Doing Difference

page three

Sex, gender and the stories we live by

Sex happens. From a purely biological standpoint, sex— whether an organism is genetically male or female— is determined in that magic moment when gametes collide. Sex determines which bodies produce eggs and sperm and (in mammals) which bodies get pregnant, give birth and lactate. In some species, including humans, sex also produces secondary physical characteristics like women’s breasts and men’s facial hair, but there is significant variation in the expression of these traits (which can also be intentionally modified or concealed). So the business of being “male’ or “female” is fairly straightforward; it’s the meaning we attach to it that makes life so damn difficult.

As social psychologist Carol Tavris notes in her 1992 book The Mismeasure of Woman: Why Women Are Not the Better Sex, the Inferior Sex, or the Opposite Sex, throughout human history both individuals and societies have organized their experience and understanding of the world in a series of interlocking stories. There are monolithic stories that explain the creation of the universe, the origin of the species, the properties of the invisible and miraculous, the possibility of transcendence and the nature of good and evil, life and death. There are other overarching stories we rely on to explain why things can be counted on to work a certain way in the context of a specific social order. For example, in 21st century America we have an active collection of stories about democracy, liberals, conservatives, the free market, rights and liberties, the nature of happiness, romantic love, the objectivity of scientific inquiry, equal opportunity, personal responsibility, crime and punishment, checks and balances, the deserving and undeserving poor, the mind, the body, aging, race, class, work, family, adults, children and teenagers, motherhood, fatherhood, and of course, men and women— just to name a few. These stories don’t reflect absolute truths, although more often than not they are represented as if they do.

In world where everything— everything— is subject to change, the stories we construct are like signposts that help us make sense of our daily lives and string our personal and collective experiences into a coherent history. It may be that as time goes on, some of our stories get better— perhaps they become more just, more humane and more inclusive. But they are still only stories, and they can be and are revised in response to pressure. As Tavris writes, “In the space of only a few years, social movements and economic upheavals can alter the stories people are able to envision for themselves. And in our private lives, we frequently change explanatory themes as a result of love, tragedy, everyday experience, political conversion or psychotherapy.” Because stories are so critical to our sense of personal and social equilibrium, the groups and individuals that have the means to reshape their content are exceptionally powerful.

Gender is one of our biggest stories— a thick, invisible film that overlays the biological inevitability of sex. Gender is not so much about who we are as it is about how others expect us to be. But since many people accept at least some aspects of the culture’s dominant gender norms as “the way things are and should be”— and there are heavy social penalties for non-conformists, including shaming, ostracism and persecution— most people, if not all, incorporate some elements of gender into their identity from an early age, or they learn how to perform gender. As sociologist Barbara Risman writes, gender is so deeply encoded in norms of interpersonal conduct in our public and private lives that “doing gender is usually the easiest means to thrive, or even survive, in our society.” Men— so our present day narrative of gender difference informs us— are active and aggressive, hardwired to compete. Their motives are objective and rational, as opposed to those of women, which are often described as subjective and “relational.” Women are more nurturing than men, more emotionally expressive and less emotionally stable. Men attack problems head-on and work to get results; women “feel” their way through problems and work to build and strengthen social connections that serve the common interest. Men are more proficient with hard logic, such as math and science or describing the positions and relationships of objects in space; women are more proficient with the soft logic required for processing language and reading the emotions of others. Men are all about detachment and autonomy, whereas women are all about attachment and dependency. From this baseline understanding of the “nature” of men and women, popular culture elaborates stereotypes of masculinity and femininity by layering on characteristics that range from the sublime to the absurd.

But the most critical thing to recognize about our story of gender— and why developing a sensitivity to the way gender operates is important for mothers who yearn for social change— is that it divides the world very neatly into two different parts and assigns men and women to the segment where their supposedly innate qualities are most in demand. Men get gainful work and public authority; women get family work and private authority. Each hemisphere has its own set of drawbacks and rewards, and one complements the other to constitute a functional whole. There is, of course, just one slight problem— this arrangement gives men, as the leaders of public institutions, disproportionate access to social and economic power. As Cynthia Fuchs Epstein writes in Deceptive Distinctions: Sex, Gender and the Social Order (1988), “Whether consciously or unconsciously, from the time gender distinctions were made …the social order generated a system of thought that legitimated gender inequality. Agents of the social order, people with a stake in it and people persuaded by them, are the insiders.”

In other words, not only does our gender story substantiate a social order that continues to marginalize and subordinate women— especially if they happen to be mothers, or poor, or people of color— it also ensures that women have limited access to the power they need to change the story.

next:
The difference problem

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