Packed Into a Gender Box

 

Recently, I have begun a journey to increase my overall health, including modifying my diet and exercising regularly.  This is a change that is long overdue (and will probably get a blog article all to itself at some point), but it has had an unintended side effect: some people seem to think that wanting to lose weight and become healthier is synonymous with trying to be “more feminine” and have made comments along these lines, asking me whether I’m going to wear makeup more regularly or change the way I dress.

My upbringing never encouraged me to be a “girly girl.”  I also didn’t really think of myself as a “tomboy.”  I played dress up and house and loved to sing and dance, but was much more interested in train tracks, blocks, Legos, and bugs – and this was never criticized or redirected.  By merit of cisgender privilege, where I fall on the gender spectrum isn’t something I gave very much thought to until a few years ago when I became actively interested – through friendships with some amazing trans* people as well as my developing professional interests – in learning about the effects of how gender (beyond male vs female) affects people.  So I am surprised to discover how much these kinds of comments bother me.  After giving it some thought, I realized I’ve never felt comfortable being squished into a gender box.

Allow me to clarify – I am a cisgender female.  I don’t have any dysphoric thoughts about my gender, desire to be perceived as male, or interest in undergoing surgery to present as non-female.  Sometimes I wear dresses.  Once in a great while, when the mood strikes me, I even wear makeup.  My hobbies and interests include things like crafts and going to the theatre.  And – if you’re reading this blog you already know this – I’m a therapist, which is a profession that is largely female-dominated.  But an expectation that I should try to live up to some mythological feminine group of characteristics is really bothersome to me.

All this just drives home what I’ve been saying for quite some time: gender is neither simple nor binary.  The first question that’s asked when someone is pregnant is usually “is it a girl or a boy?” or even “what is it?”  This latter question seems to imply that male and female are completely different and separate entities with no overlap, and the use of “what” rather than “who” implies that a person is defined primarily if not exclusively by maleness or femaleness (which is determined by the physical appearance of the person’s genitals), rather than anything about the personality, disposition, interests, intellectual pursuits, hopes, or dreams of the person being brought into the world.

I guess the next curiosity is what is it that bothers me so much about being encouraged to be “feminine.”  Maybe it’s that feminine is frequently used to mean weak, vapid, or superficial, whereas “masculine” typically implies strong, ambitious, and adventurous.  Obviously, these stereotypes and expectations are inherently problematic, and a lot of it has come to light in the recent gender swapping trend.  Just think about how differently you envision a person in a story depending on the pronoun.  Here’s an example:

"I was out with a friend, and she said she wanted to get lunch."

"I was out with a friend, and he said he wanted to get lunch."

What is the picture you get in your head when you read those sentences?  You’re probably picturing different lunch choices depending on the gender of the person.  You’re probably imagining being out at different places before the lunch suggestion comes up.  Depending on the gender of the person telling this story, you’re probably imagining a different kind of chemistry between the narrator and the friend.  Weird, right? 

(If you're still not convinced there's a bias, check out the Harvard Implicit Association Test, which measures subconscious assumptions about gender attitudes.)

I recently read this article about the problem with classifying female characters as “strong.”  The article argues that it’s not a very useful adjective when applied to male characters, so it’s meaningless when it comes to females.  If I think of some of my favorite “strong” female characters, though, they have other great qualities too.  Here are some examples:

• ·         Hermione from Harry Potter – Strong, yes.  But also incredibly smart, hardworking, caring, loyal, resourceful, prepared, and determined.
   
• ·         Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Strong, obviously, even in the most literal sense of the word.  But connected, protective, devoted, and with a strong sense of responsibility. 

• ·         Elphaba from Wicked (the musical, not the book) – An activist, an advocate, a fighter, which are all strong characteristics.  But she is also intelligent, fiercely loyal to her sister, able to make tough choices, compassionate, and forced with a litany of tough choices.

This list could go on and on.  I don’t think any of these girls/women are built to be “just strong,” but that’s the first word that comes to mind for most people when describing them.  Why, if male characters are just presumed to be strong, is that the case?  I would argue that the most interesting and likeable characters are complex – so if “strong” is a presumed male characteristic, and the most interesting female characters are strong, maybe the most interesting male characters are compassionate– a word that is basically never used to describe female characters, because it’s already presumed to be true.

Perhaps this is what bothers me so much about being boxed in as someone who should aspire to femininity.  It’s not that I don’t want to be kind or pretty – it’s that I would hope I’m more interesting and layered than just that.  I want to be able to put on a dress and knit and go to the theatre – but I also want to be able to kick ass on a ski slope, or try something adventurous that requires the strength and ingenuity of Katniss from The Hunger Games or Tris from Divergent.  

If you could get anything out of this blog article, which is much more stream of consciousness than what I usually post, I would hope it would be an examination of your own gender identity.  Sure, you may not identify as transgender or genderfluid – but what does your gender mean to you, and are there pieces of you that might not be traditionally called “feminine” or “masculine”?  Food for thought…