I am a male. I am a female. I am a male/female/transgender/intersect. Or perhaps I am none of the above. The truth is, none of these words are important to me, because gender is merely a socially constructed label that categorizes people into superficially perfect—even if unconventional—boxes.
In the dictionary, gender is strictly polar; there are males and there are females. However, modern society recognizes gender as something more, because the word has grown to incorporate sexual preference, personal opinion, and even social status. Females, for example, are expected to be feminine while males are to assume a dominant masculine role. Even when individuals step outside of their socially constructed boxes of female or male, society creates new words like metrosexual or transgender to interpret their behavior. But to me, any attempt to find or to give identity to an individual based on one word is shallow. My chromosomal identification as XX, for example, does not inform you of my love for rock music or disgust for the color pink. On the other hand, a man who enjoys fashion and Katie Perry can still be masculine. These words, these socially constructed expectations, and these false assumptions prevent members of society from looking beyond a person as a gender to a person as an individual. To really understand someone who is bisexual, you need to know more about them than their unbiased attraction towards men and women. Moreover, to understand a female, you need to know more about her than your assumption of her shopping addiction.
As for me, I cannot tell you my identification with a particular gender at the risk of betraying the whole pretense of my argument. My affiliation with a word—whether male or female or homosexual or butch—does not inform you of who I am, whom I love, or how I choose to conduct my life. You will have to find that out in class this semester.
I also thought this video was interesting (especially in response to your post Ricki!)…it seems you’re right in saying the meaning of gender grows as our bodies do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWc1e3Nbc2g
And I don’t know if you have heard this story…but it’s very interesting about a Canadian couple who are raising their child “genderless.”
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/05/24/genderless-child-creates-media-firestorm-toronto/
I really like some of your ideas. In particular, I found your quote "looking beyond a person as a gender to a person as an individual" especially powerful. I agree that words are limited to some extent, especially when they do not convey the correct meaning, but I also think they can be very powerful tools. I think that is more important to expand your idea of "false assumptions" as the reason that words can be constraining, rather than hastily dismiss the utility of words.
ReplyDelete