okay, i watched this video and it intrigued me a lot. any yoruba neu black folks please chime in i’d love to here y’all’ perspective!
the first thing is that i feel this helped me understand gender abolition more. i tend to see people who call themselves gender abolitionists say “gender isn’t real, it’s just a social construct” and it made me super irritated. i denounced gender abolition and anyone who claimed my dysphoria would “go away” if i just stopped carin’ about labels”. the way that gender do still exist but just isn’t the main focus of the language (i’d argue it’s not genderless like the man in the video said but rather just neutral, but we’ll get there i promise) make me think of the way some other gender abolitionists tried explainin’ what the concept of gender abolition actually is. i do like this idea, though i do think we should call it something else. gender deconstructionism? i don’t know, something like that.
i also do like the idea of gender comin’ to sex rather than vice versa, which is different from the traditional understandin’ of gender for people used to European culture. and in that way, these attributes can also be used to describe other things not necessarily connected to gender. it make me think of how some spiritual people claim the feminine and masculine as energies rather than roles or stereotypes and how all people need a bit of both (i disagree, but trust me we gon get to that later).
what started to irk me was the way binary sex was presented to be almost essential to understandin’ human life even if not gender, and how at some point the understandin’ of gender in the yoruba language began to become a way to defend bioessentialism sayin’ that “gender come to the sexes because of how they naturally be actin’” without any mention of how social conditionin’ could have had any influence. sex essentialism and binarism in tandem is the exact reason why people don’t believe in non-binary genders, or view neutrality as inherently genderless because it’s not inherently assigned to either of the two traditional binary sexes. people tend to parade androgyny in the mind and spirit as the best way to be because of the impulse to ascertain binary gender modalities to the fullest range of human diversity. there’s a reason languages regularly delegate anything neutral or neuter as bein’ “object” or “non-human”. tangible presentations of neutrality (especially in terms of sex) don’t be seen as possible as androgyny is because of its abinary nature, and i don’t even think a neutral presentation would immediately convince people otherwise. the idea that gender come to the body rather than the opposite is a way i feel like we can combat this.
but, if the binary sexes can’t be naturally inclined to be a certain way, then how do gender be comin’ to the body? the answer to me is through spirituality/sensuality. when we begin to understand the world around us through our senses and can interpret what these are supposed to mean as children, it’s then we begin to under what gender is, if we have one, and what to do about the gender we do/don’t have. it’s not personality, but a kind of intention and self-concept in the way we interact with ourselves and other people that we can categorize into a solid sense of meanin’; a modifyin’ of a personality if you will. gender don’t have to be foundational, but it’s more of a tint(s) or a common feature(s) that can both be grouped or relate to each other in some way as well as inform the way we present in our personalities, relationships, and hobbies.
