Thoughts on Gender Part 2

What is gender?

I wrote some initial thoughts about looking at gender from different ways and this seems to have caused a little bit of a stir. Perhaps some expansion of those ideas is needed.

I mentioned looking at the experiences of transgendered people as a group that have experienced living in different gender roles. This means that they have taken on the presentation associated with different roles and/or sought to be perceived by other people as being of different gender roles. In no way was this meant to demean their personal self-identity. I suspect it is a failing to agree on the meaning of one word: GENDER.

Gender is a socially constructed

Now I came into conflict because of this point. It was perhaps not expressed in this way, but this is what was objected to. My definition of gender is entirely based on the social construct of gender, and not on the physical body or a person’s self identity.

So let us explore why gender is socially constructed.

When a child is born, it is assigned as male or female. This assignment is rarely done on anything more than the length of the phallus. It does not look at many other factors which may affect the biological construction of the body. This is not usually referred to as gender, but as sex. I am not concerned about the physical body. We are all highly conscious that there are physical differences between different people, but this is not gender. The one connection is that a child is defined at that very moment of birth as being expected to comply with the gender role accorded to those who share the same physical sex.

Of course, one criticism thrown at my post Thoughts on Gender Part 1 was that Male to Female have a brain of a woman and the body of a man. Female to male have a brain of a man and the body of a woman. Once again, this is full of disagreement with the term gender. In fact, what they are doing is talking about their personal self-identity. This is not something I particularly wish to get into, other than to say I respect each individual to define as they so wish but this is not gender. It is gender identity, but not gender.

The cause of it is also irrelevant in my consideration of gender. I am highly aware of various studies into pre-natal sex determination. The 2-4 digit studies apparently indicate testosterone exposure in the womb and this has been used to explain brain differentiation development. These may explain drain development, but it is not gender.

I came across an article about the radical feminist definition that gender "is a term which describes the systematic oppression of women, as a subordinate group, for the advantage of the dominant group, men. This is not an abstract concept – it describes the material circumstances of oppression, including institutionalised male power and power within personal relationships – for example, the unequal division of labour, the criminal justice system, motherhood, the family, sexual violence… and so on."

This much more fits with my own view of what gender is, although it is something of a complex description. Breaking it down into slightly different terms, there are expectations placed on what it is to be male or female. These are often in conflict, so it is expected that masculinity includes features such as being hard, strong, the provider, the breadwinner, the protector and so on. Femininity is defined in terms of weaknesses, softness, empathy, caring and nurturing.

Masculinity does not allow skirts or makeup and expects short hair and so forth whereas femininity includes wearing makeup, skirts and is heavily about a certain appearance.

Femininity includes an expectation of skin care and looking radiant and young, whereas masculinity does not.

Feminine traits include being cook, housekeeper, childminder and so forth, but masculinity is the breadwinner, the hunter, the protector.

Those with male physical form are expected to be masculine and those with female physical form are expected to be feminine.

Where do such assumptions come from? Throughout history, what is expected of masculinity or femininity has changed. Across different cultures there are different expectations. If this is the case, then clearly, masculine and feminine are not some magical biological element, leaving only one possibility: gender is socialised.

Of course, there is one point I want to return to:
Male = masculine
Female = feminine

What makes this the case? Why can females not be masculine and men feminine?