Deconstructing Gender
The goal of a just and good culture/society is that each individual has the autonomy, agency, sovereignty, safety, support and respect to make the most aligned and true choices for themselves in their expressions and actions.
If an individual has their autonomy, agency, sovereignty, safety, support and respect taken from them based on biological factors they can’t control because their culture or society has created assumptions, stereotypes, and expectations of that person’s appearance and behaviors based on those biological factors, then we aren’t living in a good or just culture/society.
This is unfortunately the case for a social construct like gender roles.
A social construct is a concept that may be based on physical reality but isn’t itself physical reality. Gender is a social construct because it is based on the physical reality of reproductive systems, but gender is not a biological reality, it is a set of self-identifications and expressions unique to an individual that exists regardless of biological form.
There is nothing wrong with having different reproductive systems like female, intersex, to male, nor is there anything wrong with anyone with any reproductive system identifying with or expressing any gender identity like non-binary, woman, or man and using the pronouns that feel best to them.
What is harmful is the gender roles we have assigned to the genders in a gender binary, especially when we assume that reproductive system at birth, gender, and gender roles are all the same thing. Gender roles are a set of expectations, assumptions, and stereotypes based on the reproductive system at birth or gender identity/expression of an individual.
Examples of gender roles:
Woman
Assumptions/Expectations/Sterotypes:
Women have female reproductive systems at birth
Women are feminine
Women are supposed to cook, clean, and care for children, elders, and their husbands/partners
Women are supposed to be submissive, subservient, and do free emotional labor for society
Women are supposed to be modest and cover up, not go out at night, not drink, not go anywhere alone, not be friendly to men, if not, they are sexually deviant and “asking for” violence
Do I even have to explain how horrific, restrictive and demeaning it would be to live a life where your culture assumed these things about you based on a biological reality you had no control over?
Men
Assumptions/Expectations/Stereotypes:
Men have male reproductive systems at birth
Men are masculine
Men are not supposed to have feelings nor express them, nor ask for help or support
Men are supposed to provide financially for their entire family regardless of the stress it puts on them
Men are supposed to be tough and dominating, never putting up with disrespect and resort to violence rather than getting “touchy-feely”
Men cannot be violated or assaulted by women
Understanding the gender role we create for “Men” explains so much of the violence that is created in our society. They have no healthy ways of expressing emotion or asking for what they need, they are expected to work themselves to death and to only resort to violence as a solution, and are dismissed when they are harmed by a woman.
It’s important to decouple gender and biological form from gender roles, to throw out gender roles entirely, and allow people to freely identify with and express whichever ways of being feel most healthy, true, aligned and fulfilling to them.
It’s extremely important to also consider intersectionality and other forms of harmful social constructs such as racism, which can be broken down into the same model:
For example, feminism is only controversial when it is centering the gender role of womanhood. Historically, white women have disenfranchised and excluded gay women, trans women, non-binary people, gay men, feminine men, and people of the global majority (people of color) to try to increase the social class of white women, and this is not helpful. It is actually extremely harmful.
Feminism is very important, but the goal needs to be clearer that it is centering the freedom and celebration of expressing femininity in all people, as well as the freedom of expression of feminine people to also be however else they want to be. If we create a narrow definition of what it means to be feminine, as well as a restrictive set of rules of what a feminine person can be and do, we are not creating a just and good society.
For example, saying that a man “shouldn’t be feminine” is implying that there is something wrong with being feminine, if certain people shouldn’t be that way. For a feminine person, this is insulting and degrading, so feminism is celebrating the expression of femininity within all people and being inclusive of the many different ways of being that a feminine person can embody.
In conclusion, if we want a good and just culture/society in which everyone has the autonomy, agency, sovereignty, safety, support and respect to make the most aligned and true choices for themselves in their expressions and actions, we need to decouple harmful social constructs like racism and gender roles from gender/ethnic identities and biological forms.
If we first judge ourselves and each other on a rubric of arbitrary assumptions assigned to certain identities and biological forms, we don’t give ourselves the chance to find out who people really are, and to connect with them AS they truly are. We restrict ourselves and each other rather than creating a freedom in which we can explore and choose the ways of being and relating that feel the best to us and are the most harmonious with others. Most importantly, we reduce our ability to bond empathically with one another as fellow humans before all else. “Othering” each other and holding prejudices prevents us from truly connecting with one another.
Allow people to be who they are. Try not to make assumptions based on how you perceive them. Just as no one can know everything about who you are from looking at you, so too can we not fully understand others until we get to know them through communication. Let’s take harmful assumptions that prevent connection and authentic self-expression out of the equation.
