Gender

Today I would like to discuss the issue of a Swedish “egalia” preschool and this blog about a trans woman denied admission to Smith College. But before that, I would like to explain what gender inequality and oppression is like in our modern society.

In the 20^th-century America where democracy, diversity, respect, equality, and freedom are our very important core values, gender equality is taken as a given for many of us. Or should I say that gender inequality is well hidden in the system where micro-oppression itself does not oppress anyone but the collection of micro-oppressions together structurally and systematically affect the oppressed gender groups. Just like how Marilyn Frye proposes in her “Oppression”,

“It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as solid walls of a dungeon” (Young).

In here, Fyre compares gender oppression of women with the situation of bird locked up in a cage. One particular metal stick may not be able to keep the bird immobile, but a systematic collection of metal sticks is able to confine the bird to the cage. In our case, microscopic things like men opening doors for women, fathers walking the brides down the aisle, and men paying the bill, if taking a macroscopic view of the whole system, demonstrates nothing but the weakness and the dependency of women on men. These actions may be done unintentionally and I totally understand how some men are just “gentleman-like” enough to do “us ladies” a favor but words and actions carry meanings and representations. Although you may not have a bad intention and sometimes you are just not aware of this, regardless, your words and actions are harmful and possibly contributing to the oppression against women and other gender groups.

 “Egalia” is a term “based on the idea of removing gender roles from the children’s’ environment” (Rubenstein). The school administration believes that egalia, by having children replaced words like “him” and “her”, “boys” and “girls” with more neutral term “friends” in our language and having children grown up in a more gender-neutral environment, can remove gender stereotypes and eliminate the prescribed gender roles assigned by cultural norm. This idea is based on the belief of how meanings carried in words in our ordinarily used language can be harmful and oppressive and how gender is a social construction “instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds of constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self” (Butler). Obviously the ideal goal is to promote gender equality and diversity. When our social norm expects girls to be girly, seat cross-legged, wear makeup, and have tons of dresses in the closet, and expects boys to be manly, seated open-legged, be a fan of sport games, and enjoy playing with guns and swords, egalia is believed to be able to break our gender expectation prescribed by society through education, childhood fairytales, and social media. 

To me, personally as a feminist, I believe that the attempt to break from the prescribed gender roles is good and I am a total fan of gender equality. However, I must doubt the practicality and the efficiency of this project. Knowing that school is not the only place where children are able to receive new knowledge or learn about the world, egalia in the preschool would not be effective if our out-of-school environment is overwhelmed with cultural expectation of what a girl and a boy should be like. For example, a mother is expected to buy her daughter a pink dress for her birthday party and how a father is expected to bring his son to a basketball game. Through simple matters like these, we are perpetuating the same old-school definition of what boys and girls are.

            Some critic worry about the identity issue egalia can possibly generate. Believing that gender is an important social identity, removing it can lead to another identity crisis where children may grow up no knowing what are their real nature. However, rather than calling it as severe as an "identity crisis", haven't the oppressed gender groups suffered from double consciousness in their daily lives already? In modern society, rather than judging ourselves and identifying ourselves by the way we want to be, a lot of us tend to look at ourselves through the eyes of others (the invisible dominant norm). While one recognizes one's difference from the majority norm and desires recognition and autonomy as an individual in a system that exists cultural imperialism, one receives the knowledge taught or popularized among the dominant norm that the one is different, stereotypically labelled as "inferior" or "freaks". If one recognizes that one is indeed inferior to the dominant majority and is liable to take order or be called with bad terms, then one doesn't only suffer from the loss of personhood, but also the otherness or externalization instituted by the so-called "normal people". Also, must we categorize people while giving them an identity? Although categorization brings realness about the identity of the people in the society, it can also be harmful and oppressive. For example, calling them "gay" or "mentally retard" can be offensive because of their underlying social meaning that contains more than just the pure definition of the phrases.

In conclusion, today we are living at a time where gender becomes a sensitive but extremely complicated political issue and gender neutrality seems to become the right solution. But rather than promoting gender neutrality and equality, I think it is more important to learn about what gender is and to promote respect for others. It is always okay to teach children Cinderella and Snow White as long as you bring them awareness to the meaning behind the wonderful fantasies.

The recent issue about this trans woman denied admission to Smith College catches my attention. In August 2012, a trans woman called Calliope Wong tries to apply to Smith College but faced obstacles because of the "male" marker on her FAFSA forms. Traditionally, Smith College is a school for women and the blogger recognizes its inhospitality toward trans women as discriminatory and threatening to its traditional institutional image as a women's college. 

In her "Imitation and Gender Insubordination", Butler suggests that gender is a social institution“instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds of constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self” (Butler). She purposes that gender is like a performance instituted through a self-disciplinary control and this disciplinary control creates an illusion of what gender do they belong. For example, most women prefer to sit cross-legged, tend to smile and display their movement with grace in public and most men prefer to sit open-legged, tend to try to look cool in front of girls. They may not be physically comfortable with their gesture but they feel like they "have to" be displayed in a certain way in order to be accepted by the society. 

In our case, I believe that Smith College is at fault for denying Calliope's admission because of the "male" marker on her FASFA form. Since gender hegemony changes over time and the idea of femininity is entirely socially constructed, the administration should accept Calliope's self-identification as a woman and respect her identity as a trans woman. However, I also believe that no one in particular in our society should be the one to blame for enforcing the disciplinary control of a woman needing to behave femininely and a man needing to behave masculinely because we all have been internalized with the dominant standard of gender dichotomy our society reinforced in our education and social media starting from childhood. 

 

Works Cited

Butler, J. (1990). "Imitation and Gender Insubordination." Cultural Theory and Popular

Culture: A Reader. Ed. John Storey. New York: Pearson Education Limited, 2009. 224-38. Print.

Rubenstein, Chanah. "Op-ed: 'Egalia' Preschool - The Neutering of Children." Digital

Journal. Digital Journal, 30 June 2011. Web. 6 July 2013.

Young, I. (1990). "Five Faces of Oppression." Theorizing Feminisms: A Reader. Eds. S.

Haslanger and E. Hackett. New York: Oxford UP, 2006.