Monday, December 7, 2009

FEMININE INCOHERENCE

As the comments-section for THYMOS part 2 is becoming unwieldly I will soon be taking that show "on the road" with main posts to refute poster JR, which was the genesis of THYMOS 2 itself. By so doing I should be able to deal with the concerns the poster raises in greater detail and with greater coherence.


Speaking of coherence, though, the blogger who started this topic in his COMICS IN THE CLOSET series deserves his share of the wealth:

"...male heterosexual identity is incoherent, built upon a binary definition of homosexual identity which is essentially untenable."

JR plainly agrees with this sentiment:

"Traditional conceptions of gender roles state that women, and by extension the feminine, are [sic] weak, and that men, and by extension the masculine, are [sic] strong."

I'll have more to say elsewhere about whether or not what JR describes should properly be called a "conception," but what amazes me about both of these statements is that the two writers can object to binarism in the alleged conceptions of masculine identity but have no problem about promulgating a similar binarism which says, in effect, "Masculine identity is incoherent but feminine identity is not."

I can't claim to have ever had the experience of being a woman. But simple observation and logic informs me that even if heterosexual women are not "incoherent" with respect to their identity when juxtaposed against the conceptions they have of homosexuality, they are certainly likely to be incoherent in some other way.

Elsewhere in the comments section, in an attempt to distance women from any "identity crisis," JR, while claiming on one hand that she hasn't tried to say that no women are ever attracted to the "hypermasculine" male, attempts to minimize the possibility by repeatedly claiming that women dominantly like less hypermasculine versions of maleness. This is tantamount to giving hetero women a free pass on the question as to whether their personal identities as heterosexuals might also be implicated in this "binary definition of homosexual identity."

That's right, guys.

No women ever make fun of other women for wearing masculine clothes, or eschewing makeup, or even looking "dikey" in some way.

Never happens. Or if it does, it's far less important than when those benighted males commit comparable acts.

Or-- is this sort of lacunae in the arguments of binary-hatin' Noah and JR really the greater form of-- incoherence?


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