When Did Women Become Objects?

There was a brief period when women were regarded as individuals; it was in the 1990's, when Bill was president and the economy was going gangbusters. These days, it seems that women have assumed their more traditional role of being objects, as they are incarcerated on jailed pedestals.

Between the "transsexual separatists", radical feminists and the conservatives, you'd think were never meant to be individuals. I'm not even going to touch the whole transgender/transsexual fetish scene, either! (Mostly because it's an odd mix of the woman, the feminine and the individual as distinct objects...) No, women become objects to all (many? most?) of these people. And while the discussions are usually vitriolic, the underlying rational is always "women need to be protected and we're the only ones who know how to do that!"

With transsexual separatists and radical feminists, "woman" becomes an object. Instead of "I am woman" being an identifier, it becomes a political football. The vagina becomes the object given the most exaltation; the penis is derided, the man becomes the penis and (often) all men are to be considered rapists or worse simply because of that. I am differentiating radical feminists and transsexual women because many radical feminists regard transsexual women as an affront to womanhood; for them, your physical gender at birth is all that matters. For transsexual separatists, it's mostly about whom has had what operation and you're judged on the spurious criteria of a quick grope. For both groups, the definition of "woman" needs to be concrete, albeit of different shapes; the idea that gender has become a fairly plastic construction is meaningless. These individuals have a desperate need, I should note, to be the final arbiters of what of a woman is. Even as they shy, run!, away from who a woman is.

In all of this, what is often neglected, it's often disparaged, is that at the edges of gender, it can't be clearly defined. What is good enough for 98, 99% of the population turns out to be either meaningless, irrelevant, inapplicable or just plain wrong at the edges of gender. The insistence of all groups upon a concrete, unyielding definition of "woman", belies the limitations of the exhorter. Not the limitations of the concept.

This isn't to argue that we can define ourselves any old way we want. There are some minimal constraints, mostly related to commonsense. (A penis will never be a vagina, for instance.) Considering that most arguments about, around, gender do insist upon absolutes, it's slightly disconcerting to even consider suggesting that commonsense has a role! And as much as some prefer the feminine pronoun, for some it can't be considered anything more than an cheerful, harmless, affectation. There's no threat to "women" if a group of guys in dresses call each other "girls". There's no threat to womanhood if someone says "I have this body, which I don't like/am not fond of/would prefer if it were different, but I'm not so sure I want to change it that drastically!" And yet transsexual separatists, radical feminists and many conservatives will insist that they have the right, the obligation, to define you and who you "really" are. You may not be a woman, but you certainly have the right to wonder, and allege, that you're not a man, either!

Women aren't objects. Womanhood, like manhood, is a fairly definite concept for most people. By arguing about concrete definitions, conflating a woman with an object, something that can be easily defined, all that's happening is that you're denying people a chance to define themselves. Which is what transsexual separatists, radical feminists and conservatives want, anyway.

Carolyn Ann