I grew up in about as much of a gender-expectation-free environment as one could get, in the time and place I grew up. This is, I think, largely a result of my mother; my father never had any objections to it, as far as I was aware, but I’m not sure he would have been as encouraging without my mother’s influence. I had ‘boy’s toys’ and ‘girl’s toys’. As a small child playing dress-up, I gleefully mixed costumes and costume elements without regard for the conceptual gender that they belonged to. I even experimented with makeup as a small child, as well as in my teens within subcultures in which such exploration was acceptable. I may have grown up in a mostly male household, but my mother was always the most dominant figure in it.
I would probably have joined in with more ‘girls’ games’ at school if there were ways to do so – girls participating in boys activities was something everyone understood, if only through the simplistic idea of the ‘tomboy’, but vice-versa wasn’t something that was done. I could do things at home, of course, and was supported to do so, but that’s not the same. I recall regretting that at the time, though I have no great long-standing pain over it.
I also always felt uncomfortable with some of the things that were expected as a feature of masculinity – insensitivity, readiness to violence, cruelty as a form of group bonding. These are elements of what is often now referred to as “toxic masculinity” (which does not imply that all elements of stereotypical masculinity are toxic, by the by), a term for which I have as much fondness as I have distaste for the phenomenon itself. I don’t know how much that’s a result of innate preference or to do with how I was brought up. I don’t know that it matters.
As I’ve grown, and learned more from the experience of those who grew up in a similar position from the other side of the sex-and-gender coin, I know there are elements of expectations of certain forms of femininity – not just from men, but from other women and girls (which I note does not stop it being a manifestation of patriarchy) – that cause similar discomfort. Not all men (or boys) are averse to talking about feelings, or (even counting only those attracted to women) keen on critiquing the relative merits of the appearance of everyone female and close to their age (or older); not all women (or girls) are happy with endless discussion of soaps or celebrity culture. My wife observes that, as a general trend, women (and girls) seem to have greater freedom to be interested in things, while men (and boys) have more freedom to be disinterested. This also extends to behaviour in conversation when signalling such interest or lack thereof. I’m not sure whether or not I agree with her primary observation here, but I certainly don’t disagree, and I very much see the point in terms of behaviour in conversation.
I’ve always – except perhaps during those awkward ages where it is made different, though even then it is only ‘less so’, not ‘not’ – had an easier time having female friends than male ones. The way women and girls were socialised made it more likely that they saw a lot of things similarly to me. They also didn’t tend to confront me with an expectation of stereotypical masculine behaviour.
I’m very aware of the ways in which being seen as male have given me advantages, even as it has caused me discomfort. Indeed, some of the discomfort comes from being aware of the advantages, not just from the unwelcome expectations. I think my mother would consider it a failure in my upbringing if I weren’t aware of those advantages, and friendship with women also helps me to see it. I know that it is my responsibility to try to break down those advantages as I make my way in the world – to use the advantage to subvert it. It is a challenge, but one that everyone who enjoys those advantages has a duty to meet.
Still, despite my discomfort with socially stereotypical masculinity, I never had any question about my gender. I am a man, and entirely content to be so, though I am not a man in full conformance with society’s expectations of men. My nonconformity is not in much that is visible, and indeed in the areas where it is visible it is barely nonconformity any more – long hair on men being much more normal now than it once was, for instance. At the same time, I am entirely comfortable with departing further from visible conformity – dressing or behaving in clearly feminine ways for a good cause, for instance. Indeed, as many men do at university, I even cross-dressed on a bar-crawl for nothing but larks, something I now look back on with a certain questioning unease (such matters are very complicated in how I see them morally, and it wouldn’t be helpful to go into it in detail here and now).
I never questioned being a boy or, later, a man. I am comfortable with my form of masculinity, though I don’t really think of it that way – I see it as my way of being a person, or more to the point, I see it as ‘me’. I recognise that there are aspects of it that are seen as typically masculine, especially physical presentation. I recognise that my gender socialisation contributes, for example, to my being a confident speaker, but it is neither the beginning nor the end of it, just one factor that contributes in my favour. I know that some rhetoric, especially in the media, about gender-questioning young people, especially the very young, would have one believe that children whose behaviour and preferences now are as mine were then would be encouraged to think of themselves as trans or non-binary, to socially transition and start down a path to pharmaceutical treatment. I’m also aware that when I look past the surface of such media reports, it’s a lot more complex – and that most people working seriously with gender-questioning youth actually encourage them to explore things and think hard about it, to recognise that anyone can play with ‘boy’s toys’ or ‘girl’s toys’. The experience of actual trans youth is qualitatively entirely different from mine, or even that of people who are much more gender non-conforming.
Now, I would like to see a world where gender, the social construct, is a thing of the past. I don’t see how it can happen in my lifetime, but I hope it happens some day. Only then will we find out whether the experience of gender as an inward identity is secondary to the social construct of gender – whether dysphoria becomes solely anatomical (noting that not all people who don’t identify with the gender conforming with their anatomy at birth have much or any desire to change their anatomy). I wouldn’t like to guess what would be the case. The reasons for wanting to attain that world are much broader than the possible end of gender dysphoria, though it might be a positive side effect.
I do wonder about something else, though… my wife and I have been watching (or in many cases re-watching) almost all of Star Trek, in internal chronology order (we skipped Star Trek: Enterprise as it’s not that long since we watched all of that together in order – something we had not done with any other series). There’s an episode of The Next Generation in which the crew of the Enterprise-D are interacting with a society which has neither sex nor gender; procreation still requires two people, but all have the same anatomy. Their people had both sex and gender once upon a time, and viewed themselves as having become more advanced by leaving both behind. However, there are some people born who come to identify with one of the genders their people used to have. They form an underground, where they can meet, share experiences, and form relationships and (in at least some cases) have sexual encounters only with those of a particular gender identity. They don’t try to behave socially in different ways that represent old, abandoned gender roles in their society – it is purely an inward experience, and impacts on their sexuality. When such people are discovered, however, they are subjected to treatment which erases their gender identity, and they are all happy about it afterwards.
I’m fairly sure, based on some of the dialogue when a character is ‘outed’ as identifying as female, that this was intended to be an allegory for how non-heterosexuals were treated at the time, and still are treated in much of the world. It makes me think about this hypothetical future, though – I don’t imagine that we will somehow lose biological sex on any reasonable timescale, though it would have advantages, especially if both parents of a child at least risked the same biological role in parenthood. But if we lose social gender, see it as a primitive construct that we have grown beyond, might there be people who nonetheless experience themselves as socially gendered – and if that happens, how will we treat them?
Written August 2021
