Tuesday 17 February 2015

Trans*

1. Is it possible to be mistaken about your own gender?
2. How are trans' 'othered'? How might we reduce this?
3. Cis and trans women face 'comparable' risks and dangers, according to Overall. Do you agree?
 4. Should the answer affect our definition (s) of gender, or is it irrelevant?

Sunday 15 February 2015

Gender

1. Remember in the first session I defined the following terms, recap what the differences are supposed to be;

SEX

GENDER

SEXUALITY

NON BINARY GENDERS (eg 'third genders' such as hijras of IndiaBangladesh and Pakistan, Fa'afafine of Polynesia, and Sworn virgins of the Balkans)

TRANS*

2. What is the 'Wrong Body Model' of trans*? Why might we worry about it?

3. What is the 'Transgender Model'? Why might we worry about it?

4. What is the 'single meaning position'?

5. What is the family resemblance model?

6. What does it mean to say 'I am a woman'?

7. How about 'I am a trans woman'? Is it any different in meaning to 6?

Tuesday 10 February 2015

"Erotic Chatting" as a problem case

In this seminar, which will be our final one where we consider the question of 'what is sex'?, we will consider if chatting erotically (internet chat boards, sexy texts ect) counts as a kind of sex. This will of course inform our discussions of what sex is.


Questions to think about;

1. Portnam claims 'chatting is not cheating'. Why? Do you agree?

2. We might separate the questions of whether something counts as 'cheating' and something counts as 'sex'. For example:

Amy and Adam are in a monogamous relationship, live together and get a cat.

Supppose Adam falls in love with Eve, but does not touch her at all, nor masurbate whilst thinking of her, not sext her.

Do you think that Adam has 'cheated' on Amy?
Has Adam had sex with Eve?

3. Considering your answer to qu 2, could erotic chatting be cheating, but still not sex? How about it not being cheating, but still a kind of sex? How much is Portnam's claim a moral claim about chatting, and how much is it simply a classification of chatting (as sex or not). Can we separate the two?

4. Several of you advocated a view last time that we should define what counts as sex culturally, or perhaps micro culturally. Does the question of erotic chatting being sex depend on which culture you come from?

5. Do we have touch each other to have sex? Think about chatting but also our discussion last time of mutual masturabation.

6. Some people advocated a view of sex where you affect someone else's consciousness. It seems in this case chatting would count, do you agree? What about mild flirting? Is this a problem?