What gender are you today?

At the end of last class we were discussing gender in terms of Judith Butler’s idea concerning gender ideology and gender roles as performance. I made the analogy of females wearing ‘masculine’ clothes as opposed to males wearing ‘feminine’ clothes. I use quotes around those words because, as I used them in class, I was refereeing only to a more Western/American idea of masculinity and femininity. Our gender ideologies put flowing, floral, vibrant, and more tightly fitted clothing along with jewelry, cosmetics, and lengthy hair as feminine attributes. What is important to understand is that this ideology is nothing more than that – ideology that is neither intrinsic nor universal among humans. In fact, many cultures make very little distinction between the physical appearance of male and female in terms of material adorning. Furthermore, there are some cultures, found mainly in Africa and sparsely in Asia, that maintain the exact opposite of our gender ideology. In certain African societies it is the young warrior males who adorn dresses, jewelry, and make-up and it is the simplistically clad women who heckle and swoon and compete over the beauty of the men. Even in the history of European and American cultures we see examples of this (i.e.- wigs worn by men of high religious or political status). Outside of the biologically predisposition of human males to have a heavier build than females, which pitted them since the birth of our species to be more likely called upon to take on more physically strenuous tasks, there is actually very little about who we are as men – versus – women that takes root anywhere else than in our own enculturation. Our culture tells us that a woman’s hair should be long and a man’s hair should be short and, as I believe Judith Butler would agree, it is us – the humans – who perform this ideology in our daily lives by cutting or not cutting our hair. These roles are often times reversed – such in the case of ‘masculine’ females or ‘masculine’ males (typically associated with homosexuality), cross-dressing, transgendered persons, drag performance, and many other instances. This is merely a more complex performance where the culture’s gender ideology is flipped, but it still serves a social purpose and is therefore selected by the human for performance. So tomorrow when you wake up and go to dress yourself, as Dr. Lillian said she does some mornings, think about what it is you wish to perform that day, dress accordingly, and see if you notice any reactions or interactions that are of cultural interest to the issue of gender.