💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › jamie-heckert-gender.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 11:19:01. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Gender Author: Jamie Heckert Date: February 2012 Language: en Topics: Lexicon, Institute for Anarchist Studies, gender Source: https://anarchiststudies.org/lexicon-pamphlet-series/lexicon-gender/
Gender is a system of categorizing ourselves and each other (including
bodies, desires, and behaviors) running through every aspect of culture
and society, and intertwining with other categories and hierarchies
(race, class, sexuality, age, ability, and so much more). Various
aspects of biology (for example, genitals, chromosomes, and body shape)
are interpreted to mean that human beings naturally belong in one of two
categories: male and female. But if we look more closely, we might
question the nature of gender. Biology, human and otherwise, is
wonderfully diverse.
Nature doesn’t give us these two options. We interpret and categorize,
and then come to believe that those interpretations, those categories,
are the truth. Gender doesn’t just happen. People define it, invent it.
Even genital surgery on intersex bodies is described as corrective, as
though nature had made a mistake by not conforming to our binary
thinking.
Because we invent gender, we can do it differently. This becomes clear
when we look at the many ways that throughout history and across
cultures, different aspects of social life and personality have been
part of defining gender. What counts as a “real” man or a “good” woman,
as masculine or feminine, varies from place to place and time to time.
In some (sub)cultures, gender hasn’t been limited to two options but
instead includes recognition of three, four, or many genders.
The usual story in countries like the United States, Canada, and the
United Kingdom, however, is that there are only two options. And while
these states may offer formal, legal equality, in practice they still
largely value those characteristics associated with men and masculinity
(for instance, independence, control, and strength) over those
associated with women and femininity (say, interdependence, love, and
gentleness). This hierarchy can be subtle or blatant, woven together
with other hierarchies through institutions and systems, socialization
and culture, in ways that produce many complex effects. In dominant
cultures, mind and reason are imagined as both separate from and
superior to body and emotion; so too is whiteness privileged over color,
action over rest, hetero over homo, and firmness over tenderness.
Gender can be more or less rigid. Supposedly abnormal, unnatural, or
improper gender behavior can be met with social censure ranging from
teasing to bullying, discrimination, imprisonment, forced medical
“treatment,” sexual violence, emotional abuse, and even murder. This
violence is most obvious when it comes to transgender people, or those
who otherwise transgress the social assumption of two fixed and natural
genders. Why does gender transgression trigger such strong emotions,
even to the point of violence? Perhaps it is because none of us are
perfect examples of a real man or real woman. No one can live up to
these abstract ideals, with all the contradictory messages about what
they even mean.
Most people twist themselves into knots trying to conform to what they
think they should be, rather than simply being aware of who they
actually are. Self-policing one’s gender can feel so familiar, so
habitual and subtle, that the effort put into conforming may seem
natural and effortless. Yet there is something profoundly liberating in
growing self-aware of the habits we hold on to out of fear or shame, and
when it feels right, learning to let them go.
Gender isn’t just an individual experience, though. It’s intertwined
with all of our relationships and social institutions—many of which
presently, if sometimes inadvertently, serve to constrain, hurt, or
control most people. Perhaps the most obvious structure that does this
today is the family, where people generally first learn to notice the
anxieties and expectations that come with gender. Even the very idea of
what a family is and how it works (or what it should be and how it
should work) is inextricably linked with gender.
The idealized nuclear family, for example, is defined as consisting of a
monogamous, married, and reproductive heterosexual couple led by the
male “head of household.” If the woman works outside the home, as is
often economically necessary at this stage of capitalism, she is still
likely to do far more of the housekeeping, emotional labor, and child
care—with little or no recognition of such tasks as work. Children are
given gender labels from birth and may be expected to conform to them.
And while being the head of household has its privileges, masculinity is
frequently tied to one’s ability or not to provide financially for the
family, which in turn leads to a great deal of anxiety, frustration, and
shame in class-based societies.
The wider political economy is also gendered in oppressive and
exploitative ways. Just as women’s labor inside the home is typically
taken for granted, all sorts of feminized labor is taken for granted in
capitalism too. When people talk about “the economy,” they usually are
referring to a narrow and official definition that only includes paid
work, the production of materials or knowledge, and the sales and
distribution of those products. The economy, in this understanding,
doesn’t include the bearing and (unpaid) caring of children nor the
(unpaid) housework on which any economy depends.
Nor does capitalism and related colonialist projects truly recognize the
traditional knowledge of non-capitalist cultures, whose extensive
histories of, say, working with plants are exploited by pharmaceutical
and agricultural corporations. Feminists of color have long noted the
linkages between colonialism’s unacknowledged dependence on the skills,
wisdom, and labor of people of color and women of all races. Many
celebrated historical figures in colonial nations are both white and
male. There is nothing wrong with white men per se, but neither is there
anything as special about them as cultures of white supremacy and gender
hierarchy would encourage us to believe. Besides, no one does anything
on their own. We all depend on the efforts of others. While understated
in capitalist thought, such efforts have inherent worth and point the
way to alternative economies.
Indeed, when work associated with women and femininity (such as
teaching, nursing, cleaning, and listening) is paid, it’s paid much less
than work associated with men and masculinity (such as sports, finance,
leadership, and talking). This gender hierarchy is further tied up with
race and class inequalities when, for example, higher-status women move
into work traditionally associated with men, thereby leaving feminized
labor to lower-status women.
The nation-state, too, is gendered. Like the traditional head of
household, the head of state offers protection in exchange for
obedience. Its other characteristics (including rigid borders,
competitiveness, aggression, and independence) are also those linked to
certain versions of men and masculinity. Some nations invade others in
order to demonstrate their dominance, which once again involves
hierarchies of race and wealth. Like individuals or households competing
for economic success, nation-states are inherently insecure. By
simultaneously creating fear and promising security, they endlessly
justify their existence.
The ways we categorize humanity into races, ethnicities, classes, and
countries are all gendered. Consider common stereotypes: the passive
East Asian woman, the hypersexual black man, the exotic other from
across the border (whether of nations or neighborhoods). Colonial
invasions have long been justified by white men (and women) drawn to
both wealth and playing the hero, allegedly protecting brown women from
brown men. Ongoing inequalities are reinforced by continuing to cast
brown women and men, especially those in the so-called developing world,
in the role of a victim in need of charity.
Gender divisions are rife with contradictions. Class hierarchies, for
instance, can be based on a division between manual labor (using the
body, which is associated with femininity) and so-called skilled labor
(using the mind, and linked to authority and control, which are all
associated with masculinity). Working-class masculine frustration often
merely reverses this hierarchy, suggesting that the strength of using
one’s body is a more authentic form of masculinity, while upper-class
men with their clean clothes and soft skin are effeminate.
Holding on to such resentment, to fantasies of superiority and a fear of
different cultures, is itself part of a gendered culture uncomfortable
with emotion. Instead of simply allowing emotions to exist and pass
through us, or finding other healthy ways to deal with our feelings,
most of us are taught to either cling to or reject them (which is really
just another way of holding on). Learning to be comfortable with our
desires as well as our fears is part of creating a world where we can
live with and love ourselves along with each other in all our
differences and similarities.
Even our relationship with the rest of the natural world (“Mother
Nature”) is connected to gender. Inciting fear and shame in people,
about either their own gender or gendered others (such as queers or
foreigners), induces a self-centered state of mind. When individuals
feel threatened, they of course prepare to defend themselves. They may
do this by supporting war, which has a profound ecological impact, or
even through shopping. Making people insecure about their bodies, and
then offering products and services to address the supposed
imperfections, is fuel to the fire of a growth economy, unsustainable on
a finite planet. Self-centeredness (associated, for example, with
certain success-oriented versions of masculinity) can also lead to
seeing the bodies of other people, other species, and the earth itself
as merely “resources” available for one’s own benefit rather than beings
in their own right.
Gender is a living, evolving system. It has no fixed truth. It changes
as we change our relationships with ourselves, each other, and the
world. Gender diversity is about the incredible beauty of life’s
capacity to overflow, undermine, subvert, and refuse all the categories
we put on it, ourselves, and each other.
Compassion can motivate people to seek each other out, to support and
nourish each other, to do gender differently. Men who want to let
themselves be gentle become friends. Women who know they can be strong
organize together and share skills. Drag queens and kings, bi people and
transfolk, lesbian women and gay men, and queers of all sexualities make
spaces for themselves and each other to connect, share, and play.
Friendships, networks, and movements can also include, cross, or
transcend all these identities and more.
Sometimes people cling to gender identities to feel safe. At other
times, they might hold them lightly. Different spaces, different
practices, can help people feel safe enough to drop some of their own
borders and self-policing in order to experience gender lightly,
playfully.
Families can, of course, also embody alternatives to normative gender.
Single mothers or fathers, joint mothers or joint fathers, and
transgender parents all show that children do not need two parents of
supposedly opposite genders. Gender diversity in children can be
respected and honored. People can become conscious of how work is
divided within the home.
We can be less fixed and more experimental with our roles as well as
identities. Sometimes people create their own families, defined less by
blood kinship and more by affinity, friendship, and intimacy. People in
social groups, movements, and even neighborhoods can become family,
developing their own rituals and relationships. Housing cooperatives,
queer networks of friends and lovers, or extended families of other
sorts all highlight that the heavily gendered ideal of the nuclear
family is only one possibility among many.
Economics and politics can be done differently, too. The dominant
systems of capitalism and the nation-state are not the only options.
They do not even represent the majority of ways that people engage in
economics or politics but instead simply demand the most attention.
Feminist geographers and economists, for example, highlight the diverse
economies that exist around the world—all the various forms of
producing, consuming, sharing, and working—that don’t fit into the
narrow (and macho) definition of the economy. We can acknowledge,
celebrate, and develop diverse, cooperative, caring economies,
emphasizing their viability as real alternatives.
Indigenous activist-scholars and anarchist anthropologists note that
many cultures, and even some nations, do not have the same impulse to
define clear borders or police their own people— forms of social control
that are taken for granted as politics. Let’s notice in our own lives
the difference between the official stories of who is in control and how
life actually works. How might we nurture the elements of our society
that work cooperatively with other people as well as ecosystems to
create freedom, equality, and abundance?
Like power, gender is everywhere, running through our relationships with
ourselves, each other, and the earth, and the relations between nations,
classes, and cultures. And like power, it is not a problem in itself but
instead a question of how we do it. Gender can be a pattern of control,
violence, and domination. Or it can be just another way of talking about
the beautiful diversity of human existence.