WP3: A Critique Of The Gender Binary
Divergence from the gender binary has long been a taboo within mainstream Western culture, but in the recent months, there have been laws passed in numerous southern US states, including my home state of Tennessee, that silence and shame any sort of exploration of identity beyond the confines of she/her and he/him. One example, in May 2021, Bill Lee, the governor of Tennessee, signed a bill that would “specifically call out the sex education of ‘sexual orientation or gender identity curriculum.’” (The Hill). The rise of bans on the freedom to explore gender identity in educational settings hits close to home both literally and figuratively.
My relationship with womanhood has been a long, complicated, and ever-changing journey. I vividly remember being in elementary and middle school and rejecting skirts and dresses, pinks and purples and pastels, glitter and sparkles. I had no interest in joining the girl scouts or the cheer team or taking ballet. Instead, I opted for basketball shorts, oversized t-shirts, and cutting my hair short. Clothing and hobbies that were deemed more masculine-presenting, “boyish.” I was called a tomboy. I was called a dyke. I didn’t fit other people’s expectations. But I persisted despite the judgment and name-calling because I felt most comfortable in those clothes. Now, I want to shed light on the social circumstances of oppression that have shaped my non-binary identity and identify and critique the larger role that gender plays in regard to feminism.
About 3 years ago, I joined the social media platform TikTok, and I saw videos of people explaining their theories that the behavior of rejecting femininity as a child, as I had done, is a result of internalized misogyny. But I never chose cargo shorts over skirts out of hate for women. I was never believing gender bias in favor of men or mistrusting women. But it was a byproduct of experiencing shame and undervaluing because of my gender. I was, in my adolescent way, choosing more masculine-presenting clothing in order to reject the rigid expectations of femininity that were constantly being shoved down my throat. In her book The Second Sex, Simone De Beauvoir’s primary thesis is that “men fundamentally oppress women by characterizing them, on every level, as the Other, defined exclusively in opposition to men. Man occupies the role of the self, or subject; woman is the object, the other. He is essential, absolute, and transcendent. She is inessential, incomplete, and mutilated. In defining woman exclusively as Other, man is effectively denying her humanity.” I was rebelling against the idea that because I was born a girl I had to like pink and glitter and dresses and in turn, be weaker and silent and passive and naturally more mature than my male peers. That I had to be the Other.
I didn’t want someone else to decide what was feminine and what wasn’t. Paulo Freire, the author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, maintains the stance that, “it is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity” (78). I wanted to define my own femininity without it denying my humanity, but being bound to the classification of Other, of the object, because of my inherently feminine body is how the system of patriarchy continues to nullify women’s humanity.
To put it another way, femininity is in fact, socially produced. When de Beauvoir “turn[ed] to biology, psychoanalysis, and historical materialism. These disciplines reveal[ed] indisputable “essential” differences between men and women but provide[d] no justification for woman’s inferiority. Throughout human history… she finds ample examples of female subordination, but again, no persuasive justification for them… She traces female development through its formative stages: childhood, youth, and sexual initiation. Her goal is to prove that women are not born “feminine” but shaped by a thousand external processes. She shows how, at each stage of her upbringing, a girl is conditioned into accepting passivity, dependence, repetition, and inwardness. Every force in society conspires to deprive her of subjectivity and flatten her into an object.” Not to mention, according to Ann Oakley’s Sex, Gender, and Society, published in 1972, “psychological differences between the sexes are due to social conditioning, and there is no research that allows us to infer any biological determinism whatsoever.”
As can be seen from de Beauvoir and Oakley’s examinations, the basis for women’s oppression is entirely historical. Femininity, through centuries of curating the social template, is by default equated to being soft, delicate, and thus, submissive, and inferior. Those of us born with female genitalia are taken advantage of as malleable infants to be shaped into this pre-determined mold. To demonstrate, a few months ago, I went to see Shakespeare’s play “As You Like It” here at USC’s very own Bing Theatre. I was aware that the play was written centuries ago, but there were still themes of gender roles and expectations that are prevalent today. In the play, one of the characters disguises herself as a man, and immediately the way the other characters act around her notably shifts. When she wore a dress, the men spoke to her with superiority. But when she wore slacks, a shirt, and a hat, the patronization dissolved. It got me questioning why clothing and feminine vs masculine appearance dictate others’ perceptions and attitudes and expectations of us. We are either to be viewed as soft, emotional, delicate, the nurturer. Or, we are to be viewed as strong, sturdy, and worthy of respect, the provider.
Even further, when I simply search “feminine” on Pinterest or Google Images, the only images that come up are full of pastels, flower blossoms, dainty objects, dainty landscapes, and dainty portrayals of women. In the current state of history, to be considered feminine, you must look and act and embody a soft, subordinate way of being. I feel it is this default feminine “setting” that fuels the notion that women are inferior to men, and that we don’t deserve the same respect that men do, that we can never upend their dominant status.
Essentially, women’s oppression is not grounded in the natural world. Women’s oppression is not a natural, instinctive, essential component of humanity. Women’s oppression is completely historical, relying on the political and economic structures of exploitation that are rigidly in place. Further, Paulo Freire asserts that “the people… unlike animals, not only live but exist; and their existence is historical” (98). We are human, not animals, and thus we cannot use biological instinct to justify the preservation of a discriminatory sex-class system. Humans have the power to create history and advanced circumstances. We, humans, are aware of ourselves and the world, we are conscious, we have the ability to change reality and set the limits of our own freedom, whereas animals in the natural world act only within the limits of stimulation and sensory and the present moment. In short, it is not possible to boil down the justification for the labeling of women as inferior to nature and biology because as humans our reality is completely historical, changeable, not reactionary, and reliant on stagnancy and stimulus.
Though there has been significant progress in terms of the rights women have in the larger Western society, the progress is surface level, in that deep down there are still systems of oppression deeply embedded into the fabric of our everyday ways of life. We can vote, we can work, we can be vice president, but our work and our bodies continue to be exploited without end.
I am reminded of the limitations that society has cultivated around women in subtle moments every day, so much so that I even come to expect and anticipate it. I am reminded of it as I walk down the street getting cat-called more times than I can count. I am reminded of it when I am spoken over in a conversation by a man. I am reminded of it when I’m forced to prove my intellect or my skill. For instance, when I played in bands throughout high school as a drummer, a very male-dominated instrument in a male-dominated music scene, I could feel the judgment and condescending attitudes of sound technicians and venue managers when I was up on stage setting up the drums. When they would hyper-critique how I was setting up drumset, but not caring about how my male bandmates were setting up their gear. I am reminded of it when I got dress-coded in high school, when I feel hands graze against my lower back, when I receive unsolicited dick pics.
Or when I checked my phone on January 1st, 2022, and saw the news that the planned parenthood in my hometown, Knoxville, Tennessee, was burned down. Deliberately burned down. As if Tennessee’s recent ban on most abortions wasn’t enough, the arson conducted on one of Knoxville’s only women’s health centers demonstrates that women still do not have control over reproduction, our own bodies.
A large contribution to the exploitation of women is bound to reproduction, child-rearing and the biological family. In The Dialectics of Sex published in 1970 by Shulasmith Firestone, Firestone points out that “the biological family is inherently unequal power distribution. The biological family — the basic reproductive unit of male/female/infant, in whatever form of social organization — is characterized by these fundamental — if not immutable — facts:
(1) That Women throughout history before the advent of birth control was at the continual mercy of their biology — menstruation, menopause, and ‘female ills’, constant painful childbirth, wet-nursing, and care of infants, all of which made them dependent on males (whether brother, father, husband, lover or clan, government, community-at-large) for physical survival.
(2) That human infants take an even longer time to grow up than animals, and thus are helpless and, for some short period at least, dependent on adults for physical survival.
(3) That a basic mother/child interdependency has existed in thus has shaped some form in every society, past or present, and the psychology of every mature female and every infant.
(4) That the natural reproductive difference between the sexes led directly to the first division of labor at the origins of class, as well as furnishing the paradigm of caste (discrimination based on biological characteristics).” (Firestone 1970).
As can be seen, the difference of sex itself did not provoke the cultivation of class distinction between the sexes, the domination of men over women. Rather, the difference of reproductive functions facilitated the class system. But even then, there are humans born with female genitalia who are classified as women because of the presumption that they can reproduce, yet there are many women who are sterile and cannot give birth but are still classified as female.
With that said, what roles do sex and gender ultimately play in the future of feminism, the future of humanity? My own journey of weaving in and out of the gender binary and traditional representations of femininity is because of the restrictions of the gender I was assigned at birth based on the body I was born with. It was as if my sex determined my gender. But a group called the French Materialists argue that that is not the case. In fact, they declared that “gender does not flow naturally from biological sex but rather gender, the social construction of gender, is the overdetermining factor that makes biological sex socially relevant” (Revolutionary Left Radio). If the importance of gender, the social commitment to it, continues to remain in place, the distinction between sexes, and thus oppression, will continue to thrive.
Further, Christine Delphi, author of “Rethinking Sex and Gender,” expresses that, “we have continued to think of gender in terms of sex: to see it as a social dichotomy determined by a natural dichotomy. We now see gender as the content with sex as the container… gender precedes sex: that sex itself simply marks a social division; that it serves to allow social recognition and identification of those who are dominants and those who are dominated. That is, that sex is a sign, but that since it does not distinguish just any old thing from anything else, and does not distinguish equivalent things but rather important and unequal things, it has historically acquired a symbolic value.” Therefore, she argues:
“the end goal of feminist revolution must be… not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.”
Namely, the future of feminism is one where gender and sex do not exist at all. They play no role. They vanish. Hierarchy forms the foundation of classification which breeds differences, such as differences in gender. And in order to rid of this hierarchy, we must disappear sex and gender altogether. Without the classification of difference, no hierarchy or privilege can afford to exist. There would simply be anatomical sexual differences that are not given any social significance or symbolic value.
But just as with any revolutionary movement, “the oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom” (Freire 98). Despite women’s desire to escape domination, latching onto the idea of sex preceding gender is out of fear that fundamental social categories might be lost. Breaking free from “femininity” is not an easy task, it means sacrificing comfort and security in exchange for equality. This fear of difficulty and discomfort is what perpetuates the hierarchy, what induces many women to submit to roles of caretaking. Ultimately, the reality of gender roles is not static, but rather can be transformed through critical analysis, questioning the organization of culture and heteronormative conceptions of gender. But by being freed from the constraints that the social categories of gender create, domination would be escaped because there would be an end to distinction, and thus separation, based on sex.
Not all of humanity is strictly bound to the separation of male and female, however. For instance, in Zapotec culture, there is a third gender category: “muxes see themselves and are seen by others as being neither male nor female…muxes upend conventional conceptions of sex, sex category, and gender, as well as the gender binary… while being widely accepted in the community as a third gender.” Although they still embrace gender as categories, the Zapotecs’ stance on multiple genders demonstrates the existence of a functional society where genitalia is irrelevant to identity. They illuminate that a society where the gender binary is dissolved can be possible.
Despite the attempts to silence, there is already a rising movement of non-binary identity in Western culture. According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, gender non-conformity is accelerating.
The rejection of the gender binary is ultimately underway, and I am a part of that movement. It is because of the way femininity is used as a tool to oppress that I have never felt quite comfortable in my body and using the word “woman,” or the pronouns “she/her” to define myself. I’ve always felt uncomfortable with the immediate assumptions and implications that come with identifying as a woman. Instead, I embrace multiple pronouns, “she/they,” as a way to reflect my gender nonconformity and my support of gender abolition while still paying respect to the fight against the oppression of womanhood that continues to blaze on until gender can altogether vanish.
Works Cited:
Alexandra Kelley May 5, 2021. “Tennessee Gov Signs Restrictive LGBTQ+ Education Bill.” The Hill, 5 May 2021, thehill.com/changing-america/respect/diversity-inclusion/551919-tenn-gov-signs-restrictive-lgbtq-education-bill/. Accessed 13 Apr. 2022.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Penguin Education, 1972.
Geiger, A.W., and Nikki Graf. “About One-in-Five U.S. Adults Know Someone Who Goes by a Gender-Neutral Pronoun.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 27 July 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/05/gender-neutral-pronouns/.
Mirandé Alfredo. Behind the Mask: Gender Hybridity in a Zapotec Community. Tucson, Arizona, The University Of Arizona Press, 2019.
“Rethinking Sex and Gender — Christine Delphy. Libcom.org.” Libcom.org, libcom.org/article/rethinking-sex-and-gender-christine-delphy. Accessed 13 Apr. 2022.
“The Dialectic of Sex by Shulasmith Firestone 1970.” Www.marxists.org, www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm.
“SparkNotes: The Second Sex: Plot Overview.” Sparknotes.com, 2019, www.sparknotes.com/lit/secondsex/summary/.
“A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) by Mary Wollstonecraft | towards Emancipation?” Hist259.Web.unc.edu, hist259.web.unc.edu/vindicationofrightsofwomen/.
