Critic(al Friend) rather than critic, because that's what happens when all your opponents #nodebate you. Kate & Holly discuss Holly's new book Gender-Critical Feminism (published by Oxford University Press, in May 2022).
At about the 24 min mark: "there is something invisible about women's oppression, and perhaps that has something to do with the norms." Yes. The norms are so ingrained, they aren't seen as being oppressive. And if we (women) don't adhere to them, we are punished in some way, whether severely (like in honor killings) or relatively less severe like being dismissed in conversations about our own effing experience as women. And we suffer from norms without most men (and some women) even knowing it. Like men not realizing, or caring to know, how we must be vigilant and aware of our surroundings in public, what it's like to be oggled, and how painful and debilitating menstruation can be, or even bras can be. So many painful, burdensome norms are invisible not only to men, but to women who don't have to experience them. And, I'll be ordering my copy soon! Can't wait to read it. Thank you, Holly, for doing this work. It means a lot to a lot of women. However trite that sounds, it's just true!
Absolutely! They're not "norms" in the sense that they're normal, they're norms in the sense that they've been normalized. Femininity is just subordination normalized in females (being accommodating, objectified, etc.) and masculinity (entitlement, aggression, emotional detachment, etc.) is just domination normalized in males.
An argument I've used with a Marxist friend that seemed to work was: "would you ever argue against a white calling themselves black on the basis of their clearly different physiologies?" No, that would be offensive, the obvious point is one of class humiliation
Surely there's nothing in either of the norms boxes that isn't deriving from requirements of deference (female) or colonisation (male)? Where do the contents of each box come from if not from imperatives of class hierarchy? Brilliant discussion! Thank you both!
what about what hoagland calls survival skills? women may respond to patriarchy with resistance in the form of novel culture. this then makes the status of that stuff at least complex, because it isn't imposed on her per se, but it is a response to what has been imposed on her.
