At 02:54 08.12.00 -0800, Shan Jayran (Ovular) wrote:
>... >I think we may need to have the courage to say simply that there IS
>no such thing as "the feminine essence". Or more precisely, there
>is the feminine principle and the masculine principle (and one could
>write books about what is what), and the two mix in each of us,

Well, there actually have been books written about what is what ;-) ... 
still, sorry to say, but I find the reification of -- mostly arbitrary 
--  traits into a polar set of *principles* (!!!!), politely put, anything 
but convincing...

>no no I don't follow you there.
>I am a "moderate essntialist" I think. That means that I do think that it
>means more than historical accident, accumulated socialisation or
>performative utterances (ugh) to be one gender or the other.

Yep...

>When I look at the determining characteristics of the group "women" or 
>"men" I see reproductive function.

Which has the problems you mentioned below because this functioning is 
optional. Also putting in sexual performance wouldn't achieve better 
results. What I think, however, that safely could be said, is that people 
-- as males vs. females -- relate to others -- again as males vs. females 
--, at least unless *severely* affected (as in the Lacan'ian structural 
psychosis, which means they not only can be neither sex but they can hardly 
"be" at all).

>We are not disembodied.

Certainly, at least not yet :-)  Btw, this also in short was one of the 
reasons I reject the idea of gender as distinct from sex...

But there also is the bonmôt "There is no sexual relationship", i.e. 
r'ships are mediated, not purely (not even "at it's core") somatic 
functioning. There's lot of things expressed by means conventionally 
labeled "sexual", but it required a very wide notion to say that they were 
substantially "sexual".

>1) Some women do not choose to mother. True, but they have to live with the
>syndrome "mothering" as vital to their options. Choosing celibacy,
>sexuality, indifference, all involve dealing with the capacity that lies in
>the body. No woman can live without dealing with it as an important, key
>determinant of her life.

But *how* they will deal with it...

>2) Some women cannot mother in the body. True, but their identity *as* women
>derives from the mothering template. To be accounted women they must have
>enough identifiers like breasts, menstruation, vagina, womb - not all, but
>some, enough to qualify.
>3) There are transgender people who wish to be called women and often are.

Nicely put :-\  Of course, in the meantime this has become such a wide 
field from the classic transsexual to people to whom this, as Castel puts 
it, it is a matter of a sexual chic (or in the sense of the above one also 
could say there wasn't too much originally sexual at its core), and who 
very well know they really aren't women (or, mutatis mutandis, men), so 
it's more a sort of play (actually, in Japan there also is a "crossplay" 
movement indeed...), while, of course, for politeness' (or pc'ness') sake 
one calls them whatever they want (often they also want to be a "third" 
sex, i.e. *an* other, but not *the* other sex...), while it still is 
difficult to relate to them the conventional way nominally aimed at.

In a way this is also very disappointing, also thinking of very powerful 
mythological/religious metaphors (which also is picked up upon in forms of 
"TG spirituality"), but probably, as already Morgenthaler had pointed out, 
there are many groups which often are marginalized, pathologicized and seen 
with morbid fascination at the same time, because they have very much more 
of a potential for individual autonomy than ordinary mortals, but success 
in realizing that potential, alas, is very rare.

>Yes, and the model they aspire to is shaped by reproductive function.

No. There is, of course, a vast range of theories to be taken into account, 
but it is safe to say that male-to-female transsexualism is definitely not 
an acting out of something like womb envy, just as female-to-male 
transsexualism definitely is not an acting out of penis envy.

>What do we study economics for, if not in order to make policy prescriptions?

E.g. also <ahem> out of a (partially very well morbid) fascination for 
group phantasies, i.e. in the end, once again how people relate (or also 
fail to).

Best,

Heike