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Liberation or Elimination?

This is perhaps the most provocative text I publish on feminism, at least I guess this is true when looking at it from the viewpoint of gender researchers. Of course, nowadays gender researchers do not only research but just as much politics. They want to “liberate us from the limitations imposed by our gender roles”. This is their own words and liberation indeed has a nice cling to it. However, what is really going on is the complete ELIMINATION of gender roles altogether. Please do not get me wrong here! I am NOT saying they are lying, I do not think it is that bad, but I think they are not quite aware of the effects of what they are doing.

So, in practice gender researchers try to get rid of the notion that certain things or certain behaviors are male and others female. What I would like to illustrate is that although gender elimination, in theory, is one way to achieve gender liberation, it is not a good way. First of all, it is pretty much impossible. Also, a better way to liberate us from any social role is to make sure we all have equal rights and that prejudice based on sex is minimized.

It should be noted that here I am really referring to gender roles, social constructs, and not biological differences between sexes. I want to point out that EVEN IF everything male and female would be about social construction, it is STILL not a good idea to eliminate gender roles. I do believe there are innate biological differences between men and women and that biology can explain why gender roles came to be in the first place. Pelle Billing has written nicely about this. Thus, we can expect statistical differences in male and female behavior which will not disappear as a consequence of eliminated gender roles. However, here I want to ask the question why, if it actually was possible, would we be interested in eliminating such differences in the first place?

Countering the Counterargument

As I indicated above, gender researchers object heavily when people claim they want to eliminate gender roles. Their answer is always the same it seems, namely that they are not “eliminating” gender roles, they are “extending” them. Again, I do not think they are lying intentionally, but it must be noted that in practice this is playing with words. When we extend the limits of what is considered male and what is considered female, both concepts gradually cease to exist. When EVERYTHING can be considered both male and female, genders are indeed eliminated. I have tried to illustrate this conceptually in the figure below.

Conceptual illustration of gender elimination. We start with what is considered male and female behavior. The overlap represents behavior that is normally not considered male or female, such as sleeping for a long time in the morning. When we start to overlap the boundaries for male and female characteristics, they both lose their meaning.

As a simple comparison, think about a forest which contains bushes and trees. Ecologists usually define trees as higher than a few meters when fully grown, while bushes are considerably shorter. This gives us a clear idea of what trees and bushes are and how they are different. Now, if we extend the concepts so that “trees” also includes plants that are much smaller and “bushes” includes plants that are quite high, both words lose their meaning, at least relative to each other. There is nothing that we can call a tree which we cannot also call a bush and vice versa. The forest now only consists of growing things and we have achieved something like plant liberation.

Feel Yourself

So why is it good to preserve the gender roles that we have? Well, it is not that simple. Of course, we should try to eliminate those aspects of gender roles which are clearly bad. For instance, fighting, drunken driving and watching women take their clothes off are typical examples of stupid male behavior. Gender researchers have my full support in trying to get rid of such stupid aspects of manliness. However, I fear they might fail since they will never fully understand such behavior when they constantly choose to ignore biological aspects. In the same manner, it is a good idea to promote aspects of typical male of female behavior which are clearly good, so that the other sex also assumes this behavior. For instance, it is considered typically female to talk about feelings and it would be nice if also men could to this to a higher extent. Such changes do make certain behavior uncorrelated to sex and thus it represents gender elimination. In summary, I support getting rid of gender roles to some extent. My point is that they should not disappear altogether!

So, I want to point out is that having some sort of gender roles is still a good idea. My simple argument for this is that gender gives us identity! It is simple but critical. In order to feel well and to have self confidence, we need to build our own identity which we can refer to as our self. Our gender roles can fill parts of this identity. There are women who convert to Islam, which probably has the worst possible religious view on women. Still, even though the Islamic women-gender-role is terrible in many ways, it is also very clearly defined. This makes many women feel good because they know exactly what to do in everyday life. Converters even admit this themselves. In this context, it might be worth thinking about why women are becoming less and less happy as their gender roles are gradually disappearing.

In order to avoid another potential mistake: I do not mean that gender roles should be actively REINFORCED either. For instance, parents should not be encouraged to ONLY give their children specific toys that fit into the gender role. When it comes to clothes, there is actually a real problem which needs attention: It is quite difficult to find male-style clothes that fit females and vice versa. The fashion industry could help out here by offering more gender neutral clothes that fit all bodies. By the way, they should include more pockets on female clothes while they are at it. I am tired of carrying all my wife belongings! (One problem remains though, as someone pointed out to me, pockets on skirts do not work well.)

So, I think people should simply be allowed to choose whatever they want in terms of gender related choices and develop their skills and interests as INDIVIDUALS, not members of some sort of sex community. Actively preserving gender roles is bad, but so is actively destroying them. If it so happens, when we are free, that gender roles do disappear eventually, then let it be so. However, I find it highly unlikely that all gender roles would disappear spontaneously in such a way. I guess gender researchers do as well. Our difference lies in to what extent we consider gender roles a problem.

Becoming Special

Alright, so finding an identity through gender roles is nice for those that like it, but what about those that do not want to follow their gender role? Well, like I tried to mention from start, we should still be allowed to leave our gender role if we want to. This is indeed very important and all action should be taken to fight prejudice. Still, we must remember that there exists prejudice based not only on sex. Also, there exists something corresponding to a gender role for colored, homosexual and muslims, although no one has chosen to study it. In other words, the feministic dominion over other types of human attributes susceptible to discrimination must be overcome.

Finally, I wish to point out that LEAVING ones gender role is an EVEN MORE powerful way to find an identity and becoming special. This way of defining a character is based on the contrast to the gender role which is abandoned. Obviously, if there are no gender roles, one cannot form an identity by leaving one either. So we have something to gain in personal identity whether we choose to follow our gender role or not! I will illustrate with an example in the image below.

A female nightelf warrior (although technically, I think she is a druid…) from World of Warcraft. I know she has little clothes and that this is often the case in computer game industry. I understand if people think this is perverse, but the reason I like female warriors is nothing sexual. It is because they contrast to the classical male warrior.

Look at the female nightelf warrior and consider her as a character. Imagine the same image showing a male nightelf. I often play female characters in fantasy role playing computer games and I once had a character that looked like the lady on the image. My point is that she looks COOL and she does so because one would EXPECT a man in her place. She has formed an identity by breaking free from her gender role since we expect men to be warriors. (That is from our point of view, I am not sure about the night elf societies.)

Of course, it will be much easier to follow the gender role of the sex one belongs to rather than the opposite and THIS is the type of gender liberation we should work on. We need to do all we can to help those individuals who feel they do not fit in with their gender role. I think the situation is especially difficult for children, since they risk being teased if they deviate from typical boyish or girlish behavior. Fortunately, things usually get better when one gets older.