A hundred years ago, the gender question was about equality, or the lack of it. Today, there is a broad consensus that the sexes should be treated equally, but increasingly agonised debate about what gender actually is. The transgender phenomenon is only the most extreme expression of uncertainty about the relationship between biological sex and gender as it is subjectively experienced by ourselves and others. More quietly and prosaically, many of us simply wonder from time to time if men and women are fundamentally different, or whether such differences as are apparent are no more than the legacy of a less equal society. Continue reading “The gender problem”
Tag: identity politics
That Existential Leap: a crime story, was in production in September 2016, when Lionel Shriver caused a stir by launching a scathing attack at the Brisbane Writers Festival on the concept of cultural appropriation. In particular, she rejected the idea that writers should not write about characters from backgrounds different from their own, that it is exploitative, for example, for a white, male, British author to write from the point of view of a 14-year-old Nigerian girl. As a white, male, British author who wrote much of That Existential Leap from the point of view of a young American woman of Indian origin, I had to agree with Shriver. Continue reading “The ways they are like us all”
Dolan Cummings 