Either sex and gender roles matter, or they don’t.
I’m gonna cover a lot of ground in this post, but as pride month is nearly halfway through now (at the time I wrote this post), it brings to mind something that has been bugging me for quite some time.
Within the last few decades or so, there has emerged a concept within the scientist and lgbtq community that separates the idea of male and female into two parts–the psychological gender, and the physical sex. Sex only refers to your body, while gender is more of a mind issue–an idea, a feeling, or a conviction.
Sex in and of itself is easily definable…which genitals a person has, the hormonal makeup of their bodies, and often their physical appearance. But most of the world, if you were to ask them what gender means, they would not be able to explain it beyond what they feel to be true.
Gender is described as a mixture of ideas and societal influences that shape how we view ourselves. So if someone were to be physically male, but feel female, then they would describe their gender as something opposite to their sex. Some people even identify their gender as an inanimate object such as water or space. But let me dial it back a bit, to the first line of this paragraph.
Societal influences and constructs–often hated and despised by members of the LGBTQ+ and alternative generation Z communities, yet present nonetheless. When it comes to gender, typically the world has two options, each with very specific ideas and expectations. When people think of men, they think taller, muscular, more objective in thought, blunt, strong, aggressive, and enjoyers of hard skills such as heavy machinery and sports. They think suits, pants, beards, chiseled features, deep voices, and natural leadership skills. When people think of women, they often think of soft voices, flowing hair and fabric, dresses, skirts, makeup, the colors red and pink, nurturing attitudes, curvy figures, and soft skills such as emotional support and childcare. They think of pregnancy and children, and deep feelings.
These things in and of themselves are not bad. However, the ideas and identities that society presses on us often go too far, and then we have parents raising their children only within those specific barriers and thousands of instances of sexism. This is indeed something to abolish and something to be angry about.
Now we come to my generation. One look on the right side of the internet will bring you to them–passionate, expressive, individualistic social warriors who live for the next meme, the next trend, the next thing to defend. Despite my misgivings about the culture they have created, I think that the increased social awareness for those who are struggling is a beautiful thing. However, with all of these new concepts appeared, swiftly being approved, and championed to all who will listen, there are a lot of contradictions.
First of all, this paradox. If there are no gender roles, no universal definitions, no societal expectations–what is gender?
Gender is inescapably tied to our physical bodies. Otherwise trans people wouldn’t get dysphoria, because what they looked like and how their bodies worked would mean nothing to them. It is also inescapably tied to our culture, and who we are as people. To me, my experience growing up as a woman is a completely unique experience. The friends I have, how I communicate with others, even how I think is all based on that.
Now, if we were to change the definition of those societal expectations and disregard them entirely in favor of a feeling, what do we have left?
Without anything to tell us what means to be male or female, we have nothing. Because those outside factors tell us the difference, the blueprint, how we should feel and act, regardless if it is right or not. From the time we are children, we learn through watching the world around us what means what. People cry when they are hurt, people hug when they love each other. If someone yells at you, that often means they are angry. If someone has an army uniform on, then likely they are enlisted in the army.
If we were to never have an army at all, and there was someone in an army uniform that you saw, you wouldn’t know what that means. Assuming there were no other armies in the world, you wouldn’t be able to understand what an army was or what it means that that person was wearing those clothes. They would just be wearing different clothes.
What does it mean to feel like a woman or feel like a man? The only possibly way that people could think they know that is through the very gender roles they hate. It is clear in many instances of LGBTQ identities and relationships that gender roles, although they are extremely flawed, are an integral part of being a human.
The first example is gay relationships. In many (not all cases), there is a more dominant person, and a more subdued person. There is a “top” and a “bottom”, when it comes to sex. There are butch and femme lesbians–which, likewise, are girls that present more masculine, and girls that present more traditionally feminine. Many lesbians dress and act more masculine on purpose. Why is that?
It is because the human body is hardwired for heterosexual gender roles. All of those concepts, masculine, feminine, top, bottom, dom and sub all come from gender role norms. They are all derived from them. If gender didn’t matter, people wouldn’t even need to label themselves more masculine or feminine, because they would just be themselves. There wouldn’t be implications of heterosexual gender roles within any gay relationships at all. And yet, there is, enough that it’s considered a stereotype.
The second example is the transgender side of the LGBTQ+ spectrum. What causes a man to feel like a woman, and a woman to feel like a man? This, besides being something scientists cannot answer, is something that isn’t spoken about much. In our world, the experience of being a man or being a woman is dictated not only by our bodies but through nature and nurture, and societal standards. The way I grew up as a woman is entirely different how one would raise a boy, and as a woman, I grew up in a place of less privilege than I would as a man. Men do not have to think about the possibility of having children, they do not typically feel more complicated emotions very deeply. They do not have to worry about being in a place where they can feel confident and safe.
That being said, how then, can a man feel like a woman, considering the way he grows up is so much different? How can he possibly know, since he has never experienced it fully himself?
The only way that transgender people can possibly even get close to defining this for themselves is their own feelings, and societal gender roles. I.e. their idea of what being a man or woman is like. Again, if there were no gender roles whatsoever, then transgender people would not exist, because there would be no expectations for how to act for themselves or others. There would be nothing to compare to, no “blueprint” so to speak, of how a woman or a man should act and feel.
Considering the restrictive and toxic nature of our current gender roles, it is no surprise that many people (especially women), tend to avoid gender entirely and identify as nonbinary. If I had not grown up aware of this, if I had not grown up and been allowed to be who I am and have it not relate to my gender at all, if I was not a Christian, I would have identified as nonbinary myself. Being a woman is hard, and being a man is undesirable to me. I don’t like my period, I wish my chest was smaller, and I don’t want children. I wear what I want, do what I want, regardless of what is expected for me as a woman. I don’t want to have the possibility of being raped or objectified. I don’t want to live within the confines of pink dresses, red lipstick, clean hands, gentle words and demure, elegant attitudes. But because someone taught me that being a woman is better than that, and that I can be myself without it relating to my gender, it isn’t a problem for me. And even so, I, having lived within a construct of lesser privilege, could not possibly fathom what it would be like to be male.
The idea of gender I see around me is so shallow. Genderfluid people fluctuate between feelings, ideas, their own interpretations, and choose which one to put on every day like it’s a costume. The suffering trans people go through as they try to reconcile and find peace with themselves is palpable. The children around me, some as young as nine or ten, switching from gender to gender, sexuality to sexuality, trying to find a stereotype that fits them perfectly so they no longer have to fear that they will never know who they are. Gender, and sex, for that matter, has been diluted to a set of clothing you can put on and take off whenever you feel like it, like a child playing dress up. But despite the cries for destruction of societal norms, destruction of roles and stereotypes, they are still there, and unknowingly, enforced even more.
Without heterosexual gender norms there would be no terms such as femme or male that genderfluid and nonbinary/agender people use to refer to themselves. There would be no top or bottom, no sub or dom, no gender and sexuality crises. The concept of being nonbinary would not exist, because if there aren’t any blueprints or expectations for your gender, you wouldn’t feel the need to be outside any of them. If there was no specific definers for gender, people wouldn’t define themselves and identify themselves by it.
The only way that you can truly relate to an experience that someone else has is by experiencing it yourself. The next way is someone else, through the internet, a textbook, or indirectly through society, telling you what that experience supposedly looks like. And if that doesn’t work, all you are left with are feelings.
Societal norms and stereotypes are shallow and toxic. Feelings are chaotic and change, just like thoughts. Most people don’t identify with their feelings. If I am angry, I will not be angry for the rest of my life, even if I feel like I will be. If I feel like my friend is talking behind my back, that doesn’t mean they are for sure solely because I feel like it. I would not be able to say that I am an army veteran because I feel like an army veteran inside. I would not be able to say I am a different race than my body because I feel like I am, because I relate to them, because I think that I think like them, because race and ethnicity is so much deeper than stereotypes, ideas, and feelings. It is a lived experience. How is gender and sex any different?
You can never fully separate yourself from gender roles, because they are the only way even know how to define your own gender. So either gender and biological sex, together, matter, or they don’t. Anything else is an illusion.
