Guest post by Tigger the Wing, originally a comment on a Facebook thread, published with permission.
To me, it is whatever the person calling themselves a woman says it is, for them and them alone.
What society says a woman is, fits few (if any) real people.
We need to have this discussion, and we need to do it without attacking other people for perceived transgressions (or even trans aggressions. Ouch. Sorry).
Ophelia has been entirely honest – she acknowledges that if a person says she’s a woman, then she is a woman. And she also says we need to discuss what is meant by that word ‘woman’; not because of individual women, but because of how wider society treats people that find themselves in that artificial class of ‘womanhood’.
The biggest problem is that, apparently for simplicity’s sake, humanity has been divided into two categories in the English-speaking world – well, possibly the entire part of the world previously and/or currently dominated by the Mosaic religions – dominated and although the majority might appear happy to fit into one of those two, a sizeable minority don’t.
And our language, customs and laws ignore us.
When I was still hiding who I am from even myself, before I even knew that I am autistic, I yet still wished that children were born undifferentiated, and could choose which sex they wished to be on entering puberty. That way, I (perhaps naïvely) thought, everyone would be raised the same way since no parent or teacher would know if they were raising a future male or female child.
All the ridiculous add-on baggage that society attaches to apparent biological sex would vanish.
Since I knew that it was at best a sci-fi fantasy (I was wishful, not delusional) I fervently hoped (and still hope) that we would stop at least gendering children, since their biological sex is irrelevant before puberty, and also stop assigning greater value to masculinity and maleness than we do to femininity and femaleness.
We could have real conversations about how different levels of different hormones, in the womb and later, affect brain and body development. We could acknowledge that even those who are able to cram themselves into their assigned box, and appear comfortable, don’t always feel that they actually fit.
What if male, female, masculinity, femininity, were understood to be fluid, on a spectrum, and weren’t assigned intrinsic value but were just random facts of life, like eye colour?
We could allow people to express themselves without frowning on their efforts, or denying them their humanity, or doubting their self-assessment. People could acknowledge that sometimes a person is born with a body in one biological category, and a brain in another – and it doesn’t matter, they can do what they like with their own body, because it is them.
Sex-changes would be no more problematic than ear-piercing, or tattoos. And there wouldn’t be the pressure that there is today, in either direction, to conform to a particular set of behaviours.
The problem is that we use the same word – gender – and mean different things by it, and sometimes the meaning that one person is using and deconstructing isn’t the one another person is using, and a third person might think that either (or both) of them is being mean to the other.
Since I am transgender, I understand that my biological brain doesn’t match my biological body, and no amount of ignoring societal pressure to be feminine (something I’ve blithely done my entire life; thanks, autism) makes that fact any different.
But the question remains – what is a ‘woman’ (and so, by extension, what is a ‘man’).
This is beautiful.
“Ophelia has been entirely honest – she acknowledges that if a person says she’s a woman, then she is a woman. And she also says we need to discuss what is meant by that word ‘woman’; not because of individual women, but because of how wider society treats people that find themselves in that artificial class of ‘womanhood’.”
That’s the most pellucid summary I’ve seen of the matter yet.
That’s very well said, and provides a lot to think about.
I think my wife and I succeeded in not “assigning greater value to masculinity and maleness than we (did) to femininity and femaleness” when raising our children. That was relatively easy. We were lucky to be doing so during the Sixties when ideas of a more fluid society were in the air.
However, when they asked why one had a penis and one didn’t, I think (can’t remember) we would have said something about the process of making babies. That inevitably feels like a binary distinction. I don’t think the possibility of a trans identity would have come into the discussion.
I suggest we don’t do away with gender. Uncertainty about my gender causes me a lot of pain. Other people treating me as a woman gives me a lot of relief. Other people perceiving me as a woman gives me even more relief. If gender was abolished, and there was no differentiation in peoples’ minds between men and women, I would be deeply hurt. Having my gender perceived and recognized by others is really important to me. I’ve basically spent my entire life trying to overcome anxiety so that I can present myself as a woman, and more importantly, be seen as one. The abolition of gender would make my struggle worthless, and I’d be back at square one. If bodily appearance, clothes, ways of acting and speaking, activities, if all these things become completely divorced from gender, how will I make my gender known? It’s not enough to simply say “I am a woman” if that doesn’t mean anything to anybody.
I felt many of these principles applied to Rachel Donezal as well. That both the Right and the Left were so hellbent on denying her her own personal narrative, because if fed THEIR particular narratives of race in America, didn’t have any bearing on whether she had the right to define herself. Just because society has erected a binary construct doesn’t mean that people fit a binary model.
@ 4, you are so obviously not your ‘nym:
do you think you might have felt differently if you had grown up in a less ferociously gendered society? (Forgive me if you have grown up in a not-strongly-gendered society). I can see how suddenly subtracting gender from everybody else’s perceptions and behavior might be disorienting, even painful, but surely you could still find a community of people you valued, and who valued you? Why couldn’t that community be based simply on personal values and preferences? For most of the people I know, “clothes, ways of acting and speaking, activities” are not gendered strongly if at all. But then I’m a nerdy oldish person in a pretty diverse environment.
For many of us, clothes, et cetera, were never part of our identities, which is why we don’t want those gendered roles imposed on us. I understand that they are very important to a lot of people. Perhaps gender identities would still emerge, and be crucial to some, even if gender roles weren’t imposed on people. I have some vague idea that a weakly, or casually, gendered society could accommodate both gendered and non-gender identifying people. Any anthropologists out there?
‘I am a woman.’
.
.
.
‘I am a man.’
Well, nothing changed discernibly between those two phrases being typed. But plain good manners dictates that I should be given the benefit of the doubt. I have not had to clash with angry mobs to say the first, even though my declaration of the second has met with PLENTY of macho hostility over the years.
The whole bewildering range of ‘identities’ around gender only exist in our current cultural range. And that culture is 100% toxic. Even thinking about ‘fluidity’ is imagining a Flow between fixed points. Without the patriarchal, Abrahamic-Hindu-Buddhist, and even current feminist, baggage we probably cannot imagine what it would be like to grow up as ourselves.
@7 – “And that culture is 100% toxic. ”
It’s quite honestly the very best culture that has ever existed for a very large number of people, for a very large number of reasons. Not perfect, certainly, but the best yet.
@4 I’m sorry for your struggles. I would like to see a world where my gender doesn’t matter. As a woman who fought ferociously as a girl to not be perceived as “less than” the boys I have to say I really hate the gendering of clothes, toys, books, voices, etc, etc. I refused to wear skirts and dresses (pretty much until into my 30’s) because of the perception of “girl” or “woman” being less capable, less intelligent, and just plain less than the boys or men around me. I still don’t wear particularly female coded clothing in the workplace in fact, because it makes me stand out. It has never been just a perception either, it was stated by peers, teachers, and eventually employers. A world where gender is fluid, where it doesn’t define what or who we can be sounds like a place where we could all just be who we are at any given time and that’s fine.
This is such a great discussion.
@Tigger the Wing
I’ll second F [i’m not here, i’m gone] @1 – this was beautifully written.
My family lives right at the intersection of gender identity and gender roles. My youngest son has already had to endure years of misgendering (cajoled to wear “girl clothes”, to respond to a girl name, and to express gratitude at being given given “girl toys”), as well as go through a gender transition (name change, pronoun change, and endless corrections of those who can’t get them right). None of which compares to the risks and side-effects of [likely] to-come hormone therapy and [possible] GRS. And thanks to gender role-ing, he’s alread given up wearing the earrings he’d long adored, and is even looking to hang up his ballet shoes.
The “sci-fi” world you describe is, honestly, the only world I can conceive of which would avoid the associated and utterly needless suffering.
As I’ve said elsewhere: I think we’ve got a long way to go to get there, but I think much of what you’ve suggested would ultimately wind up being a better world for everyone.
I love this idea.
That’s terrible.
Thank you for the kind and thoughtful comments here.
kevinkirkpatrick, I second SC – it is terrible that your son feels that he has to give up something that gives him so much pleasure. If it would help, you could tell him that two of my sons had ballet lessons, back in the 80s and 90s, and only stopped because the school closed and there wasn’t another one within reasonable travelling distance; and I know a lot of men who have been wearing earrings for decades.
As for the sci-fi world coming true, we can only hope that there are enough of us in each generation with the vision to imagine such a world and the ability to help humanity onto that path that it eventually comes to pass. Even if we don’t succeed in this century, if we can be an inspiration to future generations we will have achieved great things.
Beautiful post 🙂 Personally, I’m waiting for Iain M Banks’ Culture Minds to solve our problems 😀
Great sentiments, and beautifully written.
Addressing the sci-fi fantasy quip in the post, it’s actually not a horrible idea to consider doing away with both gender and biological sex. Having biological males is or is on the cusp of being quite unnecessary. The benefits (primarily diversity for its own sake?) may not outweigh the costs, which are substantial. The mean burden of childbearing wouldn’t be changed, but it could be distributed more equitably. There are potential problems too of course: biological, ethical, game-theoretic.
There are some books about this.
I recall the novel “Don’t Bite the Sun” by Tanith Lee, from the 70s, where people could reassign their own gender more or less on a whim. That’s probably about what it would take to break down our concepts of it. And even in that novel, when someone had to choose a gender permanently, they always had an overwhelming sense of which one was the “correct” one for them.
dmcclean, leaving aside that (biologically) sex is rather important, the argument to necessity is less than compelling.
(Also, there is a difference between gender and gender roles, and I suspect it’s the latter to which you refer)
brucegee1962, there’s also Venus Plus X.
(A different approach to a similar outcome)
John Morales, I think you are missing my point.
I am not confusing gender and gender roles, that I can see. By abolishing gender I meant abolishing the concept, nobody bothering to bin things that way. Nor am I linking the concepts of doing away with gender and doing away with biological sex, they are orthogonal.
Sexual reproduction doesn’t have to involve sex or the biologically male, there are several conceivable (sorry…) alternatives. There has been research in mice making progress towards cultivating sperm cells from the skin cells of female mice, or egg cells from the skin cells of male mice. Or we could probably learn to cultivate testicles in a lab like we are already starting to do with other organs, and not need bodies to carry them around. Or there are more conventional approaches, having an extremely lopsided ratio instead of no biological males whatsoever, as some social insects do; these are probably more prone to the ethical and game-theoretic potential negatives I mentioned. More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis#Humans.
dmcclean, you haven’t read the book, have you?
A central conceit is that everyone in that society was a hermaphrodite.
Bah. Sorry, hasty reading.
I am duly embarrassed.
I’m not sure what “the book” is that you are referring to John, but no I am not referring to any book in which the central conceit is that everyone in the described society was a hermaphrodite. Perhaps you are confusing me with brucegee1962?
When I mentioned that there were books about what I am talking about, I had in mind e.g. or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Door_into_Ocean or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herland_%28novel%29, but there are others. Note that these are primarily about possible worlds without the category of biological sex, not without the category of gender.
dmcclean, in relation to your comment, I can’t see how gender roles can disappear so long as sexual dimorphism exists, because gender is its cultural abstraction.
Realistically they almost certainly can’t, hence the OP’s note “that it was at best a sci-fi fantasy.” I meant that it was logically possible, and was noting its possibility to counter the claim that I was conflating one with the other. Also prompted me to bring up the issue of possible worlds where sexual dimorphism is disestablished which — while also quite unlikely in some sense — are perhaps more likely, especially on a very long timescale.
So, logically orthogonal, in “practice” (we might imagine, of xenosociology) observation of the disestablishment of gender roles in a once sexually dimorphic species might well be expected to be associated with sexual dimorphism having been also disestablished.
Alternatively, if a culture/society changes sufficiently, it’s possible that gender attributes (masculinity, femininity) within it could be seen merely as constructs rather than verities. I think people are quite flexible that way.