You realize, “gender is socially constructed” doesn’t mean your ~real~ pronouns are whatever you say they are, it means they’re...
You realize, “gender is socially constructed” doesn’t mean your ~real~ pronouns are whatever you say they are, it means they’re whatever everyone else says they are.
Seriously, if you guys still bothered to actually read your fucking Foucault instead of goddamn sad teen bloggers… the fuck did you think “repressive power is a creative force that gives rise to meaning” was about?
I have no idea what that means, but fortunately one doesn’t need to read Foucault (or Butler) to Think About Gender Well.
And since gender is *not* entirely socially constructed….According to Foucault, one’s “real” pronouns are “whatever everyone else says they are“? No.
I disagree with such an interpretation of Foucault. He’s not interested in what is real, authentic, or true at all, and doesn’t suggest that meaning is exclusively imposed from the outside. (He also actually argues that power is NOT repressive, so kontextmaschine’s interpretation is off there as well.)
What I believe Foucault allows us to do is step away from negotiations over what is real/authentic/true and understand ourselves to be operating within systems of language and power that give specific meanings to (in this case) biology. Right now, we have competing social constructs of how pronouns are used to produce meaning about bodies and people.
Personally, given the two generally available options for using pronouns to produce meaning, I’m going to follow the social construct that kontextmaschine dismisses as being created by “sad teen bloggers”: use the pronouns that the person you’re talking about says produces the appropriate meaning. While this may be the more real, true, or accurate approach, the argument about its objective validity is far less compelling to me than its ethics.
Foucault has many problems. However, here it is the misrepresentation of his argument, rather than the argument itself, that is problematic.
That’s a popular reading in the academy, but that’s mostly ‘cause they so want to reach that result they’re willing to do pretzel twists to get there. Mine’s better.
And the conceit that the best models of peoples’ natures are the constructs that they consciously promote to others, like holy shit, have you ever MET people?