Being and Becoming Gendered: A University Essay
One of the many blessings/opportunities I have taken advantage of at UCT is becoming a Gender Studies student. After ten weeks into the course, I can honestly say that Gender Studies should be taught at every single high school in South Africa. The lessons and application are so current to our everyday lives, and are necessary to open up questions and debates about how and why the world revolves so heavily around the idea of a gender binary. It also stirs questions, and amazing discussions, about what happens to those who fall outside of the gender binary, and how we have made a social construct into something so concrete that it is used to oppress and manipulate people into believing that they must behave, think, and act a certain way. I could carry on forever. This course has me by the balls.
You are about to read my first essay I wrote for this course. It required me to account for how I have experienced being and becoming gendered in my own life. I hope you enjoy! Here we go:
Congratulations! It's a g-GENDER!
An exploration into the minefield of femininity and heteronormative culture
“A girl should be two things: Classy and fabulous.” – Coco Chanel
Gender is the
set of socially produced differences between masculinity and femininity
(Holmes, 2007). It is a social construct used to divide humans based on
appearance, mannerisms, body features, and sexual orientation. My own exploration of my femininity, and what it means for me to be a millennial woman, has been stressful in many ways: A certain responsibility falls on me to be aware of how my gender consciously influences my privilege, actions, what roles I assume, what activities I choose to partake in, and many other things. It is almost as though I was born into this world with terms and conditions that came with the gender thrust upon me, and if I do not adhere to them, I will be considered rebellious, deviant, and problematic for challenging a system built on a binary with no room for deviation. In other ways, exploring my femininity as a millennial woman has been an eye-opening experience: I am now more in tune with why I act, think, and behave the way I do. I have become more aware of the immense impact that a social construct such as gender has on me. I find it fascinating that such a small part of my identity has been able to determine so many of my life choices. This essay will take the form of a brief journey into how I understand myself as a young, feminine being, how I came to be confused and lost in what I felt and did as a result of my gender, and how I plan on using the discoveries I made to better myself and the people around me regarding their opinions and attitudes towards femininity in the future.
I, admittedly,
am guilty of gender-based assumptions. I never questioned why I made these assumptions
so easily and without contest, nor considered them to be assumptions. I was raised without any awareness of gender
being an arbitrary construction, so I never had the skill to interrogate what I
took for granted about the people around me. As a new student of Gender Studies, I am preparing myself to hone such
skills from my lecturers, fellow students, readings, and tutorials. A responsibility falls on me to implement these
skills in my everyday life, as well as to educate others to question what our
institutions teach us about gender, to make the familiar strange, and question why
our society is structured the way it is.
I now understand that gender rests on a spectrum that does not limit itself to two confining categories. Western ideologies that make gender a rigid social system where dual-sexuality cannot be facilitated need to be interrogated to understand why I think the way I do about myself, as well as the judgements I make about the people around me (Amadiume, 1987). Gender, if we must continue to use the term, must be understood as a fluid experience. It cannot continue to shape our assumptions about people, because the stereotypes and limitations of gender that we rely on to understand people need to fall away. In this way, we will become a more compassionate and humanitarian society.
I now understand that gender rests on a spectrum that does not limit itself to two confining categories. Western ideologies that make gender a rigid social system where dual-sexuality cannot be facilitated need to be interrogated to understand why I think the way I do about myself, as well as the judgements I make about the people around me (Amadiume, 1987). Gender, if we must continue to use the term, must be understood as a fluid experience. It cannot continue to shape our assumptions about people, because the stereotypes and limitations of gender that we rely on to understand people need to fall away. In this way, we will become a more compassionate and humanitarian society.
Extrapolating my
feelings around gender is very difficult for me. I think that one of the reasons why few people
are open to debate and discuss gender as a social construct is because we as
humans seek logical explanations about the world. Gender answers questions about bodily,
personality, and social differences between two distinct groups of human
beings. It allows us to operate in an
organized manner because of the strict specifications of the two groups. It makes life into a systematic way of living,
as opposed to a free, fluid experience.
My first kiss
was with a girl. I identify as
heterosexual, but at the time I didn’t attach the kiss to any romantic
affiliation, nor did I question my sexuality. I became ever more surrounded by
women as I went to an all-girls primary school and high school, and became
entranced at the beauty of the female body and mind. It was then I began to question my
sexuality. The thought that I could be
lesbian terrified me. I was raised an Anglican Christian, went to a Christian high school where we attended chapel and Eucharist, and was taught by the church that homosexuality is a sin. I overheard a conversation between two people who said, “It’s Adam and Eve, not
Alan and Steve. Being gay is a perversion of God’s plan.” Because of the influence of my school,
church, religion, and friends, the idea that a gendered woman was only meant to
be with a gendered man became entrenched in my mind. I became accustomed to the idea that
heterosexuality was the norm, and that experimenting with my femininity and
sexuality, as well as existing fluidly, would condemn me to public and divine
ridicule. The institutions I was in had
influenced my understanding of gender, and what it meant to be a young
woman. Being attracted to men and being
a gendered woman became symbiotic to me at such a tender age.
After this indoctrination of the heteronormativity of heterosexual relationships, I cast my mind back to that innocent kiss with my friend. I began to question if I was lesbian, and if so, would God send me to hell? I thought that even though my first kiss was at a young age, it was with a girl and not a boy, the way hegemonic heteronormative relationships should manifest as the 'correct' way of being intimate with another person. I, however, had been intimate with a girl from a young age. And since it was kiss with a girl, that surely meant that I was a lesbian. I instantly started panicking, fearing for my life. What would I tell my family? My friends? What would my church think? I began to fear that I would never be able to get married or be myself in public, because everyone would tease me for being lesbian. I became so afraid that I did not tell anyone about the kiss, I did not explore my feelings about what the kiss meant, nor did I confide in anyone about my confusion about my sexuality. I grew up with a sense of fear and hesitation towards becoming involved with the opposite sex, because I was terrified it would confirm the questions and doubts I had about whether or not I was lesbian.
I know today that I am heterosexual, and I am sad to say that that calms me down considerably. That is not to say I would be ashamed to be lesbian, but rather that the sense of privilege that comes with being heterosexual makes me feel secure. This sense of security is stripped away when you are homosexual, and is something you have to fight against your whole life, despite the fact that who you are is not illegal or wrong. It makes me severely frustrated that people who deviate from the socially constructed heteronormative standards of being straight and being attracted to the opposite sex are even considered 'deviants' simply because they fall outside of a binary that does not exist naturally. Who they are is not deviant or other. This is why I fervently believe in the emphasis of gender as a fluid experience, because little girls should not be praying fiercely at night with tears streaming down their eyes, begging God to make them normal.
"Normal."
After this indoctrination of the heteronormativity of heterosexual relationships, I cast my mind back to that innocent kiss with my friend. I began to question if I was lesbian, and if so, would God send me to hell? I thought that even though my first kiss was at a young age, it was with a girl and not a boy, the way hegemonic heteronormative relationships should manifest as the 'correct' way of being intimate with another person. I, however, had been intimate with a girl from a young age. And since it was kiss with a girl, that surely meant that I was a lesbian. I instantly started panicking, fearing for my life. What would I tell my family? My friends? What would my church think? I began to fear that I would never be able to get married or be myself in public, because everyone would tease me for being lesbian. I became so afraid that I did not tell anyone about the kiss, I did not explore my feelings about what the kiss meant, nor did I confide in anyone about my confusion about my sexuality. I grew up with a sense of fear and hesitation towards becoming involved with the opposite sex, because I was terrified it would confirm the questions and doubts I had about whether or not I was lesbian.
I know today that I am heterosexual, and I am sad to say that that calms me down considerably. That is not to say I would be ashamed to be lesbian, but rather that the sense of privilege that comes with being heterosexual makes me feel secure. This sense of security is stripped away when you are homosexual, and is something you have to fight against your whole life, despite the fact that who you are is not illegal or wrong. It makes me severely frustrated that people who deviate from the socially constructed heteronormative standards of being straight and being attracted to the opposite sex are even considered 'deviants' simply because they fall outside of a binary that does not exist naturally. Who they are is not deviant or other. This is why I fervently believe in the emphasis of gender as a fluid experience, because little girls should not be praying fiercely at night with tears streaming down their eyes, begging God to make them normal.
"Normal."
Reflecting on
being and becoming gendered makes me feel uncomfortable at times, because I am
forced to confront the unfair and unsubstantiated assumptions I make daily
about myself and others. Indeed, we
interact with people according to their gender, and cannot think of them as
neutral, because the world operates around gender distinction (Holmes, 2007). The way I interact with myself because
of being gendered often makes me feel trapped in my own body. I am constantly aware of how young women
ought to present themselves to appear desirable and respected. Consequently, I feel like my actions and
behaviour are not my own. Instead, they
are influenced by societal pressure dictating to me what a person gendered as a
woman should be.
I have been
molded to sit perfectly upright, hands folded, and legs crossed in the presence
of a man, because this is deemed ladylike and respectable behaviour from a woman.
It exhausts me that I must fight to earn
the same respect a man is granted simply by the gender society has given
him. Who am I not to be respected? Who is society to tell me my breasts and what
is between my legs determines how I should act, and thus how I will be
received? It angers me
deeply that I must behave in a certain way to achieve the respect a man
receives in this world, simply because we have organized gender to allocate all
societal power to gendered males. It
frustrates me that a force greater than myself, the patriarchy, has a stronger
hold on me than I have on myself: No
matter how much I respect myself, and how much I invest in my self-esteem, confidence,
and achievements, if I do not behave as a respectable, desirable woman by
patriarchal standards, I am not worthy of the attention, praise, and power a
gendered man is born with. Being
gendered has become a process of being jailed in my own body and entrapped by
my femininity, forever condemned to be less than my male counterpart.
Being gendered
as a woman has, however, influenced me in good ways too. Through social media I have become increasingly
aware of how unjust the power balance is in the patriarchal system. I am learning to question why we have allowed
a social construct to divide us into superior and inferior groups, and to
debate these issues and discrepancies. Through
Gender Studies, I will become more educated and equipped to fight the
patriarchy, and empower myself as a millennial woman. I am also becoming empowered through learning
about the struggles of women throughout history to earn their rights in a male-dominated
society. I am hoping that I may use
these skills to educate my future daughters on how being gendered can both
imprison and free you. It can build
identity, and give a sense of conviction and strength as you explore what it
means to be a woman.
I have revised
the introductory quote to suit contemporary gender debates:
“A
girl should be two things: Who she wants, and what she wants.”
I am determined to move forward into the future with my understanding of gender as a fluid experience. Gender can no longer be seen as a holding cell for the body to move no more than two steps in. A social construct cannot be justified as the reason why people are alienated, bullied, beaten, oppressed, and stripped of power. A certain responsibility falls on all people to educate themselves on how their gender influences their privilege, regardless of the fact that none of us asked for it. Societal divide based an imbalance of power, and inferiorities between people cannot continue to be corroborated by the forces of nature, the nature of our gender, or gender roles, because these are all socially constructed ideas. Moving forward, we need to emphasize gender as an unnatural construct, not something that imprisons us and dooms us to privilege and oppressive roles. However, I do stand by my femininity and my
journey in this life as a woman. I will
no longer allow my gender, and the assumptions that come with it, to imprison
me. I want to exist in this world fluidly,
without terms and conditions.
Reference list
Amadiume, I. (1987). Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society. London:
Zed Books.
I hope you enjoyed this essay! Let me know your thoughts and comments, if you have any.
Enjoy your week, and stay safe.
XO
