I
have written on gender in this blog before, and it may be worth having a look before
reading on here, because today's stuff
branches off from the basic critique.
The problem of gender takes
many forms, of which a brief sample may include:
- gender inequality;
- gender conflict;
- the subjection of women in almost all spheres of public and private life;
- hegemonic relationship dynamics;
- hegemonic family structures;
- hostility to sexual diversity;
- the mistreatment of people who are not biologically male or female, such as intersex people;
- the mistreatment of people who do not conform to masculine or feminine gender expectations, the consequences of which include exclusion, alienation, mental health problems and suicide;
- and the abomination that is rape, among others.
There is a worldwide struggle against many of these, even if only
some people identify gender itself as the source of those ills.
Indeed, the primary question of gender divides those struggles, at
best compromising their focus, at worst confounding them into an ugly
free-for-all. Some, the essentialists,
do believe that there are inherent social differences between men and
women, and would conduct the struggle according to these models as
they see them. Others reject that binary altogether, considering
those models to be constructs in themselves and seeing the struggle
as one of transcending them.
In
other words, these people all have different narratives.
Ask them to look at our world and tell the story of gender on Earth,
and each of their stories will be different. Their beginnings and
predicted ends will be different – the liberation of humanity, or
the end of the world? Their genres will be different – a heroic
tale, or an
epic tragedy, or a textbook? Their characters will be different,
their settings will be different, and the assumptions on which they
rely will be different.
I have made no secret of my own
perspective. I stand firmly against essentialism: against the idea
that the biological categories of male and female deserve any
significant direct implications on our social arrangements. I do so
first because we are each different, and second because we are each
joined by our common humanity – and thus must suspect any such
social division of our species as the herald of a repressive assault
upon individual liberty and the collective good alike. From this
division comes judgemental attitudes, pressures on people to be who
they are not, and the punishment of those considered different.
No-one should have to live their lives in that shadow. Essentialism
is gender, and the
bedrock of so many of its catastrophes.
Of course, the real villains have quite different narratives of their
own. The rapists, the fundamentalists, the patriarchals, the morally
panicked, those convinced that one sex should dominate the other or
that sexual diversity is sinful – theirs are the narratives so
obviously heinous to everyone who is not a cannibal that to
discuss them now would be a waste of time.
Instead, let's look at some problems in the narratives on the better
side of the struggle. Narratives which, though we may come to see
sense in them with all the best intentions, are in the end more
trouble than they are worth. They may even appear reasonable or
effective at times; but their destiny is only to soak into the roots
of the great gender parasite, to nourish it, and to lengthen its
harvest of human souls.
In this short series of articles, I want to deal with three general
varieties of these narrative problems – three myths, which I have
called the Myth of Natural Origin, the Myth of Modernity, and the
Myth of the Others. This first article will consider the first, the
Myth of Natural Origin, while subsequent entries tackle the other
two. In each case, let us explore we will never resolve the problem
of gender so long as we rest on these illusions.
1) The Myth of Natural Origin
The first myth is the myth that gender is natural.
It is simple on the surface yet profound in the depths, which may be
why it is so pervasive but so hard to justify. Unpacking it
requires great care, for there are extremely sensitive terms and
concepts involved.
What makes a thing “natural”?
First, we should be clear on what we mean by nature.
It is not enough to say that something is natural because it exists,
nor because of some authority – any authority – declaring that it
is. The first is tautology, the second politics. Instead, let us
define it thus: a thing is natural if it is of this world
– that is, if it has come to exist, as a product of
reality, without interference from outside the system.
We shall return to what 'outside the system' might mean later.
Second, we should remind ourselves that gender
is different from sex.
Sex refers to biological differences, gender to socially constructed
ones. “Male” and “female” are sexes; “masculine” and
“feminine” are genders. Thus to question gender's place in nature
is not at all to suggest that sexuality, indeed one of the pillars of
life on Earth, is also not natural – and while checking to make
sure, note especially the splendid diversity of those sexual
configurations, which
are so varied
that no one sexual model can be put forward as more standard than the
others. These models of sexual interaction, so far as they occur
outside societies
of animals, have nothing to do with gender. Gender, as something
socially constructed, by definition first requires societies.
Third, the fact that some animals do
live socially, and do exhibit gender problems such as sexual violence
or the subjection of females, is not enough to regard gender as
natural. Existence alone, once again, is not a sufficient criterion
for this; it must be shown conclusively that that thing came about
without interference from outside the system.
On top of that, we humans are so gendered ourselves that we can
hardly trust our own kind to study and understand those creatures
impartially, in the full nuances of their own contexts and ways of
thinking and feeling, without allowing any of our own human
assumptions, including gendered assumptions, to cloud our lenses.
Fourth, even if we were to take
gender in other animals as natural, a massive leap is required to
conclude by extension that gender in humans
is natural – a leap we are not equipped to make. Over hundreds of
thousands of years we have become exceptionally complex, diverse, and
capable of more than enough logic and empathy to realise that
gendered repression is calamitous for collective humankind and for
each and every one of us. Conflict and alienation between two halves
of our species benefits no-one, and certainly not the species itself.
We can guess what we like about other animals, but for ourselves at
least, we can know it
is repressive. We can know
it causes hurt. We have had centuries upon centuries to learn it –
there has been no excuse not to. And that we would not only persist
in gendered cruelty so harmful and meaningless, but spawn entire
moral, legal and civic systems to perpetuate it – that is a mockery
of sanity that must make us question how far our problems can truly
be the products of a functioning universe.
And so the alternative echoes again.
Outside the system.
Can gender be natural?
The basic problem with the “gender is natural” position is the
same as with any other “X is natural/unnatural” position,
including statements
about human nature: they are impossible to prove or disprove with
our present understanding. What it comes down to is that we really
know sod all. Humankind has learnt a great deal in recent millennia,
but our records of our own history are only reliable so far back, and
when it comes to the vast extent of our reality's space and time, the
totality of our secure understanding scarcely bears mention. From
where we are now, we simply do not know of what might or might not
have happened in the billions-of-years-old story of all-that exists –
indeed, to even think at
that scale challenges imagination.
Of course this makes it equally
impossible to conclude that gender is unnatural.
But it does leave the question wide open, and invites us to ask: if
gender is natural, then how did it come about? And if it is not
natural, then how the heck
did it come about?
“Gender is natural” arguments usually stand upon one of two
foundations. On the one hand there is the religious foundation,
typically resting on gendered creation stories, the Genesis narrative
of the Christian Bible being a case in point. Even if not held as
literally true, these come to reflect the values preferred by those
who tell them. In other words, “gender is natural because I want to
believe it is natural”. That is to say, a normative statement; a
choice. There are many things one might say to that, but it adds
little to our current empirical concern, so let's leave that for
another discussion.
The other foundation is more interesting: the attempt at a
scientific, value-impartial explanation. The eternally-cited
framework here is Charles Darwin's theory
of evolution, which must be one of the most frequently and
tragically misinterpreted triumphs of our scientific heritage. By
these readings, gender is both context and output: sexually
differentiated roles and behaviours both shape and result from a
contest for survival and reproduction, typically with aggressive male
agents competing for passive female resources – sex as something
women “have” and men “want”, or as Catherine MacKinnon
eloquently captures it, 'man fucks woman: subject verb object'.
There are multiple problems with
this inference. Life is not
just some contest for survival, properly defined; not the “survival
of the fittest” yanked
from a whole other context and tacked clumsily to this one. It is
observably not the case that survival and reproduction are the
absolute priorities for all living things, nor would they result in
gender inequality and conflict even if they were. Only at the
pinnacle of wilful ignorance can we reduce all life to mere machines
of self-preservation and reproduction, and suggest that all social
activity and behaviour is a function of that; and only by leaping
across a whole series of those pinnacles could we claim that a
species fighting a gendered war with itself does any good for its
prospects in the world.
This is especially the case with
complex life forms like ourselves, capable as we are of our multitude
of values, beliefs, ways of thinking and feeling, and above all, our
propensity to value each other as ends in ourselves.
We could point to the many systems of ethics, of law, of philosophy,
we have developed to assert that, but they all come down to very
basic human senses: that we experience or have record that certain
things feel terrible, and do not wish others to feel them either;
that we can understand that to harm others is to harm ourselves, as
it motivates others to harm us back; and more than anything else,
that we can love.
Of course, this does not undermine
evolution itself. Evolution occurs over tremendous timescales, ever
buffeted by the winds of chance, random mutation, and physical and
social environments that are always changing, every second, every
year, every era, perpetually reshaping the terms of life and the
meaning of biological fitness with a chaos far beyond any one
generation's ken.
It does, however, leave evolutionary
mechanics next to irrelevant at the level of the here and now. Ask
yourself, honestly, if there is seriously nothing worse to you than
death. There is so much else that is important to us aside from
survival and reproduction, be it freedom, or integrity, or the chance
to express and fulfil ourselves, or the people or creatures or gods
or objects that we love and the health of our relationships with
them.
That is why attempts to apply
evolutionary mechanisms to our lives tend to become normative
instead: that is, an argument not that we do
live according to them, but that we should.
We all know well what manner of people have thought like that, and
sought to make it happen, and we know exactly what harrowing
anguishes lie down that road cemented with blood and paved with bone.
Why raise these echoes of European eugenics and Nazism? To indicate
the pinnacle of our complexity: because as repugnant as these choices
were, these were choices on a formidable normative scale, and a scale
on which most of us, thank goodness, prefer other choices. A choice
of nothing less than what it means to be human. Of what we want our
species to be.
It has been within our abilities to think about that and act on it
for at least tens of thousands of years, which makes it finally
beyond imagination to suggest that concerns of natural selection and
biological fitness account for the gender madness our kind has
acquired. Strong life, fit life, is diverse life: capable of creating
and adapting against as many different shocks and surprises as
possible. Strong life, fit life, stands together: cooperates against
universal threats, rather than turning upon its own for no reason.
Genderedness, by selecting against those who do not conform, acts to
make us the very antithesis of this. It makes us weak. Divided. A
fearful, feckless, faceless half-human race of ones and zeroes,
squandering its strength, energy and self-control by panicking at
every difference and policing and violating its own members. In
evolutionary terms, we might call that a regression.
We must get beyond the idea that
gender is a natural thing. Not only because we have not a clue if it
is or is not, but because to proceed as if it is
is paralysing our search for the actual causes of the gender problem
and its worst manifestations. As with arguments about human nature,
the appeal to “nature” does more to close an argument than win
it: it masquerades as a conclusive explanation while in fact telling
us nothing.
“Nature” does nothing to explain
why men have become generally larger and stronger than women, and
even less to explain why such a hideously disproportionate apparatus
of social norms and expectations have grown up to associate men with
reason, power, aggression and violence, and women with emotion,
vulnerability, weakness and submission. It tells us nothing about why
so many men and women comply with these stereotypes without
resistance, even while it destroys them.
“Nature” tells us nothing about
why societies segregate
male and female spaces, or impose
certain dress codes on men and women, or pressure men and women
to want certain body shapes or sizes. It tells us nothing about why
so many jobs or functions in society are considered the exclusive
preserve of men or of women – usually of men.
“Nature” tells us nothing about why “masculinity” or
“femininity” exist, nor about why the content of those constructs
is what it is; nor does it tell us why hostility
is shown towards homosexuals, transgendered people, or the many
others who do not conform to gendered expectations.
“Nature”
tells us nothing about the invisible, suffocating and occasionally
bloodthirsty rules we have set up around male-female social
relationships, and why those who cannot or will not dance the dance
at best must give up all hope at finding intimate companionship, and
at worst are slaughtered
like carrion. It tells us nothing about why we assume the models
of monogamous heterosexual marriage and the nuclear family are best
for everyone, and stigmatise those it does not represent, such as
same-sex couples, polyamorous people, single-parent families, or
people who plain don't like marriage.
And “nature” tells us nothing,
absolutely and utterly nothing, about why rape exists; how it can
exist; or how it is sanely possible that any human being can will
themselves to violate the body of another human being, less still
take pleasure from their agony
or walk away with impunity knowing that society will blame the victim
for it.
Frustratingly, in spite of all this,
from a purely empirical standpoint we can only conclude that gender
may or may not be natural. That is all that the hard evidence right
now permits us to know – it is possible that gender might
be natural, but the conclusive conviction that it is
is absolutely a myth.
Beyond the evidence, we are left with values, influences, and
intuition, which vary between us all. Are these worth anything in
confronting the “gender is natural” myth?
Outside the system
From here I can only speak personally. I will fully admit that what
follows is but my own subjective impression – emotions and
instincts as fallible as anyone else's and hardly scientifically
admissible. However, I can only admit that I cannot, as a human
being, look upon the aforementioned gender nightmares and find them
anything less than downright freaking abominable.
From any angle. From any perspective. It could be because of their
logical and ethical bankruptcy, as just discussed – tormenting and
weakening our species, hounding and excluding the different, an
evolutionary regression, a source of so much suffering. Or it could
be a nauseated revulsion at the extremes our kind employs to regulate
gender and sexuality: the rape, the enslavement, the stonings, the
lashings, the mass hysterias, the atrocities against people's bodies
and souls, and the plain-as-daylight odiousness of the people who
carry them out and call them righteous. Or it could be a more
personal bitterness and rage, at how so long as this world is like
this, my own prospects have been thoroughly screwed over by a
gendered paradigm of behaviours, relationships and male-female
interaction totally alien to me, and
often altogether abhorrent.
But beneath that – beneath all of that – there is something else.
It is something I have had for longer than I remember, and that I was
certainly never taught. I do not know what to call it, aside from
some deep, irrepressible sensation I get in the presence of gendered
forces; a feeling akin to that of trying to breathe in the sudden
absence of air, or of losing molecular contact with the world around
me – as though when I look upon gender, I am looking at something
that is not capable of existing.
Something that does
not belong in this reality.
That is the best I can do to give
what is meant by outside the system,
because words inherently cannot engage with it – words are of the
system of which this is not. It is a thing of which, at the most
elemental level, it simply does not make sense that it could exist
upon the fundamental fabric of the cosmos; something upon which
everything you know about reality breaks down, to leave only madness,
a universe insane. There is simply nothing I am aware of – no
logic, no intuition, no chain of causes and consequences – by which
I can imagine our gendered paradigm coming into existence in our
reality, without something foreign to reality
having acted upon it.
I do not know what that would mean; what this something that cannot
be something could be. I dread to consider the magnitude of what it
might imply. But I have found nothing, absolutely nothing, that
begins to demonstrate to me even the faintest hint of some natural
basis for the horrors we have visited upon ourselves with our
gendered creations; and until I do, I cannot suppress this suspicion
that they are wrong at a level unparalleled in our most hellish
imaginations.
If gender truly is this brand of abomination, I doubt we will
identify it soon. But we can do ourselves all a favour by rejecting,
or at least suspending, the notion that the problems of gender have a
sane and legitimate place in the natural history of our world, until
such time as we have the evidence to consider it.
Coming up in Part Two of this series: the Myth of Modernity.
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