Gendering Animals

From an academic paper on Gendering Animals:

When feminists first adopted the sex/gender distinction in the 1960s and 1970s it formed the keystone in their theoretical framework. In a social context where it was typically assumed that the social and political differences between the sexes found in practically every part of daily life were the result of natural, essential, biological sex differences, the idea that many of these differences were, in fact, socially constructed gender differences offered hope of subverting patriarchy.

The article is not a joke.

It says that boys have higher bone mineral density in the lower back than girls, except that it is the other way around for ultra-Orthodox Jewish adolescents. Weird.

Wikipedia has already rewritten its pages on Ellen Page, the actress who starred in the 2007 movie Juno:

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars and called it "just about the best movie of the year. ... Has there been a better performance this year than Elliot Page's creation of Juno? I don't think so."

No, Ebert never mentioned "Elliot Page".

Juno was an anti-man movie, as was her previous movie. It is funny for an actress famous for anti-man roles would suddenly call herself a man. She has said that she was a lesbian, and married to a woman. But now lesbians are extinct, and she is a man, so I guess she is heterosexual. Or maybe her sex is still female and her gender is male, I am not sure.

This should help everyone get ready for the Biden administration. The stock exchange is getting ready:

Nasdaq would require all companies listed on the exchange to publicly disclose consistent, transparent diversity statistics about their board of directors. It would require those companies to have, or explain why they don't have, at least two diverse directors. This includes having one board member who self-identifies as female and one who self-identifies as either an underrepresented racial minority or LGBTQ.

If Ellen Page were on a company board, she would be not so diverse. She is now Elliot, a man, and no longer self-identifying as female. She is not a racial minority, and she no longer identifies as a lesbian. Possibly she identifies as trans, but it is not clear, as maybe she is just a man. If she is trans, is she transsexual or transgender? Those are different, since sex and gender are different. My guess is that her sex is still female, but her gender is now declared to be male. I doubt that she has the fake male organ surgery, after playing a sadistic castrator in a movie, so I do not know whether she would qualify as a Nasdaq diversity choice.

Here is a weak attempt to rationalize a sex difference:

“Can men be victims and women perpetrators? Yes of course,” she says. “But if you define domestic violence saying anyone can be a victim or perpetrator, it ignores that women are disproportionately victimised and men are disproportionately the perpetrator. If you come at if from a gender-neutral angle you will never change it. It's like hitting a pool ball at the wrong angle - it goes into a pocket but the wrong one.”

I will remember that excuse, the next time I get accused of sexism. I will just say, “it goes into a pocket but the wrong one.”