Feminism - Now with an extra helping of gender roles

[karaddin]

Clearly you have odd priorities at work, it seems like you are actually...working there!

[Mladen]

As someone whose scientific forte is in the biology department, I would call myself a believer in gender essentialism. But this also is a tricky area. If we speak only about feminism, than yeah, I am essentialist, but if we speak about Transgender and their right to choose, then I would call myself a constructivist. It's so shady, but allow me to say something without cracking my head to the point where I don't understand either thing...

Now, I understand the other side, but simply I believe that constructivism (without some great research on the topic) in terms of already defined gender roles is a product of quite traditional view on matter. I mean, are you less a woman if you are tomboy who likes football? Or am I a less man for liking to sow? Simply I feel that there is some great division of what's supposed to be seen as male and female interests and that based on them, we accordingly judge them.

For instance, the example of Katniss as feminist role model is, IMHO, a bit narrow-minded. We have been cracking our heads around for quite some time looking at certain products of pop culture and calling them products of progressive feminism: Xena, Buffy, Star Trek's female characters, The Bride etc... In comic book world those are like Catwoman, Black Widow... So, in a way, I feel that we put abnormally high importance on women doing traditionally male roles to prove the equality. For me, I was never big fan of kick-ass female characters, not because I feel threatened but for simple reason that they showed rather narrow-minded perception of what female strength is supposed to be. And, IMO, women's strength is not about being masculine, it's about something completely different. Basically, woman can be strong even without masculine characteristics.

Discussing about pop culture, my latest example of the positive feminism is Alicia Florrick in CBS's "The Good Wife". In one of the latest episodes, when her husband says to her "we are all we have", she poignantly refuses that and freely says "No". And I think that with Eowyn's "I am no man"(and even that one was tainted with everyone talking about her strength through how she could have fought), this for me was one of the most impressive moments of feminism in pop culture. "No, I don't need you. I proved I can do this on my own". That is what counts, IMO. The feminism should be not about being a male, but being independent of male. And when we acknowledge that these warrior-princess type of women shows just one side of the medal, there is impressive side that they don't cover. Personally, I am more interested in that other side.

I perhaps went a bit off topic with this, given that essentialism/constructivism debate is in order, but I do believe that the perception of genders must be changed. I simply don't see that interests or social norms are in any way determinate of how we feel. A female can love male interests and be a female as much as male can love female interests and be male...

[sologdin]

no need to identify a priori certain tasks as 'masculine' and then impute masculinity to the persons performing them!

[brook]

I perhaps went a bit off topic with this, given that essentialism/constructivism debate is in order, but I do believe that the perception of genders must be changed. I simply don't see that interests or social norms are in any way determinate of how we feel. A female can love male interests and be a female as much as male can love female interests and be male...

It's more than possible I'm misunderstanding you here but most of what you've written sounds like the opposite of a gender essentialist view.

I don't believe knowledge of or interest in biology necessarily makes you an essentialist either.

[Mladen]

It's more than possible I'm misunderstanding you here but most of what you've written sounds like the opposite of a gender essentialist view.

I don't believe knowledge of or interest in biology necessarily makes you an essentialist either.

OK, as I understood, gender essentialism is that gender is defined by our birth, by our biological characteristics, that no matter what interests or behavior is, we are of the gender biologically we are. Constructivism is when the gender is defined by our behavioral patterns, and can be separated from the biology. For me, woman is a woman, with or without behavioral patterns that can be interpreted as masculine, same for male only vice versa.

You are right, but as a doctor, I see anatomy first, behavioral and social traits second...

[emberling]

As someone whose scientific forte is in the biology department, I would call myself a believer in gender essentialism. But this also is a tricky area. If we speak only about feminism, than yeah, I am essentialist, but if we speak about Transgender and their right to choose, then I would call myself a constructivist. It's so shady, but allow me to say something without cracking my head to the point where I don't understand either thing...

Now, I understand the other side, but simply I believe that constructivism (without some great research on the topic) in terms of already defined gender roles is a product of quite traditional view on matter. I mean, are you less a woman if you are tomboy who likes football? Or am I a less man for liking to sow? Simply I feel that there is some great division of what's supposed to be seen as male and female interests and that based on them, we accordingly judge them.

Essentialist/constructivist dichotomy is a bit of a red herring, much like the nature/nurture debate it reflects. The answer is yes, all of these things affect who we are.

Most important is the recognition that any biological differences that may or may not exist between genders (however you define genders) occur on a continuum. It seems logical, to take one of your examples, that as testosterone levels increase, the appeal of an aggressive, highly physical sport like football would also increase. But to what degree, when we look only at biological inclination? A few percentage points of probability?

What can happen here (and has, over and over) is that a small trend becomes noticed, becomes entrenched in culture: This thing is a man's thing. Then it becomes unmanly to abstain, unwomanly to partake; and we have such pressure, we accord such status to those who perform their assigned gender with perfection. The man who is most manly does all manly things; the woman who is most womanly does no manly things; and these are the paragons we are given.

That's not universal to history, but it does recur.

As for your confusion with constructivist feminism - I'm no expert myself,- but I think what you're missing is that once you accept the idea of a socially constructed gender (whether wholly or in part), you accept that it is mutable.

An essentialist would say that woman does not football, therefore woman + football is biologically unnatural.

A constructivist would say that woman does not football, therefore at some point woman was convinced not to football; this can be undone by the simple process of women choosing to football, openly and vocally, in numbers too large to ignore.

The nuanced view simply adds to this last that there may be a biological tendency at the root of the original construction, but with the reminder that a biological tendency speaks of populations, statistically, and speaks nothing of individuals and the correctness of their choice to football or not.

[emberling]

OK, as I understood, gender essentialism is that gender is defined by our birth, by our biological characteristics, that no matter what interests or behavior is, we are of the gender biologically we are. Constructivism is when the gender is defined by our behavioral patterns, and can be separated from the biology. For me, woman is a woman, with or without behavioral patterns that can be interpreted as masculine, same for male only vice versa.

You are right, but as a doctor, I see anatomy first, behavioral and social traits second...

Okay, when we talk gender we don't talk anatomy. You are combining two unrelated things. Gender is not anatomical in any way (except inasmuch as anything involving the brain is.) The typical mishmashed mess of conflated gender/sex binary concepts can be split as follows, roughly from most anatomical to most social/conceptual:

- Original biological sex, chromosomes, genital configuration at birth - important for my doctor to know, believed by bigots to determine the "correct" way to do everything else on this list, otherwise essentially irrelevant

- Lived biological sex, hormone levels, current genital configuration, ability to reproduce (if any) - usually referred to as "sex"

- Brain configuration - what mix of hormones does my brain require in order to not feel dysphoria?

- Gender identity - do I think of myself as "a man" or "a woman" or as something other than that? - Probably the best thing to shorten to "gender"

- Gender expression - Do I express myself in a masculine way or feminine or neither/both? Extends to body language, clothes, grooming, voice, interests, friend groups, etc. etc. and can have a different answer for each one of these

- Sexual orientation doesn't belong on this list and has nothing to do with any of it but whoops, it's here anyway

It can also be separated in other ways but my way is best. Everything on the list has a wide variety of possibilities, not two. Possible other categories are "gender role" (not sure how this differs from expression unless you're backward) and "socialization/upbringing" (mostly a dog whistle for transphobes).

The old second-wave gender constructionists didn't divide things into quite so many categories, but they definitely saw gender as gender and sex as sex. You can say that gender must match anatomy to be "true", or something, but that's again just a socially-imposed requirement that can be accepted or discarded. Requiring that a person of XX-typical phenotype take the role of "woman" is as arbitrary as requiring that an albino take the role of "witch".

[Mladen]

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Ok, I am smart enough to know when I am in debate where I have nothing smart to say... The topic does seem interesting, but I am truly uninformed on the subject to have anything smart or productive to say... Please carry on and pardon me for the intrusion... At least, now I will know not to meddle in things I obviously don't know the first thing about.

[Formerly Tetrarch42]

OK, as I understood, gender essentialism is that gender is defined by our birth, by our biological characteristics, that no matter what interests or behavior is, we are of the gender biologically we are. Constructivism is when the gender is defined by our behavioral patterns, and can be separated from the biology. For me, woman is a woman, with or without behavioral patterns that can be interpreted as masculine, same for male only vice versa.

You are right, but as a doctor, I see anatomy first, behavioral and social traits second...

Isn't "gender biologically" just refering to sex? As far as I understand it gender just is what an individual identifies as whereas sex refers to actual anatomical characteristics? Thus one's sex can be male whilst their gender is female.

[emberling]

Thus one's sex can be male whilst their gender is female.

Technically true by the common definitions we use of the terms, but I ask you not to use that framework to refer to any actual people. Largely, when we meet people, we don't see their sex--we see their gender. You may not actually know that person's sex. That person may not even know their own sex (as some intersex conditions can go undetected).

If you say that a woman with certain physical characteristics should be regarded as male-sexed, then - even if you don't intend anything of the sort - those people inclined to say that, for instance, the only real woman is an XX woman - they will take it as validation and reinforcement. Let's not do that.

[Eponine]

How would you know what gender you were besides from sexual characteristics if gender weren't constructed?

As a pre-teen, I believed that I was transgender. I did not have a very good idea of what transgender entailed and possibly didn't even have a word for it, but I believed that I could not possibly be female because I could not express myself in a feminine manner by the extremely tight definition of the community/culture I was raised in. When I was about 10, I told a few friends (but obviously not parents or authority figures, because I wasn't stupid) that I thought I was a man in a woman's body. I believed that femaleness WAS fitting a gender role.

Even though I agree that sexual orientation doesn't belong on the list, one of the things that made me think that I was female was because, even though I don't know what it's like to be a gay male, I was pretty sure that I related to sex as a heterosexual female and not as a gay male. Here's the thing, even though I think that I'm a female who doesn't adhere to the same gender roles I grew up with, if in some hypothetical, I had to live the rest of my life in that community with literally no outside exposure, I would choose to appear as and live as an (asexual) male. Not because I believe that gender is that fluid - I think I would be faking - but because I think gender roles can be so strong in a community that it would be easier to fake being the "wrong" gender than to adhere to the rules for the "actual" gender.

[emberling]

I feel like I'm talking too much here, and it's only shakily on topic, but this is too interesting to pass up.

How would you know what gender you were besides from sexual characteristics if gender weren't constructed?

Which gender are we talking about here? In a utopia absent social constructions of gender (leaving the strictly biology-derived elements of gender), I expect that "gender expression" would just be "expression," or just ... the stuff you wear/do, no need to name it, entirely unrelated to gender, just subject to peoples' individual preferences.

As far as identity goes, that is actually tied to biology-derived elements and would likely be much as it is today, with less repression. "Knowing what gender you are" implies something more fundamental than identity, though. My identity is shaped by the concepts constructed by society and the concepts that exist in my head. I wasn't genderqueer until I knew that there was a such thing as genderqueer. Labelling myself requires the existence of labels.

But what I think is interesting is the issue of how do you tell what your brain requires for happiness--from hormones to companionship to whatever. If we don't have the traditional mismatched gender roles transgender narrative, how can people discover that they're transgender?

I think the answer is it just muddles through. If there are still gendered pronouns then that can trigger dysphoria. A person could be super into the idea of being pregnant/giving birth despite male biology. Phantom limb kind of feelings are commonly reported, mostly phantom penis for trans men but sometimes (as for me) breasts. What was amazing is that within literally less than an hour of my first dose of HRT I started having those former phantom feelings, that I had only felt as some disconnected body part hovering outside of me, only this time it was my actual body feeling it. Yeah. Point is, there are ways of telling, there are ways of being that are qualitatively different and you really do feel like something's not right, or that it is right. You went through the mismatched gender role narrative and you weren't trans so maybe that says something about how predictive the mismatched gender role narrative is.

[karaddin]

I honestly can't envisage a society that has rejected the idea of gender or sex completely because I don't think it's compatible with human identity and sexuality. I had everything in my life telling me I was a guy, and that's part of why it took me so long. I didn't reject typical gender roles to the point of doing anything that's coded female (although I did avoid things that were coded particularly masculine), and my interests were entirely compatible and not stigmatised (at least from a gender point of view) with being a guy. I still eventually figured out where the problem was and that I wasn't a man, and once I did self acceptance followed and almost 15 years of depression so omnipresent I thought it was just normal lifted. It improved as much again with the right hormones later (and that's discounting the ~6weeks of euphoria that was just incredible).

A society without gender roles is a different story and one that I can see at least a possibility of, although I suspect many things would still skew one way or another just without any negative associations being attached to this. I don't see any greater hurdles to realising your own truth in such a society than those that I had myself, and a bunch of others would be removed.

I actually had the opposite experience to you with regards to sexuality Ep, but I agree that although they are different sexuality is part of our identity and can serve as a clue. My first indication of being trans was feeling like a lesbian rather than a heterosexual male. This feeling stayed with me, and I think was a large part of why I identified as bisexual (well I'm attracted to women, but I'm a guy and I'm not straight...I guess that makes me bi?) and has asserted itself in a strong lesbian/queer identification now.

I'm not sure what you are saying with your hypothetical Ep, I think you are saying you would fake a male identity to avoid being forced to conform to the expected female gender roles in that society? I can certainly understand your rejection of those roles and would as well, but I will say that pretending to be the wrong gender takes a really massive toll on you even when you don't know you are doing it. I would rebel against those roles or kill myself ahead of pretending to be a male again. That said as you questioned your gender identity in the past it's entirely possible you would be a lot more comfortable in that identity than I was.

[protar]

Unrelated to the current discussion but a cool video anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwJRFClybmk

Laci Green has perhaps single-handedly changed my reaction to feminism, for the better.

[Xray the Enforcer]

Not because I believe that gender is that fluid - I think I would be faking - but because I think gender roles can be so strong in a community that it would be easier to fake being the "wrong" gender than to adhere to the rules for the "actual" gender.

One of my friends, who self-identifies as FTM, has struggled with that exact issue. He grew up in a religious community with very strict (and, frankly, misogynist) gender roles. And he genuinely wondered how much of his trans* self-identity comes from reacting to the restrictive culture and rejecting the female gender roles he would have had to adopt. I haven't spoken to him in awhile about this topic, so he may have gotten some clarity on it since then.

[Prince Alexander]

Unrelated to the current discussion but a cool video anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwJRFClybmk

Laci Green has perhaps single-handedly changed my reaction to feminism, for the better.

A bunch of misguided and misinformed statements, most of which have nothing to do with feminism, but ok, cool.

2014 pop feminism is terrifying and borderline fascist. I no longer say to anyone I'm/was feminist. At most I'll say I'm anti-sexist, but even that gets me in trouble.

[sologdin]

curious. what is near-fascistic about popular feminism, you think?

[protar]

A bunch of misguided and misinformed statements, most of which have nothing to do with feminism, but ok, cool.

2014 pop feminism is terrifying and borderline fascist. I no longer say to anyone I'm/was feminist. At most I'll say I'm anti-sexist, but even that gets me in trouble.

How so? Seeing as about half of them were anecdotes it seems a large jump to call them misguided and misinformed. I'll grant that the LGBT statements aren't really connected to feminism but from what I gather the two movements tend to "team up" a lot. I find Laci to be very insightful and when she is talking about feminism I don't feel like I'm being seen as the enemy, which is nice.

[Prince Alexander]

curious. what is near-fascistic about popular feminism, you think?

It's not about equality anymore, rather than priveleges and some form of payback for a specific gender?

I don't want to paint everyone with the same brush, pop feminism is primarily white woman yougogirl paygap women need to be presidents cause patriarchy rape culture everywhere. There is minimal substance or actual research or fair discussion of equality rather than privilige or victimization. Occasionally they make valid ideas go pop (anti slut shaming), very rarely though. Yes, feminism is about a specific gender, and equality talk can find another venue, which is fair, but most pop feminism is totalitarian "do this to fix our gender problems or you're bad". When it starts to affect innocent individuals (men and women), I call out fascism.

I know I get my dose of feminism on the internet which is hardly a reliably indicator of actual, equality-oriented feminism. But I'm not sure where the good, non-pop kind of feminism exists anymore, and more importantly if it has any kind of power whatsoever. Our lives are influenced by pop shit more than we can imagine. People read unsupported biased data, become biased, and make wrong decisions in life later on.

[Formerly Tetrarch42]

It's not about equality anymore, rather than priveleges and some form of payback for a specific gender?

I don't want to paint everyone with the same brush, pop feminism is primarily white woman yougogirl paygap women need to be presidents cause patriarchy rape culture everywhere. There is minimal substance or actual research or fair discussion of equality rather than privilige or victimization. Occasionally they make valid ideas go pop (anti slut shaming), very rarely though. Yes, feminism is about a specific gender, and equality talk can find another venue, which is fair, but most pop feminism is totalitarian "do this to fix our gender problems or you're bad". When it starts to affect innocent individuals (men and women), I call out fascism.

I know I get my dose of feminism on the internet which is hardly a reliably indicator of actual, equality-oriented feminism. But I'm not sure where the good, non-pop kind of feminism exists anymore, and more importantly if it has any kind of power whatsoever. Our lives are influenced by pop shit more than we can imagine. People read unsupported biased data, become biased, and make wrong decisions in life later on.

Down with the patriarchy! Ban Bossy!