How do you identify someone’s gender? By whether or not they have breasts? The way their voice sounds? The way they dress? You identify their gender by the things you see on them or the things you associate with them. That’s not all there is to gender. Gender is how they identify themselves, and not how you identify them.
Society being ever considerate gives us two major ways of identifying our gender. You can either be male or female. And how are you male or female? The moment you’re born, your genitalia determine that. After which, you are constantly pressed upon with the need to ‘live up’ to your gender and everything else it entails. If you’re a girl, you have to doll up, wear pretty things, wear nail paint and make up, love the colour pink because what’s ‘girlier’ than a girl who loves pink? If you’re a boy, you have to not cry, play sports, ‘be a man!’, not be scared of anything, be emotionless and so on and so forth.
Here’s the thing, gender is a social construct. Its society’s way of labelling us to fit into categories that suits their interests. And gender roles? Gender roles are absolute bullshit. Gender roles assign a gender to clothes, colours, hobbies, jobs, and everything else we as human beings encounter in our life. The poor unborn foetus is subject to gender roles because their parents cannot decide what colour to paint the kids’ room. Pink can’t work for a boy, right? The toddler is subject to gender roles because if they’re a girl, they have to play with dolls and if they’re a boy, they have to play with cars. Let alone freedom of choice, gender roles are internalized in our systems since before we’re born and that’s a sad reality.
Masculinity is associated with rough and tough macho men, fearless of anything and everything, doing what they wish to. Feminity on the other hand is associated with being prim and proper, wearing pretty dresses, sitting with your legs closed, being emotional, etc. And if even one of the (stereotypical) characteristics is gender swapped, that’s problematic. How can a woman have control over her sexuality? How can a woman enjoy sports? How can a man cry? How can a man like the colour pink? I’ll tell you how; they can like whatever they want, if they want to.
Colours don’t have a gender. Pink is not a ‘girly’ colour and blue is not a ‘boyish’ colour. A colour is just a colour, don’t attach a gender to it and limit it. When you attach a gender to a colour or clothing, you limit its usage, perpetuate harmful stereotypes about the ‘fairer sex’ and so called ‘weaker sex’. These are times we’re trying to rid ourselves of the traditional understanding that limits our view and expand our ideas of gender and equality. Blue is just a colour. Skirts are just a piece of clothing.
Jobs shouldn’t have a gender because that’s logically impossible. A man is equally capable of being a brilliant professor and a woman is equally capable of being a corporate giant. A man is allowed to be a nanny for a living, without it being called, ‘manny’. Nanny is not a feminine word inherently, it’s simply been constructed as one. It’s all about the training and the opportunity. As a kid, something that always struck me was, “Why don’t women sportsmen get acclaim in football, cricket etc?” We have women doing exceptionally well in various sports such as tennis, badminton and tons of others. But we don’t see women get acclaim the way male sportsmen do in the popular sports.
If you want concrete proof on why gender roles are harmful to our understanding of an equalitarian society, then here it is- When you attach a gender to something as mundane as a piece of clothing, you attach the stereotypical traits associated with a narrow idea of masculinity and Feminity in our society. It’s a tedious task to rid our society of these characteristics in the first place but, not attaching these traits will help in that task. Why are cosmetics limited to women? Do men not get pimples or blemishes? Are men not allowed to use something on their skin if it makes them feel like they look better if they do?
What are hair buns? They’re a hairstyle where you tie your hair up and there are several variations to it. Do hair buns have a gender? They shouldn’t but they do. Growing up, I never heard my mother say, “I’m making a ‘woman bun’ to go with my saree.” Naturally, I was baffled when the internet showed me ‘the man bun’, the same hairstyle being adopted by men. Because a ‘bun’ is feminine so you add the word ‘man’ to it. Let me tell you something, the hairstyle was never feminine, it was society that attached the notion of long hair with women despite history being proof of some major rulers and kings having had long hair. When society makes a hairstyle naturally feminine, that forces the fragile masculinity of men who have been internalized with gender norms to validate it with something that makes it ‘manly’. It’s all so asinine when you theorize it, but it’s a reality. Gender norms are very effortlessly socialized into our very being. In practice, they’re very harmful.
It’s time we retired these gender roles that don’t benefit our society in actuality. If your son wants to wear pink, let him. If your daughter wants to chop all her long hair off, let her. If your son wants to learn ballet instead of football, let him. And if your daughter doesn’t like wearing dresses, she doesn’t have to. Don’t impose gender roles on yourself, your family, your friends or anyone you know. Let them discover themselves and be whoever they wish to be.
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