The performance of gender, material consequences, and social change
When a baby is born, upon inspection of the genitalia, it is labeled either male or female. The dualistic nature of our culture defines man as everything that woman isn’t and woman as everything man isn’t. The terms describing the attributes of these polar opposites are the masculine and the feminine, and the images of men and women illustrating these attributes are the archetypes from which gender traits are created. These archetypes are located within a heteronormative framework in which genitalia, gender identification, and sexual orientation must match a certain “coherent� or reproductive pattern in order to be considered “normal.� People internalize gender roles and traits during the process of childhood, and learn how to execute a convincing “performance� of their assigned gender that takes place literally every moment of every person’s life. Gender is a self-regulating institution. We expect others to correctly perform gender and in turn they expect us to do the same. There are a wide range of possible social negatives resulting from the failure to perform gender correctly spanning from taunting to murder.
Thus while gender is entirely a creation of culture, and not at all “natural,� gender is important to society because it is a sorting device for the allotment of work, resources, and power. This is why everyday events bare such drastically different consequences for men and women. In this way, performance of gender roles is also performance of economic class. The hierarchical, capitalist nature of our society demands division of the masses in order to concentrate wealth at the top. The myth of class flexibility (the idea that we all have an equal chance to become rich with a little hard work and entrepreneurship) is dangled in front of us to convince us to ignore inequality and poverty. The poverties produced by the social, economic, and political disabilities effected by gender are thus created in an ongoing cycle.
Our display of unambiguous gender traits ensures that we be treated and regarded as either men or women. While individual resistance to gender norms does indeed create a social ripple effect, it is difficult to create material changes in the social, economic, and political realities of men and women in the climate of lethargy and low activism that currently pervades the US. Social resistance and possible violence are also limitations on a person’s ability to use gender performance for social change.