Sex vs. Gender as discussed on Facebook

Recently, something very interesting happened among the comments on the Facebook status of one of my friends (I know it's shocking but true). A friend of mine posted a link to an article all about gender. To me, a well-versed sociology student (hee hee), this article was nothing new: Sex and gender are two different things, sex being biological and gender being socially constructed and learned. Among the comments on this friend's link, one girl wrote

     I think the mistake of gender socialization is to teach gender ideals based on anatomy rather than discerning the balance of masculinity and femininity within the individual. Gender differences are REAL and INNATE. They just aren't always as clear cut as penises and vaginas.

My initial reaction was to angrily respond to her "real and innate" comment. But then I read the whole thing again. She's not saying anything about women biologically being feminine or men masculine; she's saying that the personality traits which we've designated as feminine and masculine exist, and are different, but just don't exist in humans based on genitals, or primary sex characteristics. Very interesting thought.

What do you think?

I'm undecided as of now. I think it's a very interesting point, but my problem with it is the perpetuation of binaries. I think it's a bit simplified. She's trying to point out that people are widely varied and that variation doesn't have to do with biology, but she can't get past the idea of two categories. Most people that I know would not easily (would barely, in fact) fit into a category of either feminine or masculine, regardless of their biological sex. My boyfriend has several masculine traits as well as several feminine ones, but if I were to categorize him I wouldn't put him in either place. I think if we really want to move past the stereotypes associated with men, women, masculinity and femininity, we need to move past all these binaries and look at people as human beings with a range of emotions and traits. 

Our society is so worried about names. I fall victim to it too. Even now, I almost wrote something about getting rid of categories all together, and my first thought was "But what would people be then?" How could we easily describe someone if we didn't have simple categories like "man" or "woman" to fall back on? I don't know. I also think it's unrealistic to imagine our society making a change like that; language would be difficult to completely re-do. But I think it's an interesting idea to think about ways in which we could change the ways we think of men and women so that we don't have one group against the other, or one group as the opposite of the other, and so that we could allow for the millions of tiny traits, behaviors and quirks that make one human different from all others.




**For extra reading, this article discusses how we socialize children (specifically female children) to fit into their gender roles, even when we don't realize we are doing it, and don't mean to do it.

Sex, Gender and The Princess Syndrome

I was just reading an old blog post on Femagination, which I've just discovered tonight. I like this blog and find it really interesting, but something in this particular post bothered me. It was about women making themselves up to be pretty, especially on wedding days (The Princess Syndrome), and the writer's struggle as a feminist to take a stand on this. This is the part that irked me:

"But I think there’s something else at work when a woman does all the womanly things to make herself look attractive. It has to do with a woman’s sense of identity. Wanting to be attractive is part of being female; it is probably hard-wired into us because of biology."

She writes this in an offhand manner, as if it's something that is just accepted. But it's not! "Wanting to be attractive" is not at all hard-wired into women biologically; it is hard-wired into women socially. We are socialized from the time that we are born to learn our gender roles and play the parts well. Women and girls are taught, both subtly and not, that their best asset is their looks. Women are judged, often harshly, if they are not constantly working their hardest to look attractive at all times. There was a court case in 1982, Ann Hopkins vs. Price Waterhouse, which dealt with this issue; Hopkins had the best record of 88 candidates (all others were male) but was not given the promotion because she was not feminine enough. A woman who doesn't follow the social rules of making herself attractive and devoting herself to femininity is seen as a threat to the system, as abnormal, deviant, or even dangerous. Society is putting women into a horribly confined, lose-lose position.

It is absolutely crucial to understand that nothing about gender is biological; gender and behaviors associated with it are socially created, regulated and enforced. Most people find that they do not fit evenly into a 'feminine' or 'masculine' category (and many do not even fit cleanly into male or female). It is important, as feminists, to understand this difference because the assumption that sex defines personality traits, behaviors, or a person's abilities is the assumption that has made female oppression in this country (and the world) possible. Women were considered too weak to go to work because their fragile, female minds and/or bodies couldn't take it. Women were not allowed to vote because they (supposedly) lacked the mental capacity to make political decisions. As long as we continue to believe in sex defining what a person is capable of (or even what a person is like), we continue to oppress all people by confining them to a set of characteristics that they are expected to have. We know that men have emotions, and that they cry (or can cry), but society still tells them that these are wrong, because emotions and tears are feminine. We cannot continue teach people to be half-human, choosing either the 'feminine' or 'masculine' characteristics; we are limiting everyone. 

I have a very different opinion than the Femagination author on today's weddings and Princess Syndrome; I simply don't understand the point in spending all that money on the wedding instead of investing that money (as well as time and energy) into the marriage. Still, I do respect the right of any woman to look how she pleases, whether that look involves make-up and heels or not. However, I think all women should ask themselves why they want (or need) to make themselves pretty, and for whom they are actually doing it.