THE UNSPOKEN: The Slippery Gendering of Sex
By: Karolyn
20 July 2021
When we adults engage with young children, we often marvel at their inborn drive to make sense of themselves and world around them. We’re often astounded by their curiosity and ingenuity. Sometimes we laugh at some of their mistakes.
This can be seen in the story Michelle Duff tells of her son’s developing understanding of what it is to be male in NZ society: a culture where, as she shows, “masculinity’s a contradictory mess”, and it can be harmful to both males and females.
Duff’s telling of her son’s development fits with the general pattern of the way a child learns to understand social expectations and beliefs about the two human sexes: males and females. First, he proclaimed that he didn’t like girls. When Duff points out that she and some of his friends are girls, he modified his claim to say that he only likes girls he knows.
The interaction between a child’s developing language and thinking skills is aided by the child’s observations and social encounters with his/her family and peer group. It is a gradual process, of sorting people and things into categories, then modifying these classifications when their experiences and observations throw up contradictions and exceptions.
Michelle Duff’s article hints at the unspoken: that she and her son are in no doubt that he is a boy, and she is a woman. Gradually, the child actively tries to make sense of the culturally specific roles and expectations of the behaviour and appearance, at the same time as they are gradually coming to understand their own sexed bodies.
Across the majority of cultures, for thousands of years, different gendered beliefs have usually worked to keep females in a secondary position in society, while dominant males have the most power and status. Within such societies there also tends to be a pecking order among males, whereby some have higher status, and more power than others.
Currently there is such a social change afoot that Duff treads carefully around. While it is true that gender myths have tended to over-emphasis the range of activities men and women can successfully engage in, there are significant biological differences between males and females, that are very noticeable in health concerns, responses to diseases (such as Covid19), and performances in sport.
Currently, hard and fast facts of biological sex are now being denied, while gender stereotypes are presented as the basis of material ‘identities’, present at birth. This back-to-front re-definition is slippery and contradictory, masking the ways it is impacting more heavily, and negatively, on females than on males.
This is part of fashionable shift towards redefining women and girls in terms of gender identity, while men seem to be left largely intact biologically. At the same time, some media articles still resort to, or imply biological sex, especially when reporting on inequalities between men and women, and abuse and/or harassment of females.
On issues sex-based inequalities and harm, many journalists continue to draw on traditional biological understanding of sex inequalities, such as with reporting on #meto issues. It is likely that many readers are not aware that for some, the term ‘women’ can now include any males who self-identify as a woman, whether or not they take female hormones or have had genital altering surgery.
Often reports on gender inequalities attach ‘non-binary’ individuals to the category ‘women’. Confusingly the non-binary people referred to seem to be females – though this remains unspoken. Articles focused on men do not usually include references to ‘men and non-binary people’ – so where do the males who self ID as non-binary get included?
A January 2021 article on harassment and undermining of women in NZ’s music industry uses the label “women and non-binary people”. The article refers to Massey research showing 70% of “women and non-binary” people are disadvantaged in the music industry. But the link to a news report on this research says “70% of women”.
We don’t need to see people naked to identify most people as clearly being male or female regardless of how people identify their gender. Are we to assume that male to non-binary people like Sam Smith, are sexually disadvantaged in the music and entertainment industries in the same ways as female non-binary or transmen individuals like Elliot Page?
It seems that when men in the music industry harass and undermine people in the industry, they know who the females are. Clearly there is some sexual harassment and abuse of less powerful males by men in powerful positions, as is shown with the #metoo naming of Kevin Spacey. Nevertheless, we need to be clear on the different power dynamics between male harassment of other males and their harassment/abuse of females; the latter of which seems to be more widespread. We also need clear information on the extent of harassment, abuse and discrimination of gender non-conforming people, however they identify; data that includes both sex and gender identification.
In order to collect accurate statistics, and undertake important research on inequalities and disadvantages, there needs to be clear definitions, including that of sex in comparison with gendered identifications; ones that will show changes in trends historically.
‘“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.” — Confucius
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/more-light/201802/the-power-naming
Naming something gives it power, enables communication. Renaming something changes it forever. If a man can become a woman, and we must call him woman because he says we must, then ‘woman’ has lost its meaning- and the hard won rights that go with that word, are rendered redundant.
Thanks for an excellent article K