The concept of a post-gender world is really exciting. I’m frequently frustrated that we’re not living in that future yet. We’re not in that future because we haven’t built it yet. I say we’re not building it fast enough. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the patient type. The slow process of changing culture upsets me. Change is so exciting to me because it means I’ll have a greater variety of experiences in my life. Even if I live to be 150, I know I’ll be sad at the end, thinking about the future I won’t get to see. So, when I see our culture processing the same issues for so many years, I start ranting like an 16 year old punk who just discovered outrage.
So, what do I mean by “post-gender”? I absolutely do not mean that we should declare the gender conversation over, assume that we’ve reached equality, and never speak of it again. There are a lot of very real problems that still exist. We’re not going to solve them by ignoring them. The effects of gender-based assumptions are not going to be instantly healed. It takes time to understand this situation enough to completely dismantle it. I get this. What I mean by “post-gender” is a commitment to building a future where gender is actually irrelevant, a future where dividing people along gender lines is seen as arbitrary and stupid as dividing people by hair color. Months ago, my friend Kewagi said this on twitter: “I have this dream of gender eventually going the way of the tie – initially, strict insignia (military), now fashion accessory.” (original twitter post). That sounds awesome and just makes complete sense. Where’s the fast-forward button?
Especially in this bubble called San Francisco (at least in my immediate community), the gender roles of the 1950s and earlier are agreed to be obsolete. They’re seen as harmful things of the past that don’t deserve to live in present day. Saying outright that “women should…” or “men should…” is a great way to get yourself shamed. Despite this, longterm effects of established norms persist. They persist in the way we dress, the way we interact, and what opportunities we believe to be open to us. They persist in subtle ways that are much harder to understand. How much has my perception of my own agency been shaped by having a biologically female body and a feminine(ish) gender identity to go along with it? As I discover bits of my behavior and thought that are limited by this, I can do my best to banish them and rewire my brain. Will I ever find all of them? I doubt it, and this bothers me. I’m resentful that these things were allowed to affect my developing mind.
I was really lucky to be raised by parents who thought it was important to treat their daughter and son equally. It wasn’t perfect, especially since they weren’t the only adults I encountered as a child, and most others were not as enlightened on the subject. They tried their best to give us the same toys and encourage us in the same ways. I remember being really confused when people outside my family suggested that there were things I couldn’t do because I was a girl. In middle school and high school, when classes were separated by subject and skill level, it took me a long time to notice that the gender ratios of my advanced science and math classes were all wrong. When I took woodshop the gender division was more obvious, likely because of the boys’ attitudes. I was one of four girls in a class of about 16. My friend Angel and I saw this as an opportunity to show off. Boys were supposed to be better at this, but she and I did the highest quality work, never had to be called out for using the tools unsafely, and got the best grades. We were thrilled to enter a male-dominated environment and brag about how much better at everything we were. The boys’ discomfort at this was intensely amusing. The boys in that class were more obviously conditioned to be stereotypical “Men”. Their assertion that men were better at this particular skill was stupidly easy to disprove. They came into this class assuming they’d be good at it because of gender conditioning. In their arrogance, they didn’t bother to learn. Though they never treated us as equals, they eventually stopped their verbal chest-pounding when we kept proving them wrong.
In math and science classes, the boys weren’t usually dumb enough to say sexist things like “girls are bad at math.” In those classes, I got along equally well with students of whatever gender. I was one of the smart kids, and the other smart kids treated me as one of them. Sometimes I’d look around the room and wonder why there were so few girls in the class. I was smart enough for these classes, so why couldn’t the other girls get in? I started thinking that maybe boys were generally smarter than girls and I was one of the weird smart ones. Since I was a misfit, especially with other girls, this explanation seemed plausible. It didn’t occur to me then that other kids were not necessarily raised with the ideals of equality that my parents held. It didn’t occur to me that those other girls may have been told that they couldn’t do certain things just because they were girls. I didn’t realize how arrogant I was to think that everyone grew up with the same privileges as I did. How many of them thought themselves incapable of learning things without ever being encouraged to try? What is it like to be so defined by other people’s negative assumptions?
It’s shameful that kids are still taught to shove themselves into these limiting “boy” and “girl” roles. Many parents still assume that little children should be raised differently based on gender. Even the well-intentioned statement “girls can do anything” can backfire if a little girl never thought otherwise. I remember being confused by this sentiment as a kid – of course I can do anything, what does being a girl have to do with that? It let some doubt creep in and established a division between groups of humans that I didn’t perceive before. But, that statement could be incredibly useful for a girl who already perceived the boy/girl, man/woman division and felt limited by it. Depending on personal history, this same statement can have drastically different effects. So, how can we talk about the artificial cultural construction of two genders without accidentally perpetuating it? Keeping kids naive about the gendered world they’ve entered might be helpful in some ways, but ultimately deprives them of the tools to recognize and take apart the limitations they encounter. Dwelling on it too much may keep the gender divides alive and strong in the minds of future generations.
How can we finish fixing this legacy disaster of gender roles? I want so badly to see this finished in my lifetime, so we can legitimately declare victory and move on. In my mind, the importance of equality is so obvious. Getting culture to reach that ideal is complicated and messy. Undoing the damage of centuries is hard work. Not everyone is able to wake up one day and say “Well duh, dividing humans by gender is a stupid, obsolete idea! We’ve been such assholes! Let’s make amends and find a way out of this mess!” It’s disappointing that we still need to spend so much effort convincing people that equality is a good idea when that effort would be much better spent in strategizing and solving the damn problem.
This is why I get so impatient with those who defend the fears of bigots. Someone who fears what will happen if women and transgendered people gain true equality, if all humans are able to marry someone they love, or any other thing that absolutely needs to happen before this fight is over, should not be babied into thinking their fears are reasonable. No matter how real that fear feels to them, it’s still illogical, irrational, and completely naive. The only thing they stand to lose is their ability to scream about being afraid without being seen as a bigoted fool. Their fears should be addressed, but never validated. If someone’s afraid of monsters under the bed, it’s not actually useful to tell them “Yes, monsters are scary! I understand that you’re afraid! I’ll protect you from the monsters!” Instead, how about this approach: “I’m sorry you’re afraid. Let’s look under the bed together and see what’s there. Oh look! It’s just some toys and clothes that got pushed under the bed. The shape of them in the dark might look like a monster, but it’s completely harmless.” Patient, compassionate education about why these fears are unfounded is necessary. I don’t think I’m the one for the job. When people argue emotion against logic, I tend to just call them idiots and write them off as Not Worth Listening To. I know this solves nothing.
Actually repairing damage of centuries of oppression is a far more interesting problem than convincing people that it should be repaired. Pressure should be strongly put on anyone who is perpetuating oppression. As a culture, we all must become better at recognizing oppression and all its lingering effects. We must become better at calling bullshit anytime inequality shows up, even in subtle ways. We must become better at strategizing ways to repair the damage of unequal structures. Old hierarchies and traditions deserve no protection. Until every human truly believes that being human is enough to guarantee human rights, this process isn’t done.
8 Comments
“We must become better at calling bullshit anytime inequality shows up, even in subtle ways.”
Here, here! Personally, I am perpetually baffled by the backlash to calling bullshit. Granted, I’m usually not one to be afraid to step up and call a spade a spade, but hands down, every time someone calls me a bitch – (which is pretty funny considering I’m actually fairly nice). There’s this whole ‘ignore it and it doesn’t exist’ mentality, like you’ve said, and if you refuse to play along then you’re the one rocking the boat. When the reality is, the boat *needs* to be rocked.
Well said, Audrey. The “monster under the bed” analogy is great. Keep it up.
I’m so glad you wrote this. I understand a lot better what you mean when you say “post-gender,” which I think I was missing before in my conversations with you. I find those experienced you had when you were in school as a kid fascinating, and I had some similar (and different) experiences in the same vein that I am really interested in talking to you about. Well put, impassioned, and rational. Bravo.
This was a lovely piece, and yeah, let me echo the above on thanking you for the explanation. I’m afraid I may have in part inspired it, and I want to mention that I see post-gender sometimes being used in the way you mean, which is clearly good, and sometimes as basically an excuse to not address the gender-based discrimination in the world. “This doesn’t apply to me and maybe doesn’t even exist; I’m post-gender, so not only am I not going to identify as feminist, I’m going to run away from/disrupt any conversations about the subject.”
I’d be truly delighted if some day we could properly make it to the point where gender really was just a fashion accessory.
This post was definitely inspired by some of your comments, as well as those by many others. Until you mentioned it on twitter, I didn’t see how “post-gender” could be defined in that way of avoiding the conversation. My thoughts on this subject are complex and tend to get lost in the short form of twitter. I’m really glad that I finally took the time to organize these thoughts into a longer post. Writing this, and taking part in discussions has helped me to clarify a lot of things in my own head, so thank you.
Lovely.
I remember having to fight against gender roles in school. My mom did her darndest to instill “you can do anything” and “education is your ticket in life”, but despite that, sexism was alive and strong in school, where she couldn’t be there to protect me.
In math class, where I excelled, there were maybe 3 girls and 20 boys. One day, for no reason I can make sense of, the teacher said to us (in front of everyone:) “You girls may be be doing well now, but later on, the boys will surpass you.”
I was dumbfounded. I wanted to go straight up there and hit him. I didn’t understand it. I was about 12 at the time. It was 1983. What possible reason could an adult male teacher have for demoralizing his young female students? What if we believed him? Did he think he was making a joke?
If I have a son or daughter, first skill I teach them: stand up and speak your mind!
“Keeping kids naive about the gendered world they’ve entered might be helpful in some ways, but ultimately deprives them of the tools to recognize and take apart the limitations they encounter. Dwelling on it too much may keep the gender divides alive and strong in the minds of future generations.”
I think your story answers your own question. Please deprive small children of sexism until they get old enough to see it for what it is.
Kids who are exposed to sexism as a small child don’t “gain tools” they gain *acceptance*.
I have the exact same story of my encounters with sexism — later, when it was too late to stop me. I also faced the same self-doubts, thinking I was a misfit, then found a community of 1900 computer scientists who were women, and that helped me shed even the last vestiges of sexism.
When you are older, you have a much better view from the *outside* of sexism than on the inside of it.
I also know the same story of a friend who is African American. She, too, grew up without thoughts of racism, and didn’t really encounter it until high school. And when she did, her mother gently suggested maybe it was her skin color. She was unable to believe that could be the reason!
I argued as much while I was on the production team for Toy Story 2. Early in the story, the Woody’s Roundup was to have a sexist scene, Jessie being helpless and saved by Woody, and the modern-day Jessie doll was to groan and shake her head over it. I argued to take the scene out, that children should read about sexism in history books in college, not receive messages about it as children. (I doubt my arguments were the impetus of taking that scene out, but I do hope it helped. Jessie became quite a wonderful character and role model!)
As Alfie Kohn said (on a topic completely different), “it reminds me of Monte Python’s hit-you-on-the-head lessons.” Children don’t need to “learn” about sexism by being exposed to it over and over — particularly when they are little. That kind of exposure only makes them put up with it, when they have no tools to deal with it. Instead, let them feel that first blow in high school, when they can go, “geeze, dude, what the hell are you doing??”
Kiki
And, by the way, I know a handful of transgender folks and all of them are tech women now who are very smart and doing very well in their field. I just now realized that all along I’ve been saying to myself, “well, that’s because they were originally boys and boys do better at that stuff.” And just now I realized that the real answer to it is that they were *pretend* boys, hidden girls, who just plain never got that sexist pressure not to succeed.
Transgender tech women are what women *would* have been had those women not faced stereotypes growing up. Lucky bitches. :) :) :)
So, yeah, hide the kids from sexism as long as possible.
Kiki
PS Note that I said “kids” not girls.