Guest post: What are the keystone gender norms?
Originally a comment by Laurent on Scoop: more men running for office!
We’re all non-binary.
I keep struggling with gender stereotypes themselves, and the whole issue clearly doesn’t clarify at all.
I really wonder what are the keystone gender norms that apply to the binary as a general inalienable truth, that almost everyone would acknowledge is actually what historically defines gender at core and still applies mostwhere, if possible independently of secondary cultural norms.
What I get is that it is not about lifestyle at all.
Men -. I was about to write down “none”, but admittedly there is one norm that became quite exceptional but may make an unexpected come-back in the future: obligation to go to war and serve the country.
Women:
– shut up, smile, be nice
– much less safety outside of home
– have kids (and take charge) (husband is a special kid with special needs)
– housekeeping & home management
– paygap, way fewer career opportunities, way fewer opportunities at large
Claiming non-binarity is not doing anything to change that.
Disclaimer: I am not claiming exhaustivity, I was aiming for defining core. Does not imply feeling fine about it neither.
Latest Zen Koan: “Imagine a non-binary clownfish.”
In answer to your main point: Men have demands put upon them. “Be a good provider.” “Be confident.” “Be brave.” “Be Proud.” “Don’t Cry.” … many of them are the duties all people (male and female) put on themselves anyway. Most men aspire to them but fail.
Males: More physically aggressive
Females: Carers of small children
I think these are biologically based. Even so, of course, they aren’t true for every individual.
As Laurent says: the draft.
The significance of it fades when there isn’t one, of course, but the potential remains. Women are called on to risk their lives in childbirth and men in war.
@me #1
If men don’t aspire to those traits, I’m not sure they pay much of a penalty. They are still top dog as between men and women.
Men have demands put upon them. “Be a good provider.” “Be confident.” “Be brave.” “Be Proud.” “Don’t Cry.” … many of them are the duties all people (male and female) put on themselves anyway. Most men aspire to them but fail.
I agree a little bit, but to be fair, this is fairly little. Yes, there are these demands. Yet I mostly encountered them as a child. As an adult, nobody is putting any pressure on me about any of this. My partner still meet with my list often enough that even I cannot ignore it.
The first one should work be natural self ethics anyway. From what I get from my male peers, most men are good providers enough (considering the economic constraints some have to go through); yet many will still treat themselves before potential family needs. No one will tell them anything about this.
Few would understand or accept desertion, though.
I guess it depends how far back in time you want to go, and how cross-culturally inclusive you want to get. You’re still going to find differences and variations. My understanding is that almost all cultures practice some degree of sexual division of labour; though those things considered “man’s work” and “woman’s work” might vary considerably from society to society. Difference does not have to mean hierarchy. I think the key patriarchal moves are the denigration and subordination of women, and women’s work by men, the appropriation and confiscation of its products (whether they are actual material goods, or the resulting comparitive freedom for men through the commandeering of women’s work and time in order to avoid men having to do an equitable share of scut work that benefits the entire family or household), and the exclusion of women from political/religious positions in the community as a whole. Difference becomes hierarchy, and women and women’s work are deemed of lesser worth and importance in perhaps one of the oldest Catch 22s: the work isn’t important, or it would be honoured and rewarded. The work isn’t rewarded or honoured, so it must not be important. Women are saddled with the domestic corvee duties, society gets its clothing washed and bellies filled for free. Invisibly, behind the scenes, as if by magic. The timing of these patriarchal moves, where they have occurred, will have varied from place to place.
Men (or at least some wealthy, powerful men) take over the “outside” world and relegate women to the “inside” or “domestic” sphere. This in itself is a denial of the fundamental importance of the unpaid labour being extracted from women who are expected to submit, and who have had little or no power or legal right to resist or oppose this tidy, “traditional” arrangement. Men cannot be trusted to look out for women’s needs and interests, which are quite different from what is expected of them and what they have been limited to. The men at the top have to control disenfranchised men, but can offer them the sop of control over women of the same class. Maybe tthese men are not the boss, but they’re a boss nonetheless.
Never mind that the glorification and celebration of wealth and power comes at the expense of both women and children. You would think that the health, welfare, and well-being of the next generation of humans would be of paramount importance to a society, but in many instances it is not. Billions for defence and bake sales for schools. The atomization of societies into individuals in pursuit of wealth and power for themselves (and perhaps, their own progeny) has meant that efforts aimed at benefitting children (or even society) as a whole (child labour laws, universal education, school lunch programs, medicare), are hard won victories, and sometimes temporary ones at that. Women’s unpaid labour in raising children (and underpaid labour in teaching and caring for them when they’re paid at all) is still the invisible, unacknowledged bedrock upon which many societies still stand.
Damn right it’s not.
Notice that trans activism/genderism isn’t interested in cleaning the shitty end of the stick that women have had for centuries. Are they with women on the front lines for equal pay, abortion rights, childcare, safety from men’s violence? No. Their chosen battlgrounds are policing pronoun usage, erasing the word “woman”, and appropriating women’s rights and spaces for themselves, using women for validation and as human shields. They’re demanding that women drop their own needs and centre the needs of TiMs instead. They want to gain entrance to “womanhood” through the performative, decorative, stereotypically sexist, male-gaze inspired route of womanface. Smash the binary? Please. Their goal is passing. They can’t do that without the binary. For some them, “the hardest part about being a woman is deciding what to wear.” Very empathy. So solidarity. That just shows that they haven’t been paying attention.
My father made good money. My parents had six kids. I grew up in the situation of poverty. Why? Because my father didn’t give my mother enough money to raise us properly. He still has most of what he made. Now I don’t begrudge him a decent living in his old age, and I’m glad I don’t have to figure out how to take care of his needs because I couldn’t. But…
Growing up dirt poor, suffering from hunger and poverty, when one parent has money in the bank to spare? That is on a par with treating themselves before potential family needs. No one has ever chastised him about it. My mother? She went out to work part time jobs a couple of times in my life and got crapped all over for it. That was fine with her; she quit the jobs and went back home. She didn’t want to work outside the home anyway.