, and soon entered the vernacular. The definitions of gender and gender identity vary on a doctrinal basis. In popularized and scientifically debased usage, sex is what you are biologically; gender is what you become socially; gender identity is your own sense or conviction of maleness or femaleness; and gender role is the cultural stereotype of what is masculine and feminine. Causality with respect to gender identity disorder is subdivisible into genetic, prenatal hormonal, postnatal social, and postpubertal hormonal determinants, but there is, as yet, no comprehensive and detailed theory of causality. Gender coding in the brain is bipolar. In gender identity disorder, there is discordancy between the natal sex of one's external genitalia and the brain coding of one's gender as masculine or feminine."

I also bold one sentence above as I think it is prudent for you to understand: "The definitions of gender and gender identity vary on a doctrinal basis."

Also, can we stop the personal insults? Calling my points of view 'trolling', 'sexist', 'misogynistic', 'cissexist' isn't good for an open-minded discourse. Let's be honest. Pigeonholing things like that is why 'gender roles' exist in the first place.

It's like a man telling a woman, "You sound feminist, you shouldn't do that, and therefore I shall not listen to you." Wherein the woman replies, "You sound sexist, you shouldn't do that, and therefore I shall not listen to you."

As a more apt example for this discussion, it's like a discussion between a boy and his father, where the father tells the son, "You sound like a girl, you shouldn't do that."

"PS: .018 of 6 billion is 108,000,000 people. That is, over a hundred million people are intersex by your statistics. I think that's a significant number, don't you?"

How many is 1% of 6,000,000,000 people? If you divide that by 100, you realise it is 60 million and less than the answer you gave. How is that possible? You did the maths wrong. It's actually 1.08 million. That's a lot less than 100 million.

Perhaps there is some truth in male brains being able to do maths better.

[Olive]

Jun 22, 2011 12:46:33 GMT -5 @Ynnek said:

Perhaps there is some truth in male brains being able to do maths better.

Those kind of comments are why it's very hard for any of us to take you seriously, and why many of your opinions come off as sexist. You almost had me convinced that you were a completely neutral party, and yet you still had to throw in that dig.

[Ynnek]

After being labeled 'transphobic', 'cissexist', and now 'sexist', I was indeed having a tongue-in-cheek dig. However, my debate points still stand as presented. Why is it that whenever someone disagrees or presents an alternative view that happens to be a male, the term 'sexist' is freely bantered?

[Olive]

Jun 22, 2011 13:36:30 GMT -5 @Ynnek said:

After being labeled 'transphobic', 'cissexist', and now 'sexist', I was indeed having a tongue-in-cheek dig. However, my debate points still stand as presented. Why is it that whenever someone disagrees or presents an alternative view that happens to be a male, the term 'sexist' is freely bantered?

I don't believe it's "freely bantered" when in direct response to a comment that claims the superiority of one gender over another. And in a thread where many are sensitive to such ideas, you would be wise to assume that the sarcasm of the moment might be taken seriously.

[Annie Ozone]

So at first I was like:



And now I'm just



Obviously this fool has no respect for me, or everybody else on this thread who has politely corrected hir (note: I'm not sure I'm included in that number). Coming onto this board and imposing his vocabulary and beliefs on this community is, frankly, trolling and reeking of privilege. So, let's stop feeding it. If ze's interested in actually learning, ze's been given more than enough resources. It's not my (or anyone else's) job to educate random people on the internet. They can google it.

How 'bout getting back on topic? I asked a question earlier about how many people are in y'all's classes (mine is usually 30, with a 15 or so minimum requirement). Since it seems like a lot of y'all come from smaller colleges and I (and Dodger Thirteen, I think?) come from a state university, I feel like that might have as much to do with faculty and student gender discrepancies as the subject we study does. To recap: my school has a definite majority of male faculty and a slight majority of female students. That line wavers on a class-by-class (i.e., subject-by-subject) basis. Beats class? You must be swift as the coursing river. Post-colonialism? LADIES' NIGHT.

[Olive]

Jun 22, 2011 13:57:24 GMT -5 Annie Ozone said:

How 'bout getting back on topic? I asked a question earlier about how many people are in y'all's classes (mine is usually 30, with a 15 or so minimum requirement). Since it seems like a lot of y'all come from smaller colleges and I (and Dodger Thirteen, I think?) come from a state university, I feel like that might have as much to do with faculty and student gender discrepancies as the subject we study does. To recap: my school has a definite majority of male faculty and a slight majority of female students. That line wavers on a class-by-class (i.e., subject-by-subject) basis. Beats class? You must be swift as the coursing river. Post-colonialism? LADIES' NIGHT.

Brilliant notion.

My school sounds like maybe about the same size? (Lit classes are 25-35 capped, with 12-15 minimum, usually.) I think there has been a female majority in all of my classes (yes all, including the non English or German courses), and I know there is a female majority in the undergrad population, though I think overall it's about 55% female, whereas my classes average about 75% female.

(Undergrad total is just under 10,000. I have no idea how many of those are officially in the English department.)

[Annie Ozone]

Undergrad total here is about 38,400, with ~49% male and ~51% female. Liberal Arts is the largest college; it and the College of Natural Sciences make up more than half of the undergrad population. I couldn't find any specific information about the English department, but I do know the majority of tenured English professors are male. And the student demographics really do depend on the class subject--the required classes (grammar, intro literature) are even.

PS: Our intro to literature classes are infamous--they're 300-large weed-out courses with the unluckiest (and crankiest) professor in the world heading it. It's a required course for every undergrad, which is why they're so big. I'd be really interested to see demographics for that class as relates to grades and drop-outs. Once you get past the intro courses, though, you're at a 30-person cap for [English] classes.

[Eternal Lobster]

Hmm I did some quick counting, and for the tenured English staff at my university (I go to the same state one as Dodger) about 14/35 are female. So 40% are female, 60% are male.

I can do maths, ma!

[serpentheart]

I'm not sure of the numbers in my entire university but in my last class for English (Ideas of the Real), after all the drop-outs, we had a tute class of 15, and 5 of them were male. Around 1/3 to half of people in the lectures were male. Which is not such a bad ratio.
Out of the staff the majority are women with only about 4 or 5 male, most in chair positions (professors). I saw more guys in my History classes, though. But surprisingly, there were more girls in my Russia in War and Revolution class - which felt like such a guy class because it's all modern warfare and stuff haha.

Though I think English is seen a little differently in Australia, especially since English in high school is, in majority of schools, compulsory even in senior year (with a choice of English Communications or English Studies).

There is also a great drive in my state, possibly the rest of the country, for women to study engineering, science and maths. Just last week my university invited 250 female students to a special day at the school of "e, s and m".

I would have liked to go into science or maths but because of learning disabilities as a child I can't comprehend those ideas very easily. Though I do make my own desktops, my bf is in CS and my Dad is a programmer, too.

[onlyaworkingtitle]

Getting off-track (again! sorry) to say that this gif...

Jun 22, 2011 13:57:24 GMT -5 Annie Ozone said:

... makes me happier than it has any reason to. I blame the scones.