The Lexicon pamphlet series, a new project of the Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS), aims to convert words into politically useful tools—for those already engaged in a politics from below as well as the newly approaching—by offering definitional understandings of commonly used keywords. Each Lexicon is a two-color pamphlet featuring one keyword or phrase, defined in about 2,000 words of text, and all pamphlets are available for free from the IAS, or can be downloaded here for printing and sharing. The first five pamphlets, designed by Josh MacPhee of Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative and printed by P&L Printing in Denver, are: “Power” by Todd May, “Colonialism” by Maia Ramnath, “Gender” by Jamie Heckert. “Anarchism” by Cindy Milstein, and “White Supremacy” by Joel Olson. Stay tuned for more titles in this growing series.
Gender
Gender is a system of categorizing
ourselves and each other (including bodies, desires, and behaviors) running through every aspect of culture and society,
and intertwining with other
categories and hierarchies (race, class, sexuality, age, ability, and so much
more). Various aspects of biology (for example, genitals, chromosomes, and body
shape) are interpreted to mean that human beings naturally belong in one of two
categories: male and female. But if we look more closely, we might question the
nature of gender. Biology, human and otherwise, is wonderfully diverse.
Nature
doesn’t give us these two options. We interpret and categorize, and then come
to believe that those interpretations, those categories, are the truth. Gender
doesn’t just happen. People define it, invent it. Even genital surgery on
intersex bodies is described as corrective, as though nature had made a mistake by not conforming to our binary
thinking.
Because
we invent gender, we can do it differently. This becomes clear when we look at
the many ways that throughout history and across cultures, different aspects of
social life and personality have been part of defining gender. What counts as a
“real” man or a “good” woman, as masculine or feminine, varies from place to
place and time to time. In some (sub)cultures, gender hasn’t been limited to
two options but instead includes recognition of three, four, or many genders.
The
usual story in countries like the United States, Canada, and the United
Kingdom, however, is that there are only two options. And while these states
may offer formal, legal equality, in practice they still largely value those
characteristics associated with men and masculinity (for instance,
independence, control, and strength) over those associated with women and
femininity (say, interdependence, love, and gentleness). This hierarchy can be
subtle or blatant, woven together with other hierarchies through institutions
and systems, socialization and culture, in ways that produce many complex effects.
In dominant cultures, mind and reason are imagined as both separate from and
superior to body and emotion; so too
is whiteness privileged over color, action over rest, hetero over homo, and
firmness over tenderness.
Gender
can be more or less rigid. Supposedly abnormal, unnatural, or improper gender
behavior can be met with social censure ranging from teasing to bullying,
discrimination, imprisonment, forced medical “treatment,” sexual violence,
emotional abuse, and even murder. This violence is most obvious when it comes
to transgender people, or those who otherwise transgress the social assumption
of two fixed and natural genders. Why does gender transgression trigger such
strong emotions, even to the point of violence? Perhaps it is because none of
us are perfect examples of a real man or real woman. No one can live up to
these abstract ideals, with all the contradictory messages about what they even
mean.
Most
people twist themselves into knots trying to conform to what they think they
should be, rather than simply being aware of who they actually are.
Self-policing one’s gender can feel so familiar, so habitual and subtle, that
the effort put into conforming may seem natural and effortless. Yet there is
something profoundly liberating in growing self-aware of the habits we hold on
to out of fear or shame, and when it feels right, learning to let them go.
Gender
isn’t just an individual experience, though. It’s intertwined with all of our
relationships and social institutions—many of which presently, if sometimes
inadvertently, serve to constrain, hurt, or control most people. Perhaps the
most obvious structure that does this today is the family, where people
generally first learn to notice the anxieties and expectations that come with
gender. Even the very idea of what a family is and how it works (or what it should be and how it should
work) is inextricably
linked with gender.
The
idealized nuclear family, for example, is defined as consisting of a
monogamous, married, and reproductive heterosexual couple led by the male “head
of household.” If the woman works outside the home, as is often economically
necessary at this stage of capitalism, she is still likely to do far more of the
housekeeping, emotional labor, and child care—with little or no recognition of
such tasks as work. Children are given gender labels from birth and may be
expected to conform to them. And while being the head of household has its
privileges, masculinity is frequently tied to one’s ability or not to provide
financially for the family, which in turn leads to a great deal of anxiety,
frustration, and shame in class-based societies.
The
wider political economy is also gendered in oppressive and exploitative ways.
Just as women’s labor inside the home is typically taken for granted, all sorts
of feminized labor is taken for granted in capitalism too. When people talk
about “the economy,” they usually are referring to a narrow and official
definition that only includes paid work, the production of materials or
knowledge, and the sales and distribution of those products. The economy, in
this understanding, doesn’t include the bearing and (unpaid) caring of children
nor the (unpaid) housework on which any economy depends.
Nor
does capitalism and related colonialist projects truly recognize the
traditional knowledge of noncapitalist cultures, whose extensive histories of,
say, working with plants are exploited by pharmaceutical and agricultural
corporations. Feminists of color have long noted the linkages between
colonialism’s unacknowledged dependence on the skills, wisdom, and labor of
people of color and women of all races. Many celebrated historical figures in
colonial nations are both white and male. There is nothing wrong with white men
per se, but neither is there anything as special about them as cultures of
white supremacy and gender hierarchy would encourage us to believe. Besides, no
one does anything on their own. We all depend on the efforts of others. While understated
in capitalist thought, such efforts have inherent worth and point the way to alternative economies.
Indeed, when work associated with women and femininity (such as
teaching, nursing, cleaning, and listening) is paid, it’s paid much less than
work associated with men and masculinity (such as sports, finance, leadership,
and talking). This gender hierarchy is further tied up with race and class inequalities when, for
example, higher-status women move into work traditionally associated with men,
thereby leaving feminized labor to lower-status women.
The
nation-state, too, is gendered. Like the traditional head of household, the
head of state offers protection in exchange for obedience. Its other characteristics
(including rigid borders, competitiveness, aggression, and independence) are
also those linked to certain versions of men and masculinity. Some nations
invade others in order to demonstrate their dominance, which once again
involves hierarchies of race and wealth. Like individuals or households
competing for economic success, nation-states are inherently insecure. By
simultaneously creating fear and promising security, they endlessly justify
their existence.
The
ways we categorize humanity into races, ethnicities, classes, and countries are
all gendered. Consider common stereotypes: the passive East Asian woman, the
hypersexual black man, the exotic other from across the border (whether of
nations or neighborhoods). Colonial invasions have long been justified by white
men (and women) drawn to both wealth and playing the hero, allegedly protecting
brown women from brown men. Ongoing inequalities are reinforced by continuing
to cast brown women and men, especially those in the so-called developing
world, in the role of a victim in need of charity.
Gender
divisions are rife with contradictions. Class hierarchies, for instance, can be
based on a division between manual labor (using the body, which is associated
with femininity) and so-called skilled labor (using the mind, and linked to
authority and control, which are all associated with masculinity).
Working-class masculine frustration often merely reverses this hierarchy,
suggesting that the strength of using one’s body is a more authentic form of
masculinity, while upper-class men with their clean clothes and soft skin are
effeminate.
Holding on to such resentment, to fantasies of superiority and a fear
of different cultures, is itself part of a gendered culture uncomfortable with
emotion. Instead of simply allowing emotions to exist and pass through us, or
finding other healthy ways to deal with our feelings, most of us are taught to
either cling to or reject them (which is really just another way of holding
on). Learning to be comfortable with our desires as well as our fears is part
of creating a world where we can live with and love ourselves along with each
other in all our differences and similarities.
Even our relationship with the rest
of the natural world (“Mother Nature”) is connected to gender. Inciting fear
and shame in people, about
either their own gender or gendered others (such as queers or foreigners),
induces a self-centered state of mind. When individuals feel threatened, they
of course prepare to defend themselves. They may do this by supporting war,
which has a profound ecological impact, or even through shopping. Making people
insecure about their bodies, and then offering products and services to address
the supposed imperfections, is fuel to the fire of a growth economy,
unsustainable on a finite planet. Self-centeredness (associated, for example,
with certain success-oriented versions of masculinity) can also lead to seeing
the bodies of other people, other species, and the earth itself as merely
“resources” available for one’s own benefit rather than beings in their own
right.
Gender
is a living, evolving system. It has no fixed truth. It changes as we change
our relationships with ourselves, each other, and the world. Gender diversity
is about the incredible beauty of life’s capacity to overflow, undermine,
subvert, and refuse all the categories we put on it, ourselves, and each other.
Compassion
can motivate people to seek
each other out, to support and nourish each other, to do gender differently.
Men who want to let themselves be gentle become friends. Women who know they
can be strong organize together and share skills. Drag queens and kings, bi
people and transfolk, lesbian women and gay men, and queers of all sexualities
make spaces for themselves and each other to connect, share, and play.
Friendships, networks, and movements can also include, cross, or transcend all
these identities and more.
Sometimes
people cling to gender identities to feel safe. At other times, they might hold
them lightly. Different spaces, different practices, can help people feel safe
enough to drop some of their own borders and self-policing in order to
experience gender lightly, playfully.
Families
can, of course, also embody alternatives to normative gender. Single mothers or
fathers, joint mothers or joint fathers, and
transgender parents all show that children do not need two parents of
supposedly opposite genders. Gender diversity in children can be respected and
honored. People can become conscious of how work is divided within the home.
We
can be less fixed and more experimental with our roles as well as identities.
Sometimes people create their own families, defined less by blood kinship and
more by affinity, friendship, and intimacy. People in social groups, movements,
and even neighborhoods can become family, developing their own rituals and
relationships. Housing cooperatives, queer networks of friends and lovers, or
extended families of other sorts all highlight that the heavily gendered ideal
of the nuclear family is only one possibility among many.
Economics
and politics can be done differently, too. The dominant systems of capitalism
and the nation-state are not the only options. They do not even represent the
majority of ways that people engage in economics or politics but instead simply
demand the most attention. Feminist geographers and economists, for example,
highlight the diverse economies that exist around the world—all the various
forms of producing, consuming, sharing, and working—that don’t fit into the narrow
(and macho) definition of the economy. We can acknowledge, celebrate, and
develop diverse, cooperative, caring economies, emphasizing their viability as
real alternatives.
Indigenous
activist-scholars and anarchist anthropologists note that many cultures, and
even some nations, do not have the same impulse to define clear borders or
police their own people— forms of social control that are taken for granted as
politics. Let’s notice in our own lives the difference between the official stories of who is in
control and how life actually
works. How might we
nurture the elements of our society that work cooperatively with other people
as well as ecosystems to create freedom, equality, and abundance?
Like
power, gender is everywhere, running through our relationships with ourselves,
each other, and the earth, and the relations between nations, classes, and
cultures. And like power, it is not a problem in itself but instead a question
of how we do it. Gender can be a pattern of control, violence, and domination.
Or it can be just another way of talking about the beautiful diversity of human
existence.
Lexicon
Series created by the Institute for Anarchist Studies/Anarchiststudies.org
“Gender”
by Jamie Heckert
Series
design by Josh MacPhee/Justseeds.org
Printed
by
February
2012
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