Originally Posted by
N.J.
I definitely do not believe in classifications. The labels offered by society to identify sexuality, CD, TV, TS, are starting points, a place for people to sort of come together and say, yeah… I’m kind of like that. Aside from a simple starting place I have no use for labels.
Universally sex and identity are extremely significant in culture. Perhaps because it is the first and most obvious thing we discover about ourselves. Even as children we know some people have girl parts and some people have boy parts. This is emphasized by adult role characters who assign behavioural qualities to sex. “Boys like trucks. Girls like dolls, etcetera.” Social behaviours are assigned to a simple anatomical difference, sex, and from this assignation we get gender.
The essentialist point of view is that there is an intrinsic difference between men and women. Something basic and animalistic that defies social constraints. John Gray basically covers the essentialist view in his book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, which is basically over hyped drivel.
Another theory is that Gender is shaped by socialization. Basically men and women come off of the factory floor emotionally, mentally the same. The only difference between boys and girls is their bits and that is all. The theory states that our early life experiences and social influences shape our gender, that hormones and physicality only influence who we want to shag and the rest is constructed loosely around that.
The theory of biological determinism, which is similar to essentialism, relies on pure physiology, saying that the difference between men and women revolves purely around our bodies and the things our bodies do. Men are stronger than women, it says, and women bear children, so men and women are different.
So the question of gender comes down, in the scientific world, to one of nature or nurture. This oversimplified battle has been waged for decades. There are fallacies in each theory so we have to pick and choose and come up with something that works for us, a bit like labels no?
Judith Butler, who ought to win the ‘worst academic writing ever’ award, actually manages some theories that I am comfortable with, though she can take things a bit over the top. She says that there are differences physiologically between men and women, and men and men, and women and women. These differences, she says, influence sexuality and sex… basically who you want to shag. This first bit is very like the theory of socialization, however the remarkable thing she says is that there are as many genders as there are people in the world. She equates gender to a performance, and says that gender is an individual performing their sex in a way that is viable to them. It’s as if you are going out and saying, this is my version of man, or woman, or whatever and everybody does it differently based on what their sex means to them. I think butler has some good and quite liberal ideas on gender. If you can wade through a bit of questionable writing, I recommend picking up Undoing Gender, or Gender Trouble.
Another intriguing writer, Paul D. Slocumb, addresses the need for advancements in men’s rights to emotional health in, Hear Our Cry: boys in crisis. While leaps and bounds have been made in the rights of women over the last fifty years the role of men in our society is stuck very much in the Leave It To Beaver era. Not only is Slocumb’s book an interesting read with good case studies it also turns the reader onto other interesting authorities on the subject.
So… I got a bit academic there. Please don’t offer me up to the gods of the message board as a virgin sacrifice… because that sooooooooooo wouldn’t work:D. I’m a straight chick who likes boys in makeup and lingerie, what do I know about “normal” gender behaviour. Actually, I think all gender behaviour has got to be abnormal due to the fact that society’s basic gender roles are so one-dimensional.
So, yeah… Out of the box!
N.J.
GG
