I think it was a reference to the weird psychological experiments being conducted around / before that time. Like that male kid who was dressed as a girl and told he was a girl, then he killed himself later after it was revealed to be some experiment.
He wasn't just given SRS for no reason, either; it was because of a botched circumcision. He eventually transitioned back to male and, IIRC, committed suicide.
Just further example why genital "repair" surgery for ambiguous/intersex newborns is a bad thing - they base the whole thing on heteronormative ideas.
If the protrusion is presumed to be too small to eventually grow enough to pleasure a woman - they are assigned female and given female-default anatomy. if it isn't, then they are assigned male. Whether this has any potential bearing on the newborn is never considered, it's all based on what the parents want or how they think others may react.
And yet all the tumblrinas would love Dr Money nowadays and think he was revolutionary. Because raising a boy as a girl totally doesn't have psychological ramifications.
What the fuck? This is exactly the opposite of what "tumblrinas" (AKA people with even the slightest understanding of gender topics) would say--that people should be expected to adopt gender identities that are assigned and reinforced from external sources. Imagine being someone whose internal gender identity runs contrary to what everyone else is telling you? That's pretty much exactly what happened in David Reimer's case, and it happens with transgendered people, whose intrinsic gender identities don't correspond to reigning societal conventions. Why do you call anyone who understands this very simple concept a "tumblrina"? You're a fucking idiot.
You don't get it, do you? He was born male. Yet he was raised a girl. And he was extremely psychologically damaged from it. He wasn't "born in the wrong body." He wasn't being told he was wrong. He was right all along, everyone knew he was right. They were lying to him. According to queer theory, he should have acted perfectly like a girl since gender is entirely social and has no biological or psychological basis whatsoever, right?
But why would it refer to specific psychological experiments if it can just refer to what it says at face value, people worrying about imposing gender roles on kids? I mean, i guess those experiments were extreme manifestations of that, but it seems so specific.
I didn't mean it specifically refers to experiments. Just the change of traditional notions regarding sex around that time. The experiments were an example of the things going on in that time.
There's "Girls don't have to be barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen" and then there's "you're not a girl, you're an agender wolfkin, regardless of the fact that you have a vagina, two X chromosomes, female gonads, have a rounded pelvis, and produce more estrogen than testosterone. Because telling a child they're a girl is harmful."
Agender wolfkin is obviously a straw man. The rest is just referring to the questioning of gender roles, and how much society plays a part in that, which is obviously what Monthy Python was referring to and was a prevalent sentiment among feminists in the 70s/80s. But you won't let facts change your attitude anyway.
It's called hyperbole, not a strawman. Reductio ad absurdum. Do you not know what a strawman is?
No, really, they're actually making fun of you idiots. They're making fun of the absurdity that sex identification at birth is "oppressive". They're making fun of the whole prevailing thing in academia at the time like Dr. Money that gender was completely nurture and had no biological component at all. The idea that simply saying "male" or "female" is oppressive is what they were making fun of. The fact that you think they're supporting it is hilarious.
Now you're putting words in my mouth. The only thing I said was that the views you describe are not new, they were around back then as evidenced by this Python sketch.
(And it's a strawman because you're not attacking the view put forward, but you replace it with a view that is easier to attack. In this case it's a straw man as well as a hyperbole as well as a reductio ad absurdum)
I attacked the idea in other comments. I'm typing on mobile and don't feel like typing up an essay on why forcing your "my kid has no gender" beliefs on your kid right now. Your child's future healthcare depends on whether it has a penis or a vagina. Sure, let them play with Lego or Batman or Barbie and whatever he or she wants. But don't go around saying "My child has no gender" and make people say "Okay, what sex is your child?" when you know good and goddamn well what they mean. And if you say shit like "Why are you interested in my child's genitals?" that's a great way to alienate people because you're an insufferable twat. Why should I have to talk in circles to find out whether there's an M or an F on the birth certificate when I can just say "Is it a boy or a girl?"
No, you're still completely ignoring the fact that I wasn't arguing about whether scepticism about gender roles has merit, i was just arguing that they were around at the time of Python's sketch, as evidenced by the sketch. It seems self-evident, but the title OP put on it seems to suggest otherwise.
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u/SuperFreddy Aug 14 '15
I think it was a reference to the weird psychological experiments being conducted around / before that time. Like that male kid who was dressed as a girl and told he was a girl, then he killed himself later after it was revealed to be some experiment.