- ML
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Re: Is Womanhood Tied To Biology?
Jeremy Taylor - That depends on how sex and gender relate. We can start with this question: Are all genders necessarily tied to a specific sex? I.e. do all genders come with necessary sex conditions?
If the answer is yes, then it follows that womanhood is necessarily tied to biology, so the thread's original question reduces to the question of how sex and gender related.
But if the answer is no, then there are two possibilities: Either no genders come with necessary sex conditions, or some genders do. If it's the former, then womanhood isn't necessarily tied to biology, and again the two questions are reducible. But if it's the latter, then the question is where womanhood falls - to those genders with necessary sex conditions or not? In this case, the two questions aren't reducible, since specifying how sex and gender relate leaves open whether womanhood is necessarily tied to biology or not.
- iwpoe
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Re: Is Womanhood Tied To Biology?
I say that the role arises from up out of innate differences in the sexes (and as a response to those differences) and that they best fit their biological counterpart much as left-handed training and sports practices best fit the left-handed. You can *force* it, but this is unlikely to work well. I'm disinclined to call it wrong of itself in some full sense, but it's rash for most people and grossly careless if conducted upon children.
It is possible to think that the sex roles as we now have them are inadequate, but what that means is that our sex practices don't serve the sexes that use them well and need revision not that they simply float free of sex.
We need cultural-creative work to better flesh out the gender roles, especially with respect to work, sex, and friendship, since the nature of these three have in many ways changed dramatically. In recent times we have often sought to be "good people" in these areas, but this is inadeaqueste, since I don't want a merely good person but rather to have a good woman or to act as a good man, which is to say, in these areas I either want to act most authentically with respect to myself or I want an appropiate compliment to myself.
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- Jeremy Taylor
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Re: Is Womanhood Tied To Biology?
ML wrote:
Jeremy Taylor - That depends on how sex and gender relate. We can start with this question: Are all genders necessarily tied to a specific sex? I.e. do all genders come with necessary sex conditions?
If the answer is yes, then it follows that womanhood is necessarily tied to biology, so the thread's original question reduces to the question of how sex and gender related.
But if the answer is no, then there are two possibilities: Either no genders come with necessary sex conditions, or some genders do. If it's the former, then womanhood isn't necessarily tied to biology, and again the two questions are reducible. But if it's the latter, then the question is where womanhood falls - to those genders with necessary sex conditions or not? In this case, the two questions aren't reducible, since specifying how sex and gender relate leaves open whether womanhood is necessarily tied to biology or not.
I just meant that the term womanhood is not important here - it seems to just mean the female gender (though not necessarily sex, as you point out). Perhaps it is a convenient shorthand for the female gender, but I don't think going too deeply in historical English usage of the term womanhood is useful.