The Scary Monster of Gender Ideology
Since the beginning of time, gender has been motive. Indigenous, early civilizations had more than binary definitions of what gender was. Whether your role in the village or a far flung farm was defined by gender, your tasks might not be what we’d consider to be male or female now. Women often built the ‘houses’, tended animals, worked the fields and mines, and hunted for the smaller animals. They defended their villages against all invaders when the men were away.
In the culture of guilds, what we consider to be female crafts were often the expertise of men. When offices began, men were the clerks. Cottage industries were often done by both genders (couple and their children).
Diet, exercise and people’s health still speak more about your body than even your DNA does. They also speak to your strength, endurance and pain tolerance. And maturity between child – adult – elder are states of becoming rather than solely gender exercises.
Labour tasks are more often communal rather than domestic. You have social roles in your religious group, in your neighbourhood and your extended family. Charity and schooling extend beyond the religious or academic activities and aren’t always gender specific. There are moments of emergency when all hands are on deck and they aren’t checking what’s in your panties before they offer you a bucket or sand bag.
Beauty is a cultural/racial issue. What is considered to be masculine or feminine is diverse. And often media make fads where there isn’t real clarity. Certainly not over time. How do you determine where the line is when fitness or buxom secondary sex traits are gendered?
With the possible sexual power relationships, attractions and positions, how do you claim a binary position?
And if you consider the full emotional range, how do you claim that men are stoic when they have no trouble emoting anger’s range? Or that women are hysterical when they can be trusted as patient caregivers? If you have a mental health issue, does that erase your perceived gender?
Men and women have hormonal fluxes of testosterone and estrogen as well as neutral hormones. It’s only when it comes to fertility roles that gender is defined. But what if you’re infertile? What if you require surgery for cancer and the treatment renders your secondary and organic determinants of gender obsolete? Do those things erase your gender?
According to gender ideology experts, there is no one common trait that crosses either gender that makes us a group (besides human) or collective. So is there such a thing as gender?
Maybe it’s a social role or experience ( ie. political, cultural, legal, media), or a self delusion. But it’s not contained within our body. It’s a dynamic issue. Not only how we define ourself, but how we are perceived.
So should we define gender? Maybe the way to be a feminist these days is to see ourselves as non binary rather than claiming a gender? What do you think?
mspeachierocks 