What is Gender?
Interviewing Linda Marks, author of “Healing the War Between the Genders” I came away wondering about our notions of gender. For many of us the idea of “male” and “female” seems innate - it feels like we were born one or the other, have always known it, recognize it in others, experience humans as two flavors: Male or Female.
Yet many of us have experiences that challenge this belief in gender polarity - perhaps as a boy-child we preferred playing with dolls to playing with trucks, perhaps as a girl-child we liked football a lot more than dancing - but most of us just ignore these experiences to persist in the belief that one is either male or female.
And science has abundant examples of people born with chromosomes that are neither xx or xy, but xxy and xyy (sometimes called “intersexed”). Throughout all of recorded history there have always been homosexual humans. And, as far as I can tell, there have always existed “transgendered” people - cross-dressers, female personalities “trapped” in male bodies and vice versa, etc.
I read somewhere (but can’t find a citation on the internet) that some Native American tribes believed that humans came in seven genders - hetero male, hetero female, gay male, lesbian female, shaman, transsexual, and dancer. Also, that in the Bantu language there are seven genders.
Andrea Dworkin, an author known for her controversial beliefs about sexual politics, once wrote that “the system of gender polarity is real but not true.” I think in generations to come we will look back at this idea of only two genders as the kind of misinformation and prejudice that had us once believe that the color of a person’s skin determined their character.
It all reminds me of a song by Peter Alsop I used to sing a lot:
As soon as you’re born, grownups check were you pee And then they decide just how you’re s’posed to be Girls pink and quiet, boys noisy and blue seems like a dumb way to choose what you’ll do Well it’s only a wee wee, so what’s the big deal? It’s only a wee wee, so what’s all the fuss? It’s only a wee wee and everyone’s got one There’s better things to discuss
Julian said,
February 3, 2008 @ 6:53 pm
Hi Chip.
I was pleased to see your writing here about gender.
As I understand it, gender, like race, while linked to human physiology (skin pigmentation, whether the clitoris has a urethra running through it or not, whether labia are fused and contain gonads or not)is not, “essentially” biological. It is, rather, social, conceptual, and deeply political. Both race and gender are systems of power, used to privilege one group over and against another.
I think we all know who the privileged classes are, when it comes to race and gender! And I’m glad you are bringing up the matter of intersex folks. Cartesian dualism, as a system of thought that developed and has remained fixed in the Industrialized West, has a lot to do why it is whites/Westerners are so fixated on aspects of reality being “either this or that” with those aspects also being in perceived as in opposition. But with race and gender, it’s not just opposition, but hierarchy that’s central to how each of these systems are organized and institutionalized.
When I was young, I didn’t just learn boys were different from girls, but that boys were better than girls. Hence terms like “throwing like a girl.” And I learned that whites were not just different from people of color, but that whites were better. Indeed, I learned that white people created everything worth knowing anything about! As a white man, I have had a lot of unlearning to do!
So we can’t forget this matter of social, political superiority. See also, Dworkin’s wonderful essay: “Biological Superiority: The World’s Most Dangerous and Deadly Idea” located here.