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This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Gender. Here is the definition we will be using so everyone can use the same terminology.
Here are some questions that should help kickstart things:
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Why do you feel it started entering public consciousness in regards to humans about 15 years ago?
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Was it needed?
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Did it do what it was intended to do?
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Are things better or worse now in that specific area?
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Is there anything you do not understand or would like to discuss about the idea of gender?
I’m going to make a longer comment with some of my more personal thoughts later but the one part that caught my attention initially was the ~15 years part.
Now I’m not going to be a stickler about precise time ranges but certainly in the 90s there were significant discussions about male/female gender roles.
While discussions about trans/gender identity topics only really picked up steam in I would say the last ~7 years these sorts of things were pretty common discussions in feminist academic circles for quite some time even before that, so it’s likely that the discussion would have happened sooner or later, even if in a different way than it did.
Last comment about timing - I suspect politics had something to do with it. More cynical analysis might say it’s been used as a wedge between the American right and left (as passion for fighting over, say, gay marriage has lessened) and there’s a cynical argument to be made that both parties actually want it to be a contentious issue because it helps then to differentiate and appeal to their base in different ways.
Some equally cynical analysis from the left specifically associates the rise of gender as a topic (and several other social issues) as a way to distract the new left from economic issues (ex: occupy Wall Street, Bernie Sanders-esque stuff). While I don’t think most on the left would claim the aforementioned social issues are unimportant they would claim that they’re of secondary importance when a great number of people are struggling just to get by with the situation only slowly getting worse.
I’ll make a separate post later on my personal feelings more on-topic.
Those “significant discussions about male/female gender roles” were almost always taken from white/European and Abrahamic perspectives, however, in the '90s.
“Gender” (as opposed to sex, which is to say the social construct rather than the biological—which is itself not as clear as people like to believe!) roles are a human universal. Every society that has ever walked the Earth, to my knowledge, has fairly clearly-defined gender roles (albeit with some societies having ‘third genders’ and others with gender role-switching, like some native groups in North America having sexual females choosing to be treated as male genders). What is not universal, however, is the specifics of what those roles are.
Who controls the money? In traditional patriarchal Abrahamic-influenced areas it’s “obviously” the men. (Except in the cases where it isn’t, but let’s not get too complicated, OK?) In the ancient Norse it was “obviously” the women. Who’s the head of the household? Again in the patriarchal Abrahamic environments it’s “obviously” the men. And again in ancient Norse society it was the women: they were literally the bosses of the homesteads. There were very obvious gender role differences in ancient Norse society … but equally obviously the differences were split along different lines.
And then let’s talk China. From the outside perspective it’s “obvious” that men are the bosses and women are subservient. You can see it in the public behaviour and even in the works of art. (We’ll come back to that art thing later, mind.) The key word you’re likely missing, however, because it seems unimportant, is “public”. Publicly women defer to men. But … who controls the money? In most Chinese cultures (yes, plural, there’s over 50 of them!) women do. (In some Chinese cultures it’s the women who decide marriages, divorces, etc.!) And in any of the Chinese cultures, woe betide the man who publicly humiliates his wife. Or who takes a decision that impacts the household without consulting with his wife. You do it? You. Are. Fucked. (And not in the good way!)
Even in the art works you can see evidence of this. In The Peach Blossom Fan Li Xiangjun, a courtesan, has the power to turn down a marriage proposal from a politically powerful man in favour of a lesser scholar. This leads directly and indirectly both to the fall of the Ming Dynasty (!). In The Palace of Eternal Life the emperor’s consort Yang Guifei has so much power over the emperor that his preoccupation with pleasing her led to the fall of his reign. In The Fragrant Companion (an openly sapphic play in the 17th century!), the scholar Fan Jiefu’s wife, Cui Jianyun, sees the daughter of Lord Cao’s daughter, Cao Yuhua, and carries on a secret affair with her before, after many hijinks, managing to arrange her lover becoming her husband’s second wife so they could be together openly. (And her husband has no objection to being, in effect, cuckolded by another woman.) So even in the public-facing entertainments of China you see little glimpses of how gender roles aren’t quite cleaved along the same lines as western/Abrahamic ones.
No matter where you go in the world you will find strong gender roles (with, in some cases, noticeable fluidity, but not flat-out ‘makes no difference’ levels of it). This appears to be one of those very rare human universals. The specifics of the expression of those roles, however, varies wildly and in often-surprising ways.
One thing I would note is that it wasn’t all that uncommon for the women to handle the finances in my family, and it’s a thing I’ve heard is frequently the case. You also get a lot of situations where “officially” the man of the house is “in charge” but everyone knows who is really running the show. I think there was probably a lot more subtlety/nuance/individual variety than we give credit for. Then again my ancestors are largely celtic and if you know anything about celtic women…
Why do you feel it started entering public consciousness in regards to humans about 15 years ago?
Because politicians who feed off of hating minorities needed someone new to pick on now that basically everyone is fine with gay people.
Was it needed?
It was needed for them to get votes, since that’s how they function; Weaponizing hating the other in order to gain support.
Did it do what it was intended to do?
Sadly, yes. Look at the polls.
Are things better or worse now in that specific area?
It depends on the social circle. Trans issues have now become mainstream in the LGBTQ communities, where even 10 years ago, you would hear gay men making trans jokes.
But also, other people are very boldly, and loudly spewing hatred.
Is there anything you do not understand or would like to discuss about the idea of gender?
Nope. It’s not hard. End of the day, let people be who they want to, and call them by the name they would like to be called.
I’m one of the downvoters, and I’d like to explain why. There’s a few reasons for my downvoting, and none of them have anything to do with disagreeing with you. Indeed I agree to some extent or another with the following:
- It is very obvious that a large amount of focus on gender and gender expression is politically motivated.
- Let people be who they want to be and call them by the name they would like to be called.
Personally I think if you get wound up over transgender people (or non-binary (or assexual (or …))) you need to seek therapy. (Doubly so if you’re afraid of them!)
I downvoted because the explanation is too facile, too cynical, and too one-sided. Gender is deeply embedded in every society in the world (with, as I noted elsewhere in this discussion, with the specifics of its expression varying wildly). It is to simplistically reductive to attribute the modern conversation about gender to just politicians looking for a cause. Because the very first question I’d have is “why did they pick this particular topic?” The answer is: it was already a conversation in process that they thought they could capitalize on, meaning you haven’t actually answered the question of why the conversation started.
