It’s Wildly Apparent that Gender Doesn’t Determine Who You Are
We don’t even need all the science, we can just observe
One of my favorite things to do is to ask someone who is sure that gender is a strict binary to visualize these four men: Donald Trump, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Pee Wee Herman, and Ru Paul. Call to mind how they present themselves, how they express themselves, and what is important to them. Really think about them for a few minutes and then decide if you are actually going to persist in telling me about how all men have the same basic personality traits, aptitudes, and capabilities.
People who are sure that nearly all men have certain characteristics and propensities and that women have different ones are thinking about a stereotype, a culturally constructed idea of what is a man and what is a woman — not actual people. Although we are indoctrinated into these stereotypes, both consciously and subconsciously, from birth, it’s still patently obvious that this is all they are because real humans are incredibly diverse.
If all “male brains” work one way and all “female brains” work in another different way, how then do we explain the fact that I read maps much better than my husband does, and that he’s quite adept at the muli-tasking it takes to put together a fancy meal? In fact, many of the world’s greatest chefs are men, and many of the world’s greatest scientists are women. In truth, the observable reality is all we need to see that gender binaries as far as aptitudes or capabilities don’t actually exist — the proof is literally all around us.
What is expected for your gender has a huge impact on what you are exposed to, and consequently, how your brain develops. The human brain is incredibly plastic, growing and responding to the stimuli that it is exposed to. If you are given Legos as a child instead of dolls, it will teach your very plastic brain different skills. Compound that by millions of inputs from every aspect of life, and you’ve got trends, but also infinite possible variety.
But aside from everything we know about the science of neuroplasticity, and that our brain's abilities are always in flux, we don’t even really need that — all we actually have to do is to look at the world. There are men who are poets and painters. There are men who are business moguls. And there are men who are all of those things. And there always have been.
There are women who are triathletes — physically tough and competitive, who bake apple pies from scratch when they aren’t training. I actually know someone just like that. She’s a top executive, a triathlete, and someone who bakes and cans, and sews. Does she behave like a woman or not? And if not, how does that happen if she’s got a “female brain”?
If gender aptitudes are a binary, then how do we have so many women now working for NASA? Even back in the early days of space flight, women were a critical part of the science team. You may have heard of Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician and “computer” who was featured in the movie Hidden Figures. Back in those days, all the “computers” were women.
In 1962, as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, Johnson was called upon to do the work that she would become most known for. The complexity of the orbital flight had required the construction of a worldwide communications network, linking tracking stations around the world to IBM computers in Washington, Cape Canaveral in Florida, and Bermuda. The computers had been programmed with the orbital equations that would control the trajectory of the capsule in Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission from liftoff to splashdown, but the astronauts were wary of putting their lives in the care of the electronic calculating machines, which were prone to hiccups and blackouts. As a part of the preflight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to “get the girl” — Johnson — to run the same numbers through the same equations that had been programmed into the computer, but by hand, on her desktop mechanical calculating machine. “If she says they’re good,’” Katherine Johnson remembers the astronaut saying, “then I’m ready to go.” Glenn’s flight was a success, and marked a turning point in the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in space.
If you want to say that women like Johnson are the exception rather than the rule, you have to acknowledge two things.
- Any exception to the rule negates its validity entirely. If male and female brains really have different aptitudes and predilections, then there should be no exceptions. Otherwise, how do women end up with “male brains” and vice versa?
- In addition, the long and still on-going history of gender expectations, indoctrination, and discrimination limits the exposure of anyone who is interested in something “not meant for them” by societal standards.
Those standards have loosened up some in the past 50 years, although they certainly aren’t gone, and what we’ve seen as a result is an uptick in women in fields previously dominated by men as well as more men entering traditionally “pink collar” fields such as nursing and social work.
What about “the Nordic gender paradox”, (where despite generally more equal societies, Nordic women still often choose jobs that are traditional for women)? Here are three things to consider:
- “Different roles in the family: Statistically Nordic men and women still have different roles in the family, where the woman has the role of primary caregiver and the man the role of primary earner. Women therefore tend to have an interest in jobs with the potential for part-time working and family-friendly benefits, and men for jobs with higher wages.”
- Unless it’s a universal, where no men work in the sorts of public sector jobs typical for Nordic women and no women work in the private sector jobs more typical of men in those countries, you don’t actually have a binary — you have a trend — one that is undoubtedly influenced by many factors.
- Nordic countries may be more equal than many others, but that doesn’t mean that gender issues don’t exist. As Amnesty International reports, “Despite being among the top-ranking countries in the world in terms of gender equality, four Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) have disturbingly high levels of rape and survivors of sexual violence are being failed by their justice systems. Social stigma and a lack of trust in the justice system often mean that women and girls fail to report attacks, and those that do, are frequently failed by callous and prejudiced justice systems or outdated laws. One survivor told us she would never have reported her rape if she had known how she would have been treated, and her story is typical in justice systems which are stacked against rape survivors.”
So, even cultures that are more gender equal than most still have norms, expectations, and discrimination. It’s been pointed out to me that pretty much all cultures have gender norms, but what’s interesting to note, is not only do those vary from culture to culture, but they also vary over time.
Egalitarian cultures, such as contemporary hunter-gatherers, tend to value personal autonomy more than meaningless social rules. In general, people do what they want to contribute to the well-being of the group, regardless of whose role that sort of work is traditionally. Anthropologists and archeologists find evidence of big game hunters, warriors, and other non-traditional occupations for women throughout history.
The Aka, foragers who live in Central Africa, are some of the most hands-on dads in the world. “Fathers are within arm’s reach of their one-to four-month-old babies more than 50 percent of any 24-hour period and are nuzzling, kissing, hugging, or mostly just holding them a whopping 22 percent of the time they spend in camp. Even when Aka parents go on hunting expeditions in the woods, they take quite young infants and their other children along, being careful to remain in constant contact.”
All humans have Yin and Yang traits, and the blend of what those are relates to some combination of nature and socialization. There’s no humane way to raise an infant apart from culture, so we cannot test for sure what the percentages might truly be. But what we do know is that we are all steeped in gender indoctrination from birth and that even so, it’s readily apparent that a wide variety exists amongst all humans, regardless of gender.
After all, it would be silly to say that Sophia Loren, Megan Rapinoe, Amy Schumer, and Oprah Winfrey have pretty much the same interests, aptitudes, and qualities simply because they are all women. Right?
