I have a friend who often used to say, "there's nothing more powerful than a 12-year-old girl." She meant a girl who has yet to "go through puberty," as we say in our culture. We might as well say "go through a war zone." This girl before she bleeds is Zena, she is Athena, she is free in mind and body, she is hilarious and smart and creative and fun. She embraces the physical and intellectual joy of being a young human with gusto. My friend said this about her own 12-year-old girl before that girl changed before her eyes. My friend watched her daughter's power drain away, and there seemed to be nothing she could do to stop it. The feminist slogans were hollow and useless. My friend watched her beloved daughter become insecure, moody, depressed, self-hating. She watched her daughter lose her physical confidence, all at the same time that her daughter was pulling away from her, because that is natural for a daughter to move away from the mother. This power-drain as our girls turn into women keeps happening generation after generation. Yes, puberty changes humans profoundly, in ways we still do not understand very well. But this loss of power and joy does not have to be an inevitable part of it. That is always why we fight, for the next generation.
If there's one thing I've learned in my work as a therapist, people pick up on subtle cues. If there are subtle cues that there's LESS value in being female or being lesbian or gay, people pick up on that. I've also learned that what we don't talk about speaks volumes. If there's a topic that seems taboo--like how many girls hate their bodies or are confused by their bodies or how objectified young girls are--this speaks volumes about how necessary it is to not talk about that topic.
The fact is, women had to fight for the vote and in the US, we've still never had a female president even though women have been running for president since the 1800s. Women still make less than men do for the same work, girls are disproportionately negatively impacted by child marriage (which is still legal in almost all of the US), sex trafficking, and kidnapping.
But if we talk about any of this, or about what it's like growing up female in this world, we're dismissed, ignored, or reminded of how silly, stupid, selfish or hateful we are for bringing it up. To me, that says it's really important to the culture that we don't talk about our experience.
This is exactly the problem. Some middle school health textbooks explicitly state that gender is a spectrum, and if you have traits that are not stereotypical, such as being a boy who cries at movies, then you are elsewhere on the spectrum. We are literally saying this in 7th grade textbooks.
Brilliant and beautiful, as always! Thank you for all you do. :)
I'd like to share a thought on this line from your last paragraph: "Without the belief that there’s a right and wrong way to be a boy or girl, gender identity has no substance." First, it's true and important. Second, it might not do quite the work you want it to.
Here's how I understand what you're saying. Gender identity derives its substance from the belief "that there’s a right and a wrong way to be a boy or girl" (let's summarize that as the "gender myth"), *therefore* a good way to deprive gender ideology of its substance would be to eliminate the gender myth. I agree that doing so would undercut the foundations of gender ideology, but I question whether that approach would be entirely beneficial.
I think you're making a couple of *implicit* assumptions: (1) that the gender myth is the *primary* (if not exclusive) basis for gender ideology; and (2) that it's inherently something wrong with believing the gender myth. These *unstated* premises give rise to some concerns (and, of course, I could be reading these assumptions into what you've written - if so, humble apologies!)
Let's start with (2). Is believing the gender myth inherently wrong? That's clearly too big a question to answer here, but a couple of observations are relevant. First, most people subscribe to the gender myth to some extent. It's built into the fabric of society, if not parts of our brains that we don't yet understand (see Debra Soh on this). Second, the gender myth is incorporated into many other widely held sociocultural norms and practices, such as mating and dating rituals, so eradicating it might have far-reaching and possibly unforeseeable consequences. In other words, even if it does some bad stuff, it also might do some good stuff. We should fully understand the ramifications of any campaign for wholly "defunding" the gender myth. And we should probably also have something with which to replace it.
From an ethical perspective, I'd want to understand much more about why believing the gender myth is inherently wrong before endorsing its demise.
If you're still with me, let's look back at assumed premise (1): the gender myth is at least the primary, if not the exclusive foundation for gender ideology. I wanted to address (2) first, because that concern raises the question of whether we actually *should* destroy the gender myth. If not, then are we forced to accept the persistence of gender ideology? No, we're not - and here's why.
The gender myth is a multivariate and complex beast, with innumerable peculiarities and permutations. Some of its aspects are undeniably vicious and unworthy of any claim to validity; think of the many, many ways that most societies underwrite the huge power differential between men and women. But the indisputable fact that the gender myth is drenched in misogyny and is used to prop up patriarchy should not blind us to some gendered assumptions that, I would argue, benefit humanity beyond measure. One such paradigmatic ideal is that of motherhood, which is clearly not *only* built into the structural foundations of law and civil society but is also clearly evidenced in the behavior of many non-human species. Ancient Chinese Taoist writings are imbued with veneration for the yin side of reality, the "eternal female," or "the receptive." Many other cultures throughout human history have similarly expressed profound valuing for aspects of human experience they associated with women.
There's both good and bad embedded in the gender myth. We don't need a wholesale repudiation, but a selective restructuring of our values so that its many undeniably *toxic* components can be jettisoned. But that's only *part* of the reason we can deflate gender ideology without destroying the gender myth.
The most important reason that gender ideology doesn't depend, to any significant degree, on the gender myth, is that it does depend on something much more sinister: the denial of reality.
Gender ideology depends on denying facts, such as the fact that every individual human is born with exactly the complex mixture of attributes that makes them a complete human infant. There is no missing *gendered* ingredient that would be required to make them whole or authentic. Neither is there something that needs to be changed about that infant's sex to make her or him fully human. Almost all of us were clearly, obviously, one sex or the other when we were born. Then we learned how to understand and express ourselves, as sexed bodies in a massively mindfucked world. We learned to experience ourselves as gendered and came to identify with the social mythologies of gender in nearly infinite, unique ways. This is the reality that gender ideology denies, by trying to make us believe that there's some right or wrong way to be boys and girls. And it's this reality-denial that supports its entire rotten edifice.
Belief in the gender myth is belief that "feelings" of masculine and feminine define your "gender identity" and.. it is these feelings that determine whether you are a man or a woman. If there is no right or wrong way to be a man or a woman (i.e. the gender myth) it is not a "gender identity" that these feelings define. You can be a feminine man or a masculine woman ~ a woman engineer or a man who likes fashion and makeup. Being a man or a woman is determined by your sex, not your gender identity i.e. your relative feelings of femininity or masculinity based upon performative stereotypes.
I agree. And I think it's important to explore the question of whether gender is only "performative stereotypes." Undoubtedly, they play a huge role, but when we talk about identity, we're wandering in uncharted and swampy territory. Some of the behavioral patterns built in by millions of years of evolution must be functions of sex-based differences between male and female neurobiology. The degree to which those differences may or may not contribute to one's sense of personal identity is, at least partially, an empirical question, and one which is far from settled. Human brains are extremely complex. We don't yet know enough about sex-based differences to know that there is no neurobiological basis for behavioral differences commonly associated with gender.
But isn't it true that the overwhelming majority of kids are "gender-typical"? When I was growing up, not that it was paradise, for girls there was the escape of being a tomboy. Boys had no such cognate escape hatch. Denying the reality of gender-typicality only gets you into another rabbit-hole.
I have a friend who often used to say, "there's nothing more powerful than a 12-year-old girl." She meant a girl who has yet to "go through puberty," as we say in our culture. We might as well say "go through a war zone." This girl before she bleeds is Zena, she is Athena, she is free in mind and body, she is hilarious and smart and creative and fun. She embraces the physical and intellectual joy of being a young human with gusto. My friend said this about her own 12-year-old girl before that girl changed before her eyes. My friend watched her daughter's power drain away, and there seemed to be nothing she could do to stop it. The feminist slogans were hollow and useless. My friend watched her beloved daughter become insecure, moody, depressed, self-hating. She watched her daughter lose her physical confidence, all at the same time that her daughter was pulling away from her, because that is natural for a daughter to move away from the mother. This power-drain as our girls turn into women keeps happening generation after generation. Yes, puberty changes humans profoundly, in ways we still do not understand very well. But this loss of power and joy does not have to be an inevitable part of it. That is always why we fight, for the next generation.
If there's one thing I've learned in my work as a therapist, people pick up on subtle cues. If there are subtle cues that there's LESS value in being female or being lesbian or gay, people pick up on that. I've also learned that what we don't talk about speaks volumes. If there's a topic that seems taboo--like how many girls hate their bodies or are confused by their bodies or how objectified young girls are--this speaks volumes about how necessary it is to not talk about that topic.
The fact is, women had to fight for the vote and in the US, we've still never had a female president even though women have been running for president since the 1800s. Women still make less than men do for the same work, girls are disproportionately negatively impacted by child marriage (which is still legal in almost all of the US), sex trafficking, and kidnapping.
But if we talk about any of this, or about what it's like growing up female in this world, we're dismissed, ignored, or reminded of how silly, stupid, selfish or hateful we are for bringing it up. To me, that says it's really important to the culture that we don't talk about our experience.
This is exactly the problem. Some middle school health textbooks explicitly state that gender is a spectrum, and if you have traits that are not stereotypical, such as being a boy who cries at movies, then you are elsewhere on the spectrum. We are literally saying this in 7th grade textbooks.
That is so maddeningly sexist and homophobic.
Brilliant and beautiful, as always! Thank you for all you do. :)
I'd like to share a thought on this line from your last paragraph: "Without the belief that there’s a right and wrong way to be a boy or girl, gender identity has no substance." First, it's true and important. Second, it might not do quite the work you want it to.
Here's how I understand what you're saying. Gender identity derives its substance from the belief "that there’s a right and a wrong way to be a boy or girl" (let's summarize that as the "gender myth"), *therefore* a good way to deprive gender ideology of its substance would be to eliminate the gender myth. I agree that doing so would undercut the foundations of gender ideology, but I question whether that approach would be entirely beneficial.
I think you're making a couple of *implicit* assumptions: (1) that the gender myth is the *primary* (if not exclusive) basis for gender ideology; and (2) that it's inherently something wrong with believing the gender myth. These *unstated* premises give rise to some concerns (and, of course, I could be reading these assumptions into what you've written - if so, humble apologies!)
Let's start with (2). Is believing the gender myth inherently wrong? That's clearly too big a question to answer here, but a couple of observations are relevant. First, most people subscribe to the gender myth to some extent. It's built into the fabric of society, if not parts of our brains that we don't yet understand (see Debra Soh on this). Second, the gender myth is incorporated into many other widely held sociocultural norms and practices, such as mating and dating rituals, so eradicating it might have far-reaching and possibly unforeseeable consequences. In other words, even if it does some bad stuff, it also might do some good stuff. We should fully understand the ramifications of any campaign for wholly "defunding" the gender myth. And we should probably also have something with which to replace it.
From an ethical perspective, I'd want to understand much more about why believing the gender myth is inherently wrong before endorsing its demise.
If you're still with me, let's look back at assumed premise (1): the gender myth is at least the primary, if not the exclusive foundation for gender ideology. I wanted to address (2) first, because that concern raises the question of whether we actually *should* destroy the gender myth. If not, then are we forced to accept the persistence of gender ideology? No, we're not - and here's why.
The gender myth is a multivariate and complex beast, with innumerable peculiarities and permutations. Some of its aspects are undeniably vicious and unworthy of any claim to validity; think of the many, many ways that most societies underwrite the huge power differential between men and women. But the indisputable fact that the gender myth is drenched in misogyny and is used to prop up patriarchy should not blind us to some gendered assumptions that, I would argue, benefit humanity beyond measure. One such paradigmatic ideal is that of motherhood, which is clearly not *only* built into the structural foundations of law and civil society but is also clearly evidenced in the behavior of many non-human species. Ancient Chinese Taoist writings are imbued with veneration for the yin side of reality, the "eternal female," or "the receptive." Many other cultures throughout human history have similarly expressed profound valuing for aspects of human experience they associated with women.
There's both good and bad embedded in the gender myth. We don't need a wholesale repudiation, but a selective restructuring of our values so that its many undeniably *toxic* components can be jettisoned. But that's only *part* of the reason we can deflate gender ideology without destroying the gender myth.
The most important reason that gender ideology doesn't depend, to any significant degree, on the gender myth, is that it does depend on something much more sinister: the denial of reality.
Gender ideology depends on denying facts, such as the fact that every individual human is born with exactly the complex mixture of attributes that makes them a complete human infant. There is no missing *gendered* ingredient that would be required to make them whole or authentic. Neither is there something that needs to be changed about that infant's sex to make her or him fully human. Almost all of us were clearly, obviously, one sex or the other when we were born. Then we learned how to understand and express ourselves, as sexed bodies in a massively mindfucked world. We learned to experience ourselves as gendered and came to identify with the social mythologies of gender in nearly infinite, unique ways. This is the reality that gender ideology denies, by trying to make us believe that there's some right or wrong way to be boys and girls. And it's this reality-denial that supports its entire rotten edifice.
Belief in the gender myth is belief that "feelings" of masculine and feminine define your "gender identity" and.. it is these feelings that determine whether you are a man or a woman. If there is no right or wrong way to be a man or a woman (i.e. the gender myth) it is not a "gender identity" that these feelings define. You can be a feminine man or a masculine woman ~ a woman engineer or a man who likes fashion and makeup. Being a man or a woman is determined by your sex, not your gender identity i.e. your relative feelings of femininity or masculinity based upon performative stereotypes.
I agree. And I think it's important to explore the question of whether gender is only "performative stereotypes." Undoubtedly, they play a huge role, but when we talk about identity, we're wandering in uncharted and swampy territory. Some of the behavioral patterns built in by millions of years of evolution must be functions of sex-based differences between male and female neurobiology. The degree to which those differences may or may not contribute to one's sense of personal identity is, at least partially, an empirical question, and one which is far from settled. Human brains are extremely complex. We don't yet know enough about sex-based differences to know that there is no neurobiological basis for behavioral differences commonly associated with gender.
But isn't it true that the overwhelming majority of kids are "gender-typical"? When I was growing up, not that it was paradise, for girls there was the escape of being a tomboy. Boys had no such cognate escape hatch. Denying the reality of gender-typicality only gets you into another rabbit-hole.