#The underlying male anatomy is not transformed into female anatomy

[coochiequeens]

How the fuck does a woman go from being the first woman be Deputy Prime Minister to not understanding that even if a man does get SRS he's still biologically a male?

By Reduxx Team February 24, 2024

Canada’s former Deputy Prime Minister is under fire by users on social media after repeatedly denying that biological males who identify as “women” have “male anatomy.”

Sheila Copps first entered politics in 1981 after being elected to serve as the Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Hamilton Centre. In 1984, she was elected Member of Parliament for the riding of Hamilton East and was re-elected in five successive elections.

Copps was the first woman to ever hold the position of Deputy Prime Minister and served for ten years in the federal cabinet, both as Minister of the Environment and Minister of Canadian Heritage.

Though her political career ended in 2004 after a messy nomination loss in which she accused another Liberal Party member of electoral impropriety, Copps continued to be a prominent figure in Canadian politics. In 2014, she revealed she had been the victim of two sexual assaults in her life, once while a young politician, in an effort to call attention to the lack of resources on Parliament Hill for survivors.

While Copps has been well-regarded as as staunch advocate for women’s rights, her latest comments have sparked backlash from Canadian women after she defended trans-identified males being able to access female-only spaces.

Controversy first erupted on February 22 after Copps slammed Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre after he announced he would seek to enforce sex-segregated spaces if elected Prime Minister.

“He has taken a ‘tough’ stance on transgendered women who want to use women’s washrooms. How courageous,” Copps sarcastically wrote on X.

Her replies were quickly filled with women supporting Poilievre’s sentiment, and questioning Copps’ understanding of the issue.

“Sheila. Sheila. The parents of Canada do NOT want their daughters/granddaughters experiencing the anatomy and more, of biological males in the women’s wash/change rooms. Changing in and out of their bathing suits. Read the room here,” political commentator Patrice O’Hamilton wrote.

Copps quoted the user, bizarrely claiming “transgendered women do not have male anatomy.”

Canadian women’s rights advocate Meghan Murphy replied to Copps: “You should know that men can identify as women without any surgeries or hormone treatments at all. I am baffled at how you can have been in your position with the government for so many years and not know this. Bill C-16 was a Liberal Party bill. Have you not been paying attention at all?”

Others noted that an exceedingly small percentage of trans-identified males have surgeries to construct the superficial appearance of a vulva.

According to a 2019 academic paper published by researchers from New York University, only 5-13% of males who identify as “women” have had “bottom surgery,” with the number being a scant 1% for males who identify as “non-binary.”

Vaginoplasties involve the removal of the scrotum and testicles, and the re-configuration of the penile tissues, sometimes with supplemental tissue from the colon, to create a shallow “canal.” The canal then has to be dilated for the remainder of the individual’s life, as the body will try to close it. The underlying male anatomy is not transformed into female anatomy.

While Copps appears to be under the impression that only postoperative trans-identified males have been permitted to enter women’s spaces, Canadian legislation provides broad protections on the basis of self-declared “gender identity” and does not require an individual to have undergone any medical transitioning to be treated as the gender with which they claim.

Copps’ former political party, the Liberal Party of Canada, was instrumental in pushing through legislation which amended the Canadian Human Rights Act and Criminal Code to include “gender identity” and “gender expression” as protected characteristics. The amendments granted men access to single-sex female spaces like washrooms, changerooms, prisons, and rape shelters on the basis of their identity.

While the Canadian government claimed the bill had been assessed for its impact on women prior to approval, it has refused to release any details of the assessment’s findings. In 2020, a copy of the assessment was given to journalist Anna Slatz via an Access To Information Request but was 96% redacted.

Since Bill C-16 was enacted in 2017, a number of disturbing incidents have been reported involving males being protected in their access to women’s spaces.

As previously reported by Reduxx, a man who raped a baby was transferred to a women’s prison after identifying as a “woman.”

Tara Desousa, also known as Adam Laboucan, sexually assaulted a three-month-old baby boy in Quesnel, British Columbia in 1997. The infant was so brutally injured by the attack that he had to be flown to Vancouver, 410 miles away, to undergo reconstructive surgery. After declaring a transgender status, Desousa was transferred to the Fraser Valley Institution for Women, where he is one of multiple trans-identified males with a history of sexual violence at the facility.

In addition to males being transferred into women’s prisons, Canadian women have reported incidents involving “obvious males” in women’s changing rooms across the country.

In February of 2023, parents in the oceanside community of Nanaimo, British Columbia sounded the alarm about a man who claimed to identify as “female” behaving in what they say was a predatory manner while using the women’s facilities at the local Aquatic Centre.

One mother who complained to the Aquatic Centre’s staff was threatened with arrest, with both the male and staff asserting the man had a “right” to use the facilities.

[culturalsociologyblog-blog]

Injecting gender

By Sabrina Huizenga

In 2016 the Dutch government announced to spend two million euros on educating health care professionals to better deal with vaccination critique (Volkskrant, 2017). While critique usually relates to safety and effectiveness of vaccinations in general, HPV vaccination became especially controversial. HPV stands for Human Papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted infection that effects about eighty percent of sexually active people. Generally, the virus clears itself and has no symptoms. Chances are that most people reading this blog post have (unknowingly) had the virus. Although chances are slim, a persisting virus can lead to cervical, throat, anal and penal cancer (Schurink-van 't Klooster & de Melker, 2016). Nowadays most (Western) governments advise HPV vaccination to young girls to prevent the risk of cervical cancer. While some have hailed this vaccination as a milestone in women’s health, serious critique has also been launched, which is very well captured in the documentary ‘de prik en het meisje’ (Nevejan, 2011). Here, we follow a mother and daughter in their struggle over the question whether to get vaccinated or not. It shows however, that public controversy is generally about safety and effectiveness.

Although criticism is expressed, this debate does not address the underlying structure of the biotechnological innovation that helps individuals with the dictate to ‘care for the self’ (Foucault, 1990). The current debate takes for granted the deeply gendered structure and performative, gendering effects that I argue, are at the core of this vaccine. By doing so, the debate contributes to the naturalization of the gendered character of the vaccine. To take a closer look at what is at stake within this specific vaccine it is helpful to make use of the sociological perspective of ‘culture as embodied practice’. This view helps to problematize and unveil the seemingly naturalness of this biotechnology. Furthermore, it helps to look at the vaccine not only as a disciplining instrument in the Foucauldian sense of disciplining the body (Foucault, 1979), but moreover as an embodied practice, disciplining it into a gendered performance (Butler, 1988). It shows that HPV vaccination is gendering the female body through the idea that only the female body has a vulnerable disposition and needs to be protected. This way it can even be argued that getting vaccinated against HPV is doing gender (West & Zimmerman, 1987). Doing gender and gender performances have in common that both suggest that managed and comported behaviour result in gender and gender relations, after which gender becomes embodied (Young, 1990) and profoundly determines who we ‘are’.

When we mention gender, performativity and the notion of ‘embodied practice’, the work of American philosopher Judith Butler cannot go unnoticed. Gender is then understood as a social construct meaning that it is subject to social and cultural influences. Biological bodily differences are however not denied, but are rather regarded as distinct from the process that gives cultural meanings to the body. A related term, performativity is defined by Butler (1993) as ‘that reiterative power of discourse to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains’. When she speaks about gender performativity, Butler refers to the process of subjectification, roughly described as the process in which people are being controlled and disciplined to behave according to the way in which dominant culture or power expects them to (Graham, 2011). Within this understanding gender identity does not precede political action. It is (political) action that is responsible for constructing the gender identity, instead of representing an objective, neutral gender identity. The ground of gender identities is not a seemingly seamless identity but instead the stylized repeating of performances through time (Butler, 1988, p. 520).

Different institutions such as the family and school are responsible for gendering bodies. According to Martin (1998) childhood is the foundation on which further gendering takes place. Because this process already starts in early childhood, gender differences between men and women later on seem natural. The process of gendering the body usually begins in the family, but is carried out by different institutions such as the school. Research shows that bodily practices of children are being controlled which turns children that are alike in their conduct and practice into differentiated boys and girls, with corresponding differential practices. Next to the family and school, the healthcare system however can also be regarded as yet another institution responsible for gendering the body.

This brings us back to HPV vaccination and the notion of gender performativity. It could be questioned how protecting oneself against the potential harms of a sexually transmitted virus can possibly be problematized in this way? In order to reveal this seemingly neutral vaccine, it is crucial to explore the context of this biomedical technology. This is the first context where performativity comes to the fore. While the vaccine can be applied to boys and girls, the (Dutch) government only advises the vaccine for girls to prevent the risks of cervical cancer. Within the national vaccination program, the vaccine is only administered to girls while excluding boys. Though it can be argued that the risk women face regarding cervical cancer is significantly higher than the risk men face to get penal, anal or throat cancer, this argumentation obscures the fact that there has simply been a far greater focus on researching cervical cancer. There is a reciprocal relationship between knowledge about a disease and the elevated status risk that is attributed through that knowledge. A focus on cervixes in research ensures that more is known about the connection between the cervix and HPV which in turn results in more awareness and a greater perceived risk for regarding HPV and women. This focus on women and cervixes can clearly be characterized as performative; the medical discourse produces the phenomena that it regulates and constrains, a vulnerable female disposition. The production of gendered knowledge results in performativity of knowledge and hence in gendered embodied practices.

Unravelling these underlying processes are important. When we ignore the processes responsible for the gendering of bodies, we risk seeing these bodies as a natural given (Martin, 1998). In healthcare discourses surrounding HPV there is a clear analogy with binary gender oppositions. While men are depicted as active spreaders of the virus, women are portrayed as at risk, vulnerable and in need of vaccination. Through gendered knowledge the vaccine is actually reifying a female vulnerability in need of protection. Moreover, it reproduces the notion of a risky female sexuality. There seems to be ‘something’ about female sexuality that needs to be disciplined. The information provided to girls, the marketing campaigns and the female application can be regarded as a gendered performance. These performances assume a ‘natural’ anatomy, femaleness is naturalized which authorises controlling and disciplining the female body (Mishra & Graham, 2012). Just like Bourdieu (2001) argues in Masculine Domination, biological differences are being abused to naturalize the socially differentiated female and male body. Through the construction of a natural disposition, the female risk for cervical cancer, an embodiment of domination is legitimized naturally, resulting in a typical (fe)male habitus.

There are yet more ways in which the notion of performativity or embodied practice comes to the fore as gendered knowledge results in gendered behaviour. Depicting the act of getting vaccinated as the responsible choice for girls, because of their high-risk biology, confirms the idea of women as domestic (health)care provider. This results in the reproduction of traditional responsibilities like caring for the family, the home and the sick, but also in new duties in face of the risk of HPV as active, responsible citizens that choose to get vaccinated (Charles, 2013). Additionally, it can be argued that while the vaccine contributes to the construction of gender, this even includes the construction of normative notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women. It is this intersection of technology and the body where a certain ‘double standard’ is (re)produced (Carpenter and Casper, 2009). Not acting upon the imperative for vaccination is framed as irresponsible, dangerous and careless, which can cause women to feel notions as obligation and fear. This sense of fear permeates the governmental and public discourse and it impacts women’s subjectivities (Charles, 2013).

To conclude, instead of debating whether or not girls should get vaccinated because of notions of efficacy or safety, it is interesting to problematize an overlooked aspect, namely the gendered core of the vaccine. I would like to pose that the knowledge about the female risk for HPV related cervical cancer and the gendered application of the HPV vaccination program can be regarded as gender performativity. At the end of the documentary mentioned in the introduction, the daughter decides to get vaccinated because she believes it is the right decision. And just like this girl, every year girls have to deal with this question. For those girls that do decide to get vaccinated, at certain dates each year, sports halls throughout the Netherlands transform into places where they can get vaccinated against the HPV virus to prevent the risk of cervical cancer. Here, gender can be theorized as a very mundane illustration of how it is (innocently) ritualized, naturalized through apparent objective medical knowledge about the female body and vulnerable disposition, as a public performance. It is one of many repetitions of acts in which girls ritually enact their femininity, their supposed vulnerability and high risk biology, through the embodied practice of a gendered performance.

Literature

Bourdieu, P. (2001). Masculine Domination. Polity Press: Cambridge, UK.

Butler, J. (1988). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre Journal 40(4): 519-531.


Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge: New York.

Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter. On the discursive limits of “sex”. Routledge: New York & London.

Butler, J. (2000). Gender Turbulentie. Boom Perresia: Amsterdam.

Carpenter, L.M. & Casper, M.J. (2009). A tale of two technologies: HPV vaccination, male circumcision and sexual health. Gender and Society, 23, 6, 790-816.

Charles, N. (2013). Mobilizing the self-governance of pre-damaged bodies: neoliberal biological citizenship and HPV vaccination promotion in Canada. Citizenship Studies, 17 (6-7), 770-784.

Foucault, M. (1979). The history of sexuality: an introduction. London: Allen Lane.

Graham, L. J. (2011). The product of text and ‘other’ statements: Discourse analysis and the critical use of Foucault. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43, 6, 663-674.

Martin, K.A. (1998). Becoming a gendered body: Practices of preschools. American Sociological Review 63(4): 494-511.

Mishra, A. & Graham, J.E. (2012). Risk, choice and the ‘girl vaccine’: unpacking Human Papillomavirus (HPV) immunization. Health, risk and society, 14, 1, 57-69.

Nevejan, M. (2011). De prik en het meisje. https://www.npo.nl/human-doc/19-05-2011/POW_00243805

Schurink-van 't Klooster, T.M. & de Melker, H.E. (2016) The National Immunisation Programme in the Netherlands : Surveillance and developments in 2015-2016. RIVM rapport, Nederland.

Volkskrant (2017). Overheid trekt 2 miljoen uit voor gesprekken met vaccinatietwijfelaars. Volkskrant. Retrieved at October 16th from: http://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/overheid-trekt-2-miljoen-uit-voor-gesprekken-met-vaccinatietwijfelaars~a4416646/.

West, C. & Zimmerman, D. (1987). "Doing Gender". Gender and Society, 1, 127-51.

Young, I. (1990). Throwing Like a Girl. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

[photographynotes]

About: The Myth of Vaginal Orgasm

The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm

by Anne Koedt (1970)

 Whenever female orgasm and frigidity are discussed, a false distinction is made between the vaginal and the clitoral orgasm. Frigidity has generally been defined by men as the failure of women to have vaginal orgasms. Actually the vagina is not a highly sensitive area and is not constructed to achieve orgasm. It is the clitoris which is the center of sexual sensitivity and which is the female equivalent of the penis.

I think this explains a great many things: First of all, the fact that the so-called frigidity rate among women is phenomenally high. Rather than tracing female frigidity to the false assumptions about female anatomy, our "experts" have declared frigidity a psychological problem of women. Those women who complained about it were recommended psychiatrists, so that they might discover their "problem" -diagnosed generally as a failure to adjust to their role as women. The facts of female anatomy and sexual response tell a different story. Although there are many areas for sexual arousal, there is only one area for sexual climax; that area is the clitoris. All orgasms are extensions of sensation from this area. Since the clitoris is not necessarily stimulated sufficiently in the conventional sexual positions, we are left "frigid."

Aside from physical stimulation, which is the common cause of orgasm for most people, there is also stimulation through primarily mental processes. Some women, for example, may achieve orgasm through sexual fantasies, or through fetishes. However, while the stimulation may be psychological, the orgasm manifests itself physically. Thus, while the cause is psychological, the effect is still physical, and the orgasm necessarily takes place in the sexual organ equipped for sexual climax, the clitoris. The orgasm experience may also differ in degree of intensity - some more localized, and some more diffuse and sensitive. But they are all clitoral orgasms.

All this leads to some interesting questions about conventional seks and our role in it. Men have orgasms essentially by friction with the vagina, not the clitoral area, which is external and not able to cause friction the way penetration does. Women have thus been defined sexually in terms of what pleases men; our own biology has not been properly analyzed. Instead, we are fed the myth of the liberated woman and her vaginal orgasm - an orgasm which in fact does not exist.

What we must do is redefine our sexuality. We must discard the "normal" concepts of sex and create new guidelines which take into account mutual sexual enjoyment. While the idea of mutual enjoyment is liberally applauded in marriage manuals, it is not followed to its logical conclusion. We must begin to demand that if certain sexual positions now defined as "standard" are not mutually conducive to orgasm, they no longer be defined as standard. New techniques must be used or devised which transform this particular aspect of our current sexual exploitation.

Freud-A Father of the Vaginal Orgasm

Freud contended that the clitoral orgasm was adolescent, and that upon puberty, when women began having intercourse with men, women should transfer the center of orgasm to the vagina. The vagina, it was assumed, was able to produce a parallel, but more mature, orgasm than the clitoris. Much work was done to elaborate on this theory, but little was done to challenge the basic assumptions. To fully appreciate this incredible invention, perhaps Freud's general attitude about women should first be recalled. Mary Ellman, in Thinking About Women, summed it up this way: Everything in Freud's patronizing and fearful attitude toward women follows from their lack of a penis, but it is only in his essay The Psychology of Women that Freud makes explicit... the deprecations of women which are implicit in his work. He then prescribes for them the abandonment of the life of the mind, which will interfere with their sexual function. When the psycho-analyzed patient is male, the analyst sets himself the task of developing the man's capacities; but with women patients, the job is to resign them to the limits of their sexuality. As Mr. Rieff puts it: For Freud, "Analysis cannot encourage in women new energies for success and achievement, but only teach them the lesson of rational resignation." It was Freud's feelings about women's secondary and inferior relationship to men that formed the basis for his theories on female sexuality.

Once having laid down the law about the nature of our sexuality, Freud not so strangely discovered a tremendous problem of frigidity in women. His recommended cure for a woman who was frigid was psychiatric care. She was suffering from failure to mentally adjust to her "natural" role as a woman. Frank S. Caprio, a contemporary follower of these ideas, states:

...whenever a woman is incapable of achieving an orgasm via coitus, provided the husband is an adequate partner, and prefers clitoral stimulation to any other form of sexual activity, she can be regarded as suffering from frigidity and requires psychiatric assistance. (The Sexually Adequate Female, p.64.) The explanation given was that women were envious of men - renunciation of womanhood. Thus it was diagnosed as an antimale phenomenon.

It is important to emphasize that Freud did not base his theory upon a study of woman's anatomy, but rather upon his assumptions of woman as an inferior appendage to man, and her consequent social and psychological role. In their attempts to deal with the ensuing problem of mass frigidity, Freudians embarked on elaborate mental gymnastics. Marie Bonaparte, in Female Sexuality, goes so far as to suggest surgery to help women back on their rightful path. Having discovered a strange connection between the non-frigid woman and the location of the clitoris near the vagina, it then occurred to me that where, in certain women, this gap was excessive, and clitoral fixation obdurate, a clitoral-vaginal reconciliation might be effected by surgical means, which would then benefit the normal erotic function. Professor Halban, of Vienna, as much a biologist as surgeon, became interested in the problem and worked out a simple operative technique. In this, the suspensory ligament of the clitoris was severed and the clitoris secured to the underlying structures, thus fixing it in a lower position, with eventual reduction of the labia minora. (p.148.)

But the severest damage was not in the area of surgery, where Freudians ran around absurdly trying to change female anatomy to fit their basic assumptions. The worst damage was done to the mental health of women, who either suffered silently with self-blame, or flocked to psychiatrists looking desperately for the hidden and terrible repression that had kept from them their vaginal destiny.

Lack of Evidence

One may perhaps at first claim that these are unknown and unexplored areas, but upon closer examination this is certainly not true today, nor was it true even in the past. For example, men have known that women suffered from frigidity often during intercourse. So the problem was there. Also, there is much specific evidence. Men knew that the clitoris was and is the essential organ for masturbation, whether in children or adult women. So obviously women made it clear where they thought their sexuality was located. Men also seem suspiciously aware of the clitoral powers during "foreplay," when they want to arouse women and produce the necessary lubrication for penetration. Foreplay is a concept created for male purposes, but works to the disadvantage of many women, since as soon as the woman is aroused the man changes to vaginal stimulation, leaving her both aroused and unsatisfied.

It has also been known that women need no anesthesia inside the vagina during surgery, thus pointing to the fact that the vagina is in fact not a highly sensitive area. Today, with extensive knowledge of anatomy, with Kelly, Kinsey, and Masters and Johnson, to mention just a few sources, there is no ignorance on the subject. There are, however, social reasons why this knowledge has not been popularized. We are living in a male society which has not sought change in women's role.

Anatomical Evidence

Rather than starting with what women ought to feel, it would seem logical to start out with the anatomical facts regarding the clitoris and vagina. The Clitoris is a small equivalent of the penis, except for the fact that the urethra does not go through it as in the man's penis. Its erection is similar to the male erection, and the head of the clitoris has the same type of structure and function as the head of the penis.

C. Lombard Kelly, in Sexual Feeling in Married Men and Women, says:

The head of the clitoris is also composed of erectile tissue, and it possesses a very sensitive epithelium or surface covering, supplied with special nerve endings called genital corpuscles, which are peculiarly adapted for sensory stimulation that under proper mental conditions terminates in the sexual orgasm. No other part of the female generative tract has such corpuscles. (Pocketbooks; p.35.)

The clitoris has no other function than that of sexual pleasure. The Vagina- Its functions are related to, the reproductive function. Principally, 1) menstruation, 2) receive penis, 3) hold semen, and 4) birth passage. The interior of the vagina, which according to the defenders of the vaginally caused orgasm is the center and producer of the orgasm, is: like nearly all other internal body structures, poorly supplied with end organs of touch. The internal entodermal origin of the lining of the vagina makes it similar in this respect to the rectum and other parts of the digestive tract. (Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, p.580.)

The degree of insensitivity inside the vagina is so high that "Among the women who were tested in our gynecologic sample, less than 14% were at all conscious that they had been touched." (Kinsey, p. 580.) Even the importance of the vagina as an erotic center (as opposed to an orgasmic center) has been found to be minor.

Other Areas- Labia minora and the vestibule of the vagina. These two sensitive areas may trigger off a clitoral orgasm. Because they can be effectively stimulated during "normal" coitus, though infrequently, this kind of stimulation is incorrectly thought to be vaginal orgasm. However, it is important to distinguish between areas which can stimulate the clitoris, incapable of producing the orgasm themselves, and the clitoris:

Regardless of what means of excitation is used to bring the individual to the state of sexual climax, the sensation is perceived by the genital corpuscles and is localized where they are situated: in the head of the clitoris or penis. (Kelly, p.49.)

Psychologically Stimulated Orgasm- Aside from the above mentioned direct and indirect stimulation of the clitoris, there is a third way an orgasm may be triggered. This is through mental (cortical) stimulation, where the imagination stimulates the brain, which in turn stimulates the genital corpuscles of the glans to set off an orgasm.

Women Who Say They Have Vaginal Orgasms

Confusion- Because of the lack of knowledge of their own anatomy, some women accept the idea that an orgasm felt during "normal" intercourse was vaginally caused. This confusion is caused by a combination of two factors. One, failing to locate the center of the orgasm, and two, by a desire to fit her experience to the male-defined idea of sexual normalcy. Considering that women know little about their anatomy, it is easy to be confused.

Deception- The vast majority of women who pretend vaginal orgasm to their men are faking it to "get the job." In a new bestselling Danish book, I Accuse, Mette Ejlersen specifically deals with this common problem, which she calls the "seks comedy." This comedy has many causes. First of all, the man brings a great deal of pressure to bear on the woman, because he considers his ability as a lover at stake. So as not to offend his ego, the woman will comply with the prescribed role and go through simulated ecstasy. In some of the other Danish women mentioned, women who were left frigid were turned off to sex, and pretended vaginal orgasm to hurry up the seks act. Others admitted that they had faked vaginal orgasm to catch a man. In one case, the woman pretended vaginal orgasm to get him to leave his first wife, who admitted being vaginally frigid.

Later she was forced to continue the deception, since obviously she couldn't tell him to stimulate her clitorally. Many more women were simply afraid to establish their right to equal enjoyment, seeing the sexual act as being primarily for the man's benefit, and any pleasure that the woman got as an added extra.

Other women, with just enough ego to reject the man's idea that they needed psychiatric care, refused to admit their frigidity. They wouldn't accept self-blame, but they didn't know how to solve the problem, not knowing the physiological facts about themselves. So they were left in a peculiar limbo. Again, perhaps one of the most infuriating and damaging results of this whole charade has been that women who were perfectly healthy sexually were taught that they were not. So in addition to being sexually deprived, these women were told to blame themselves when they deserved no blame. Looking for a cure to a problem that has none can lead a woman on an endless path of self-hatred and insecurity. For she is told by her analyst that not even in her one role allowed in a male society-the role of a woman-is she successful. She is put on the defensive, with phony data as evidence that she'd better try to be even more feminine, think more feminine, and reject her envy of men. That is, shuffle even harder, baby.

Why Men Maintain the Myth

1. Sexual Penetration Is Preferred-The best physical stimulant for the penis is the woman's vagina. It supplies the necessary friction and lubrication. From a strictly technical point of view this position offers the best physical conditions, even though the man may try other positions for variation.

2. The Invisible Woman-One of the elements of male chauvinism is the refusal or inability to see women as total, separate human beings. Rather, men have chosen to define women only in terms of how they benefited men's lives. Sexually, a woman was not seen as an individual wanting to share equally in the sexual act, any more than she was seen as a person with independent desires when she did anything else in society. Thus, it was easy to make up what was convenient about women; for on top of that, society has been a function of male interests, and women were not organized to form even a vocal opposition to the male experts.

3. The Penis as Epitome of Masculinity-Men define their lives primarily in terms of masculinity. It is a universal form of egoboosting. That is, in every society, however homogeneous (i. e., with the absence of racial, ethnic, or major economic differences) there is always a group, women, to oppress. The essence of male chauvinism is in the psychological superiority men exercise over women. This kind of superiorinferior definition of self, rather than positive definition based upon one's own achievements and development, has of course chained victim and oppressor both. But by far the most brutalized of the two is the victim. An analogy is racism, where the white racist compensates for his feelings of unworthiness by creating an image of the black man (it is primarily a male struggle) as biologically inferior to him. Because of his position in a white male power structure, the white man can socially enforce this mythical division. To the extent that men try to rationalize and justify male superiority through physical differentiation, masculinity may be symbolized by being the most muscular, the most hairy; having the deepest voice, and the biggest penis. Women, on the other hand, are approved of (i.e., called feminine) if they are weak, petite, shave their legs, have high soft voices. Since the clitoris is almost identical to the penis, one finds a great deal of evidence of men in various societies trying to either ignore the clitoris and emphasize the vagina (as did Freud), or, as in some places in the Mideast, actually performing clitoridectomy. Freud saw this ancient and still practiced custom as a way of further "feminizing" the female by removing this cardinal vestige of her masculinity. It should be noted also that a big clitoris is considered ugly and masculine. Some cultures engage in the practice of pouring a chemical on the clitoris to make it shrivel up into "proper" size. It seems clear to me that men in fact fear the clitoris as a threat to masculinity.

4. Sexually Expendable Male-Men fear that they will become sexually expendable if the clitoris is substituted for the vaginaas the center of pleasure for women. Actually this has a great deal of validity if one considers only the anatomy. The position of the penis inside the vagina, while perfect for reproduction, does not necessarily stimulate an orgasm in women because the clitoris is located externally and higher up. Women must rely upon indirect stimulation in the "normal" position. Lesbian sexuality could make an excellent case, based upon anatomical data, for the irrelevancy of the male organ. Albert Ellis says something to the effect that a man without a penis can make a woman an excellent lover. Considering that the vagina is very desirable from a man's point of view, purely on physical grounds, one begins to see the dilemma for men. And it forces us as well to discard many "physical" arguments explaining why women go to bed with men. What is left, it seems to me, are primarily psychological reasons why women select men at the exclusion of women as sexual partners.

5. Control o/ Women-One reason given to explain the Mideastern practice of clitoridectomy is that it will keep the women from straying. By removing the sexual organ capable of orgasm, it must be assumed that her sexual drive will diminish. Considering how men look upon their women as property, particularly in very backward nations, we should begin to consider a great deal more why it is not in men’s  interest to have women totally free sexually. The double standard, as practiced for example in Latin America, is set up to keep the woman as total property of the husband, while he is free to have affairs as he wishes.

6. Lesbianism and Bisexuality-Aside from the. Strictly anatomical reasons why women might equally seek other women as lovers, there is a fear on men's part that women will seek the company of other women on a full, human basis. The recognition of clitoral orgasm as fact would threaten the heterosexual institution. For it would indicate that sexual pleasure was obtainable from either men or women, thus making heterosexuality not an absolute, but an option. It would thus open up the whole question of human sexual relationships beyond the confines of the present male-female role system.

[nowwedanceitout]

thinking through fanfiction and transformative work

I was stoked when we arrived at this week because fanfiction has always been something I have wanted to indulge in but, for various reasons, refrain from getting too invested in. I was jazzed to read what voices in fan studies scholarship had to say about something I both kept at arm’s length and felt drawn to through fondness for specific fannish objects, and I was also interested in seeing what efforts would be made toward pathologizing the fan because I always find those discussions fascinating, if problematic. I was excited to find that Russ made a go at understanding the underlying reasons for fannish affinity for slash and other erotic fiction in the first article I read for the week. 

In “Pornography for Women by Women with Love,” Russ explores ways in which fans writing m/m fiction might be interested in fluidity between “responsibility, initiative, activity, passivity, strength and weakness” and how they “shift constantly from one to the other” (85). The descriptions of the dynamics between the members of the ship functioned effectively for me (especially when considered in the context of Constance Penley’s article, “Future Men”, in which Penley articulates how male bodies might simply be less complicated as a space to explore identity), but I couldn’t help but be distracted by the possibility of interpreting Spock differently (since he’s half-human, half-alien, that immediately read to me as something akin to a mixed race person, so the reading of Spock wherein he is liminal in terms of gender/sexuality as opposed to liminal in terms of racial identity seemed like a missed opportunity. I then spiraled further into distraction, thinking about whose missed opportunity it was, because Russ is analyzing the sexuality presented in the fanfiction, which ostensibly has more to do with gender than race; perhaps the fans’ reading of Spock as liminal was where the opportunity to consider race occurred, but maybe Russ selected fanfiction that did not explicitly deal with race, etc.). Once I was able to focus in on the arguments presented by Russ about the authors of the Kirk/Spock fic, I also found it interesting that she aims to unapologetically assert that the fanfiction was something very much like pornography, which she asserts is first and foremost for sexual pleasure, but then she spent time thinking through meanings deeper than that about the authors--the interplay between frankness about female sexual desire and the pathologizing tendency present in some fan studies scholarship provided a point of reflection for me. That tension, between wanting to acknowledge and validate fannish affinity and enjoyment for its own sake coming up against the urge to understand something deeper about the fans themselves, seems central to several of the writings we have read to date.

Coppa’s characterization of fanfiction as a descendant of The Canterbury Tales resonated with me, and I found myself looking for tropes or types in the Grey’s fanfic I was reading this week. It helped highlight trends in depictions of characters across AU fic, which was fun to parse.

Fanfiction, as outlined by Jenkins in chapters five and six of Textual Poachers, was useful for thinking through the mechanics of fanfiction and the transformative work that is needed to develop fanfiction. Many of the Grey’s Anatomy fic stories I’ve come across are engaged in  refocalization and expanding the world. A great deal of fan activity on tumblr (and the stuff I’m often drawn to) has to do with the ships in those contexts.

Since Grey’s is a primetime drama (and sometimes operates in ways similar to a soap opera), much of the content focuses on relationships between characters; however, the nature of the show’s generic structure necessitates at least one narrative arc per season that is highly destructive and dramatic for the characters and their interpersonal relationships--this creates opportunity for all kinds of change, including fractures in previously solid relationships, shifts from romantic to friendly dynamics (and reversions to old feelings/beliefs), and times in which romantic relationships become the secondary focus between characters who are in something akin to hurt/comfort spaces. Since the show is constantly reconfiguring dynamics and exploring new paths, many fans express frustration because certain ships never seem to get high-quality or positive screen time together and dedicate their creative efforts toward rectifying those dynamics.  

I was interested to find that the most popular ship on ao3 and one of the most visible ships on Tumblr is Calzona (Callie and Arizona, a longterm f/f relationship on the show). This got me thinking about the focus on m/m fiction over f/f fiction in scholarship we have read so far. If m/m fiction can be construed as a way to challenge the patriarchy, I have to believe that f/f fiction is engaging in some of the same concepts. I’d like to spend more time thinking about the popularity of this particular f/f pairing in the fanfic.

The show spent several seasons developing story arcs for them, but more often than not, the characters are facing nearly insurmountable odds and can’t seem to get on the same page in their relationship, despite their clearly depicted love for one another. Many writers are invested in creating different storylines for them, or writing stories focused on their initial connection (lots of PWP types of readings that focus mostly on their relationship are present). Another very popular ship that has been subjected to similar treatment on the show is Japril (Jackson Avery and April Kepner), and I’m interested in thinking through the popularity of that ship as well as ways in which its popularity might result from characteristics or elements of their relationship that differ from those in Calzona’s relationship.