3.04 (V) How Gender Rules Limit Us All
Welcome back. In this video, we want to continue our discussion of gender norms by focusing on some of the ways that people enforce, challenge, and resist gender norms in our societies. This will include an examination of transphobia and misogyny. In the previous video, we talked about nine and 10-year-old kids knowing that boys weren't allowed to wear dresses and skirts, but the girls were allowed to wear clothes typically associated with boys. This double standard, where it's socially acceptable for girls to use items, expressed preferences, and engage in activities associated with boys and masculinity goes well beyond clothing. Girls are often allowed and sometimes even expected to play with toys and games that are marketed to boys. These include things like Legos, toy cars or trucks, video games, and sports. However, boys are expected to avoid items, preferences, and activities typically associated with girls and femininity. Whether it be things like dolls, toy events, or dancing. To give another example, girls can often learn to play traditionally masculine musical instruments like drums or the trumpet, but boys are less frequently encouraged to play the flute or other instruments that are deemed feminine. There are two important things to notice about this double standard around gender. First, masculinity and maleness are often treated as default or neutral categories in most societies. There are several examples of this. For instance, what do you imagine if I tell you to picture a doctor, an engineer, or carpenter? If you are like most people, you will unconsciously picture an image of a man working in all of those jobs. If you look for gender neutral clothes for babies and toddlers, you're likely to find lots of clothes in traditionally masculine colors and styles. For another example, computer software is frequently designed to cope people as male, unless a human manually changes the setting. Some evidence even suggests that humans are socially conditioned to interpret everybody they meet as male and unless they perceive a certain number of indicators to the contrary. The phenomenon of masculinity and maleness being seen as a neutral or default category is perhaps most visible when a man or someone perceived to be a man or male wears clothing that is feminine, or grooms their body in a feminine way. Take actor Billy Porter's experience. If I'm over here wearing a dress, why does it matter? Any woman who puts on pants is considered strong, because pants are associated with the patriarchy. It's like some sort of superiority complex. So a man puts on a dress and it's disgusting. So what you're saying is men are fabulous, women are disgusting. I'm not doing that anymore. I want to be a walking piece of political art when I show up. Just living inside of my truth publicly is a political act. Billy Porter points out the second major aspect of the double-standard of gender norms. That not only are masculinity and maleness deemed neutral in society, but they are often seen as preferred, while femininity and femaleness are deemed less desirable and are frequently disparaged. This reflects the fact that most societies are patriarchal and misogynistic. Patriarchy refers to a system of social organization in which maleness and masculinity are privileged and preferred, and men hold a disproportionate amount of power. Misogyny refers to the devaluing, denigration, and sometimes hatred of femininity, femaleness, and women. Living in a society that is patriarchal and misogynistic, and where masculinity and maleness are neutral helps explain the double-standard around gender norms. Or why it's okay for women to wear pants, but not for men to wear skirts or dresses. It is important to know the misogyny is connected to another form of prejudice transphobia. Transphobia is a set of beliefs, assumptions, and biases that result in the marginalization and persecution of trans and or gender binary non-conforming people. Misogyny is rooted in the belief that masculinity is better than femininity, and that men are superior to women. Misogyny relies on the belief that gender is binary. Transgender people are often perceived as dangerous because they challenge this gender binary. This is why fighting transphobia requires also fighting misogyny, and fighting misogyny also requires fighting transphobia. There are lots of ways that people learn to express gender, and a lot of ways gender norms are enforced. However, there are also a lot of ways that people challenge and resist gender norms, misogyny, transphobia, and patriarchy. We've introduced a lot of big ideas in this video. We've only just started to explore them here. We've included several related resources to guide you if you're interested in learning more about the issues introduced here. In the next video, we will look at one of the creative ways that some people resist gender norms through a form of performance art called drag.
