Gender and the Self

I've been meaning to upload this for ages. This essay, which I wrote about two years ago, is what totally changed my view on the world with regard to gender and sexuality. Unfortunately I can't find the version which has my in-text references in, so bear with me, please!

So...what is gender?

Historically, humans have categorised themselves by assigning “gender”, defined as a social construction, to bodies “sexed” by biology. I believe that the self is not only a fragile entity, but a constantly changing one – a “fluctuating identity” – and sex and gender function like any other variable in the way they affect us. We are aware of the physiological differences between men and women, just as we are aware of the physiological differences between people of African or Asian race, and so I think that assigning gender to selves is similar to assigning race. Both have foundations in nature, then are built up by society. Gender strengthens selves, firstly by allowing them to exist under the guise of permanence, secondly by creating the sense of community. Paradoxically nevertheless, it can potentially take power from selves, since “community” implies superior status for those within it, and inferior status for those excluded. Any category creates restrictions upon the self, limiting the ways we can move about within it, and thus we are at risk of becoming trapped by unjust assumptions generated by the gender stereotype. Although to say that gender is an inherent property of the self is to discount our transience and individuality, to say that gender does not affect the self at all is to suggest that the self is disconnected from the body altogether.

Our body is “the locus of a disassociated self” which has merely “the illusion of a substantial unity”. For this reason, separating human beings based on the sex of their bodies is nothing more than an attempt to make the self appear coherent and enduring. Most people remain either male or female throughout their whole lives, which allows them to find constancy in their self-concept by clinging to a gender definition. April Ashley was distraught because he felt that his self was fragmented, a female mind in a male body. When he was able to reconcile gender and sex, he was content, because he had found the semblance of stability. It is not until puberty that male and female bodies begin to change to become sharply distinct; we become aware of our gender, identifying ourselves as men and women, labels which seem more permanent, in response to those changes. This is why Greer’s “stereotype” has lasted; it is proven through the continuing success of Mills and Boon novels. Embracing the generic stereotype of the romantic heroine can help women come to terms with the disharmony and discord in their lives and selves. Moreover, Oakley in Sex, Gender and Society describes how our feeling of security as adults, indeed, our “mental health” can only be preserved by “staying within the boundaries” of gender, which proves that gender is similar to ethnicity, which is also based on genetic variation. In Looking for Alibrandi, a popular modern novel, Josie’s Italian heritage becomes a rock for her to hang onto during her tumultuous adolescence, because it has been “nailed” into her. Therefore, our selves may find permanence, forgetting the temporality and malleability of our existence, in linking physical appearance and gender, just as they do by linking it with ethnicity.

Gender is part of the matrix of beliefs within which we construct our selves. We exist in “a field of overlapping social and cultural identities”, one of which is whether we are male or female, and through “intersubjective recognition” we make our selves whole. Identification with others was the reason why April Ashley “longed to be a woman”. He shared the trappings of gender – “jewels, fur, make-up” – with the group sectioned off by society as “women”. Once he could belong, he felt “resplendent” from the sense of fellowship and completeness of self. Men are renowned for their “old boys’ clubs”, while women in mainstream media such as Sex and the City also form cliques, finding safety in numbers. Although concepts such as the “Byronic Hero” seem to undermine this, as women find security in a domineering male figure, I believe this is dependence, rather than companionship. We can see that gender behaves like race, another social construction based on biology, as people who share a similar racial background tend to gravitate towards each other, forming mini-communities within a large one. Even in multicultural Sydney, areas such as Leichhardt and Cabramatta are famous for a particular culture. We also observe Josie finding fellowship “with other confused beings” as an Italian. Greer claims that this movement towards others of our own kind is based on “narcissism”, and works to bolster our self-esteem. We can make our selves feel strong and stable by linking them with others, through common threads such as gender.

However, the sense of community also paradoxically implies exclusion, because a community is not only defined by who is in it, but who is not in it. In this way, gender can empower or disempower individual selves. The feminism movement emerged because of indignation at the separation and oppression of the female sex and accused the patriarchy of attempting to use gender as a tool to turn women into inferior selves. The self-images of men had been reinforced, while the self-esteems of women were fairly dismal, as shown by de Beauvoir’s sad reflection on the subjugation of women. Even an ordinary man “behaves at home like a minor god”, empowered by the gender rift. Greer goes even further, to suggest that women have been “castrated”, turned into “eunuchs”, the mere property of men, by the social expectations placed up on them by the gender stereotype. However, I think that men are as victimised by gender as much as women are; they are forced to conform to their own stereotype of the “castrator”. Part of gender’s darker side is that it brings into existence a universal battle, because dichotomy creates a “power struggle” between the two sides. This is just like when we separate humans from the rest of nature, such as through the notion of “stewardship”, and “domination and destruction” of nature then occurs. Gender therefore delegates different powers to selves – de Beauvoir names them “masculine logic” and feminine “magic”, as any form of separation creates conflict between different sides.

These expectations compel both men and women to conform to stereotypes and maintain social order. Gender therefore defines what selves can and cannot do – whatever is deemed detrimental to the peace of the community can be restrained. Whenever men or women rebel against the roles set out for them, there is a disturbance in the community. For example, in Elizabethan England, when Queen Elizabeth rebelled against the gender paradigm by refusing to marry and bear children, this forced people to think that their contemporary view of women could be wrong. Pamphlets with oxymoronic names such as “Haec Vir” (the Womanish-Man) infiltrated the community, and assisted the emergence of a society in which “no rigid pre-existing doctrines dictated what the roles of the sexes should be”. The physical constrictions which gender has a reputation for enforcing reflect the ones placed on the psychological self; women wore corsets in Victorian society and Bantu women elongate their necks with brass rings, while Women’s Lib in the sixties often told their contemporaries to “burn their bras”. Elizabeth Gross was concerned about the “phallocentrism” which, through the “regimes of knowledge”, submerged women. Nationalism has in the past been used to “justify aggression”, being the catalyst and fuel for wars. By re-creating their own history through burying fake artefacts and uncovering them, claiming they were the remnants of an advanced Aryan race, the Nazis succeeded in not only supporting German struggles but moulding the German people to fit their specific regime. People believed their country had laid out a grand part for them to play, and in turn laid down their own lives fighting to maintain their country’s greatness. Gender, like nationality, is indeed a “conservative ideological force” because encourages the “retention” of the original mores by conditioning us.

The essentialists believe that what biology has bestowed upon us, sex, and the psychological paradigm, gender, are equivalent and superior to mundane variables such as hair or eye colour. Someone who is of the female sex will automatically be of the feminine gender, and a self will be created in the image of masculinity or femininity, because of the dichotomy of nature. But these people are neglecting to recognise that the categories based on chromosomes, XY and XX, cannot encompass all human beings, for there are people who possess the genetic codes XXY, XYY or XO. Although every society uses sex to ascribe gender, the composition of gender differs between communities. For example, William Davenport noted that in a certain Southwest Pacific society, “only men wear flowers in their hair”, and familiar gender roles were reversed. Furthermore, these definitions are not even stable themselves within one society; throughout the ages, “woman” has fluctuated. Today, April Ashley, despite being born possessing the genetic makeup of a man, is considered female, as “our sister” by Greer, who also notices that there is no “single face of the year”. Gender clearly cannot form the entire basis for the foundation of the self, since it is inadequate in describing all people. Moreover, we cannot forget that all men and women themselves are unique individuals in unique situations – “no originary, neutral and inert ‘woman’ lies there like a base”.

Those who hold the radical view that “woman is fictional” are those who hope for a postgendered world, because the intrinsic “self” behind a human being exists independently of gender or ethnic identities. They would classify “female” or “male” as socially constructed adjectives, like “left-handed” or “right-handed” (hand preference in particular, since most of the population only shows preference for one hand, yet the small ambidextrous percentage is largely ignored). But the whole reason the men differed from the women in the case of the Pacific society way was caused by a genetic difference which the community discovered and enhanced. The combination of biological variables, such as eye colour, hand preference or sex, is what, according to materialist philosophy, constitutes the whole self and gives us our unique identity. Even in dualistic terms, we cannot deny that our physical selves in some ways constitute who we are. For example, Locke proposed the self being a “single seat of consciousness”, but we now know that conscious thoughts are generated by chemical reactions in the brain, and may be manipulated physically. Evidently it is not possible to have a self which is totally unaffected by sex and gender. As Greer concludes her first chapter, “whatever else we are or may pretend to be, we are certainly our bodies”.

The biological differences between the sexes are “no more significant than those between individuals” – belonging to the male or female sex is merely another variation in the human genetic code. This is because our gender is no different to socially constructed divisions such as ethnicity, in that it assists the self to gain stability and fellowship, empowers it and at the same time, disempowers and restricts it. To say that gender is something more than ethnicity, which is also rooted in anatomy, is to overlook gender’s connectedness to history and subjective experience. But neither can we take the opposite stance to this, deconstructing the self, since it fails to notice that every “self” is different because of its uniqueness, which begins with our DNA and is polished off by our social networking. Like Josie Alibrandi who initially ran away from her culture, we cannot escape our gender. But, through introspection with an open mind, we can understand how they make us the people we are.

Bibliography

Board of Studies (1993) Philosophy: Self, Humanity and the World, Armidale: Teaching and Learning Centre, University of New England.

Greer, G (1971) The Female Eunuch, MacGibbon & Kee, London

Marchetta, M (2000) Looking for Alibrandi, Penguin Books, Australia

Oakley, A (1972) Sex, Gender and Society, Sun Books, Australia

Poole, M (1986) Idols-Ideals-Identities – Women in Society, AE Press, Melbourne

Smith, J (1998) Different for Girls, Vintage, UK

the meek shall inherit the earth

“Dear God,

You once said that the meek shall inherit the earth. The meek are NOT inheriting the earth.
The meek are being done like a dinner. Please do something to help the meek.
Love, Henni”

~ 45 & 47 Stella Street and everything that happened – Elizabeth Honey

Reminders of my diminutive size are a daily occurrence, whether they come from people (“aww, Minnie, you're so cute, don't grow!”) or from inanimate objects (I nearly got rolled over by a bin the other day, but that's another story). With claims that homo sapiens is getting taller and taller by the generation, it left me pondering, is it really that great to be “meek” in stature?

You know you're short...when you have never been “carded” in your life.

Typically, I most enjoy cheating the government and other institutions just because of their foolish preconception that short people are also young people. While I'm not sure exactly how much I've saved by buying child tickets on public transport, in cinemas and before historical monuments (such as the Doge's palace in Venice, where Adult tickets are 12 Euros and Child tickets are 3), I would prefer not to count it so that you won't think of me as a cheap little scammer. I suppose a less illegal method of saving money comes through buying children's clothes, which are on average 20% less expensive. More so when it comes to jeans - I have never paid above $30 for a pair of jeans. And I hopefully never will! Unless inflation...

But being mistaken for a kid is not always fun and games – I will probably never own a pair of designer jeans. Unless commercialism...And just recently my cousin said to me, “you look like a 14-year-old driving a car!” (last time I ever give HIM a lift!). I also find myself being accused of antisocialism just because I can't be bothered to get someone to believe that I am actually above the legal age to consume fermented drinks, or get into clubs.

You know you’re short…when you're over eighteen, but guys sing the “make up” song at you.

Make-up; it makes them look legal so guys wanna grab them and get them in bed.
Sometimes, I think, “I would hit that”, but then a cop says to me, don’t do it yet.
Not yet, not yet…

BUT on the upside, I'll never be accused of cradle-snatching...tralalalala, Carrie, I'm not referring to you at all...Now if you're a girl, and you're short, you're often told that you'll never have a problem finding a boyfriend, because of the stigma associated with dating someone shorter than you. But these tall people have never come out of a party with a stiff neck, not because it's an early symptom of the meningococcal which you've picked up through too many hook-ups, but because you've been talking to people who are ridiculously tall. Speaking of that, dear readers, do you want to know a secret, why I have never snogged a guy? Not only am I a total hag (thank you, Emma, for your valuable input), and not only am I frightened by the microbiology practicals which show the fungi and bacteria living in everyone's mouths, but I am so vertically challenged that I am virtually invisible to them. Literally – I went to a party once, making the terrible mistake of wearing flats, and even though I was waving at people like crazy, due to the fact all of them were at least a head above me (girls were wearing heels, and boys are always tall), nobody noticed me, until I found Carrie, who is about 5cm taller than me.

I also ought to admit that another sad thing is that I haven't been attracted to a short person for a long time (unless you count Daniel as short, which some people do). I suppose my subconscious is screaming, “DON'T GO NEAR A GUY WHO'S UNDER SIX FEET TALL UNLESS YOU WANT YOUR KIDS TO BE MIDGETS!”

Anything else?

When people ask you, “so what high school are you at?” and you have to correct them that you're a tertiary student.

When people say, about you and your younger brother, “it's impossible to tell which one of you is older!”

When people think you're just your boyfriend's younger sister's friend. OR even worse, that you ARE his younger sister.

And...you knew this was coming. You know you're short...when you get attacked by a bin...

The world is not made for short people. Well the Western world certainly isn't. Our local council forces us to recycle everything from milk cartons to weeds by giving us a bin for “general waste” that is a third of the size of the next smallest bin. So, one night, my father yells, “Minerva! The bins!”, and so I head outside, open the gate and push the bins out one by one. The last bin I take is the “Garden Bin”, which is toilet-door green, the diameter of a chair and nearly as tall as I am (which I know doesn't say that much...but still...). I have to get this monstrosity down my hill of a driveway and onto the road; I start off pushing it, inch-by-inch, down the hill, until friction and gravity decided to despise me, nearly ripping my arms out of their sockets and accelerating away. It ends up on the middle of the street in one piece. So I start backing it up so that the monster bin is standing in the gutter, and got sandwiched between the bin and the retaining-wall-esque side of the road. What a great way to start the week! (our garbage day is Monday)

I've written about how I think it's the “Western World” that's guilty of neglecting people like me – one perfect example is how high supermarket shelves are. While in many Asian countries, where short people are the majority, step-stools are commonly found in the vicinity of supermarkets, the only ladders I see near my local Coles say “STAFF ONLY”. But hey, I guess you can be creative. I once picked up a guy by asking him to get my favorite kind of coffee because I couldn't reach it. (It didn't go anywhere though)

My dad's car is also a perfect example of inconsideration towards short people. When I push the seat up, I can't reach the pedals, and when I push it down, I can't see over the dashboard. Why are German people so tall? Other objects guilty of discrimination include lanyard headphones, which I have on occasion tripped over, non-adjustable chairs,

I have also been having a hate-hate affair with anything labeled “one size fits all”.

You know you're short...when every morning you wake up and thank god you're a girl

“Do you know of Dr Freud, Mr Esme? His ideas about the male preoccupation with size might be of particular interest to you...”
~ Rose Dawson – TITANIC

I've been extremely sexist in this rant so far, having not written from a male perspective – but now I'm just about to get even worse. Sorry boys. But this discussion wouldn't be complete without some thought given to how much more amazing life is if you're short and female, than if you're short and male. I really sympathize with short guys; as discussed above, short girls like me seem to avoid them thanks to “survival of the fittest” genetic theory, and tall girls just won’t be able to notice them.

Moreover, being short has not only turned me into an instant chin- and arm- rest for the vertically blessed, but also a victim of those who find entertainment in lifting up small children and running away with them. Unfortunately these shallow bastards often mistake “small adults” for “small children”, with the result that I scream like a car alarm…Unless it's one of my beautiful friends Christabel or Zsa Zsa who are my official givers of piggyback rides. Admittedly however, I will probably have to eat my words when I find someone a la Anakin Skywalker/Hayden Christensen in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. To quote my friend Jo: “See, this is the ONE good thing about being short like Natalie Portman; your boyfriend can pick you up and spin you around!” But, somehow the mental image you get if you reverse the characters involved is not nearly as appealing. So, Jo, aren't you glad you're a girl?

You know you’re short…when you’re practically perfect in every way…

That’s right darlings, the best things come in the smallest packages.

the outing

“If you were gay...that'd be okay...I mean, cause, hey...I'd like you anyway...”

This post has been backdated because I would like to keep the timing private.

I don’t like words like “lesbian” or “bisexual”. Too often they are bandied around by young and naive girls and boys, accompanied by loathsome stereotypes. And you probably also know a fair bit about my hatred of categorisation. So it’s quite obvious that I’d appreciate neither label applied to me, especially when you consider the way lesbians look down on bisexuals, and vice versa.

I don’t mind “queer” though; I’ve been called a “queer little thing” before, though not with reference to my sexual orientation. And it suits me. Quirky, queer, quaint, all these words beginning with the letter Q. And you know why I like them? Because the most important thing to the letter Q is U!

Speaking of letters, I will now give you a quote from The L-word, the television program my mother will not allow in our house.

Alice (The L Word): I follow the heart, not the anatomy.

In all honesty, I don’t think you should love your girl/boyfriend just because they’re the opposite sex (or same sex, if that’s your thing). You should love them because they’re a great person and the two of you “click” together. “Pansexual” is a word I’ve heard a few times – usually in conjunction with the gorgeous Captain Jack Harkness of Doctor Who and Torchwood fame. It’s certainly an interesting concept, but again, the mere word carries many connotations. Pansexual implies promiscuous in the same way bisexual implies that a person needs to have 2 simultaneous partners, one of each gender, in order to reach sexual satisfaction. Common-sense will tell you that this is not necessarily the case with a person who identifies as either.

So – here’s your short answer. Me? I don’t fall in love with a person’s chromosomal arrangement; I fall in love with a person themselves.

Why am I not done yet? Or rather, why am I not “out” yet?

This note is now becoming as much directed at me as at you.

To start with, I don’t like it when people try to “figure me out” in the style of a mathematical problem or chemical equation. As much of a science-lover as I am, I believe there are some things that basic knowledge will never be able to explain (this is because a) human experience is limited and b) reality is constantly changing). Some aspects of people we can set out in black and white – like a person’s favourite colour or political stance – but some things we simply can’t. You can’t measure how compatible two people are for a relationship, you can’t precisely predict who will win an elite piano competition and you can’t choose a school for your child based on purely academic factors.

But, the moment I identify myself as lesbian or bisexual, people are going to want to know why. One of the select people I’m “out” to said, the other day, “Oh, did you hear the thing about left and right brains and sexual preference? You’re ambidextrous – so it probably explains why you’re the way you are.” An innocuous enough comment, but if more people knew, I would have more people going, “she’s a lesbian because she has only 15% body fat” or “look at her hand – the length of her fourth finger clearly shows she was exposed to excessive testosterone in utero”, or “look at her flat chest – no wonder,” or, like my mother, “I tell you what’s wrong with her; she’s too loud!” I absolutely cannot live like that; I want to keep some aspects of my personality indescribable.

I spoke about human experience being limited. And now I’ll speak about reality constantly changing. Sexuality, like any part of a self, is a fluid thing. You start out asexual as a child, and then you might start to swing one way, then you might experiment a bit, then you might choose one particular orientation for a number of years. In high school I took for granted that I was “straight”. In university, for want of a better word, I’m “bisexual”. Who knows when I’ll change again, or if I’ll change at all in the future? But human nature is such that we want to cling onto things and put concrete, unchanging labels on them. Men who were attracted to other men when they were young, but are now in heterosexual marriages are often frowned upon. Once I “come out”, there’s no going back. And I’m in an industry where the identity you forge for yourself in school carries onto your workplace. There aren’t a lot of glbtq doctors out there; it’s a very conservative world. Call me a coward, but I don’t want to jeopardise my career and the careers of people around me. My flatmate is female; her family are quite homophobic. I don’t want her to have to move out simply because of me.

One positive thing that can come out of this is that our world won’t be prejudiced forever. People will become more open-minded; all I have to do is hang in there, and wait until “reality” changes. It really wasn’t that long ago when the term “homosexuality” didn’t even exist. We know that in ancient cultures (for example, the Greeks), same-sex-attracted people lived in harmony alongside opposite-sex-attracted people. Some people even practised both heterosexual and homosexual love with one lifetime.

This time will pass. My time is coming.