If I followed the article correctly, I think she was setting up the first part of this "that gender presentation is inherent and 'natural'" as a bit of a strawman. But with the intent of contrasting it with the position "all gender presentation is an artificial social construct, and in an ideal world the notion of 'gender presentation' as a category wouldn't exist." (I hope I haven't badly misinterpreted her position, and that position may well have been intended as purely an arguing point as well.)
I see this as an article that must be understood in the context of the specific historic era that produced it, just as 16th century treatises on hermaphrodites have to be understood within a specific historic context. I think it's extremely difficult for anyone to stand enough outside their own era's concepts of sex, gender, and sexuality to be able to write in a way that won't seem quaintly dated at a later time.
But just as it's important to understand the constraints of the worldview that produced 16th century understandings of women's desire for each other, I sometimes feel that current discussions of gender and sexuality have lost track of the historic and social context of work produced in the '70s and '80s that can now feel narrow-minded and offensive. (Especially with regard to the intersection of sexual orientation and gender identity issues.)
I think what bothered me most about this article was the underlying assumption of linear evolution of gender/sexuality concepts, rather than an understanding of the cyclic nature of social attitudes on these topics. It's sort of like listening to someone opine on the topic of popular views of female desire who doesn't look earlier than the Victorian era and misses the medieval European belief that women had a stronger sex drive than men did.
To a large extent, I align with Newton's position that specific feature-clusters of gender presentation/performance are mediated by the available models of that particular historic era. Where I differ is in suspecting that she thinks some of those models are inherently more valid than others.
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Date: 2016-05-09 05:53 pm (UTC)I see this as an article that must be understood in the context of the specific historic era that produced it, just as 16th century treatises on hermaphrodites have to be understood within a specific historic context. I think it's extremely difficult for anyone to stand enough outside their own era's concepts of sex, gender, and sexuality to be able to write in a way that won't seem quaintly dated at a later time.
But just as it's important to understand the constraints of the worldview that produced 16th century understandings of women's desire for each other, I sometimes feel that current discussions of gender and sexuality have lost track of the historic and social context of work produced in the '70s and '80s that can now feel narrow-minded and offensive. (Especially with regard to the intersection of sexual orientation and gender identity issues.)
I think what bothered me most about this article was the underlying assumption of linear evolution of gender/sexuality concepts, rather than an understanding of the cyclic nature of social attitudes on these topics. It's sort of like listening to someone opine on the topic of popular views of female desire who doesn't look earlier than the Victorian era and misses the medieval European belief that women had a stronger sex drive than men did.
To a large extent, I align with Newton's position that specific feature-clusters of gender presentation/performance are mediated by the available models of that particular historic era. Where I differ is in suspecting that she thinks some of those models are inherently more valid than others.