I know that you wrote that women are creative too. I wanted to argue that first of all I would not dare to define the origins of the motivations of my whole sex. And therefore I disagree with you stating that: "Each sex has the right to define and defend itself. Men have that right too." and correct it by saying "Each person has the right to define her- or him- or whatever pronoun the person wishes to use -self. You and me have those rights as well. If we wish to give ourself the attribute of a gender we are fee to define ourself as a person with that gender.".
Besides this I think it is dangerous to define your sex in opposition to the other one. Especially by giving the attribute of the "gift" of childbirth to women. As I said before it is nature that is doing this process. I want to quote Alan Watts in this context, eventhough it is a male talking about the way things come to life, I think he got the point quite well:
“Look, here is a tree in the garden and every summer is produces apples, and we call it an apple tree because the tree "apples." That's what it does. Alright, now here is a solar system inside a galaxy, and one of the peculiarities of this solar system is that at least on the planet earth, the thing peoples! In just the same way that an apple tree apples!”
Yet I have not given birth yet, so I am shure experience this process will make me say more profound things about it. A friend of mine used this quote when I asked her about her experience with having a child this is how it comes to my mind now. Yet I think women who give birth are free to define it as their own power of creation. But defing male gender as the absence of this power seems weird to me because it makes a statement about the gender of women who are not able to give birth as well. Does their infertility make them male then? Do we really have the right to judge about anyones sex identity or give this attributes. You see I was talking about women in the sentence and it is already a commitment to allowing gender to exist in this conversation. I was basically talking about people with two XX Chromosomes meaning biological women, eventhough there are people with different Cromosomes like XY or X0 who also define themselfes as women. In the end we should leave the choice to the people themselves, thats why I still disagree with you making a statement about men, having an creative force originating in their inability to give birth. This might be your source for being a good, helpful and creative force in the world but you can not know about the sources of power other people who define themselfes as male have. Defining your sex is about defining yourself and your own way not about making preassumptions about the people who made the same choice(or have the same biological features). They might have a very different personality. In the end I would prefere if we rather saw ourselves as living parts of the ecosystem earth then as seperated individuals that are eather male or female or of this or that race or have this or that feature. But we all have wounds to heal from our seperation. Females as well as males. Some women might only see the male aggressor but there are also female aggressors putting pressure on men. And there are female and male aggressors that attac people of different genders and even perform operations on their genitals while they are still babies. Gender is very dangerous and identification with gender is dangerous.
Yet, since we all identify with things I choose to identify myself as female. I choose that this means for me that I have biological features like an uterus that are female. If I would test my chromosomes and find out that I had a different bilogical gender I would propably reconsider this definition but so far this is it for me. I think having the "female" appearance has given me a certain set of experiences, like sexist comments at school, at work, in public transportation and experiences of people touching my body against my will with sexist intentions. I think this is experiences that a person with a male look would rather not have. Men might get accused of sexism in wrong circumstances instead or get shamed for crying or experience different ways of sexism.
This is a really difficult topic and I am happy to have this conversation with you as well. Maybe I made more clear now what I wanted to say yesterday but was to tired to express right. Now I will watch the video :D
I love Alan Watts and remember that quote.
You really opened my eyes to some new perspectives here, specifically,
However, you lost me at.
I don't see that as dangerous in the least. Unless, perhaps, you're referring to the political ramifications of expressing one's views about gender if they don't align with the current PC culture of the day. Care to elaborate why you think gender is very dangerous and identification with gender is dangerous?
Until recently, that has not been something people would call dangerous so I truly am in the dark on that whole idea.
I also call the times human beings have gone through until today dangerous. We might have overcome some dangers in some part of the world yet we have created new ones. Now we have to face them as a planet earth community. This is something totally new and I think in the process of this we have to let go of a lot of the things we identify with. Gender is dangerous for me for example because identifying with the female gender can easily get me emotionally involved because of historical and current crimes commited on females. But it does not help if we only sympatize with the group of people we can easily identify with. But I can totally understand that it seems a bit far out. I just wish for a peaceful world where people focus on healing the ecological crisis. Yet we are still to hurt about the psychological issues we caused in each others in the centuries of getting more conscious to be strong enough to overcome them yet. If we could that would make us an even more intelligent species I guess.
Humans can be wonderful and horrible. I don't think gender has that much to do with it, though the media will tell us differently.
I just posted about this in Men Don't Have A Monopoly On Violence - The Myth Of Female Innocence
The idea that only women are victims is a false one. It gets back to the idea we were discussing, that humans are humans and are capable of greatness and deviousness. I don't see it as a gender specific issue.