One of the first stories we hear as Christian children is in Genesis – the creation of man, followed by woman, whose purpose was to be his companion. In these verses, we find one of the central tenets of our theologically informed ideas of gender essentialism; that God made us male and female, and that therefore this separation of the genders is sacred and unchangeable, and rooted in biological reality. To challenge this would be, in the eyes of many people, akin to blasphemy. Though our understanding and performance of gender are influenced by a great many factors, we Christians have a habit of falling back on the Bible to reaffirm what we believe about ourselves and each other. There, we find simple, immortal verses confirming a simple truth about the separation of male and female, one of the foundations of human existence.
At the heart of gender essentialism is the idea that human beings, like all biological entities, have inherent traits so deeply embedded in our biology and psyche that there is virtually no overcoming them. To pretend otherwise would be akin to delusion, implies the general argument. And because male and female human beings are inherently different, so says the essentialist, surely this inherent difference has far greater, inescapable implications on our existence. So inescapable is this biological root of the male-female dichotomy that it informs our identities, our social roles, our emotions, our dreams, our general presentation, and indeed our relationships with each other, and with power, principles, and values.
Power, Leadership, and the Female Body
Gender essentialism is inseparable from patriarchy today. We can only understand gender in a way that lends credence to the power structures defined by patriarchal standards and values. Even transgressions of patriarchy are deemed transgressive precisely because by definition they have crossed lines drawn by patriarchy; the idea of transgression accepts that a line metaphysically exists somewhere to begin with. The line is of course not physical and therefore makes way to tokenized exceptions. Nonetheless, transgression alone does not break one free of gender; sometimes it functions to reify patriarchy itself.
Take, for instance, the issue of female leadership in the church and government. While our society is no stranger to female leaders holding moderately powerful positions, these women tend to be regarded as exceptions, occasional blips in the otherwise natural chronology of male leaders. In modern societies, we see women climb the ranks largely being accepting their tokenization, and often by wielding power in a way that is acceptable to pre-existing systems. We see that they are capable of adapting to the status quo, and that it is only by negotiating with the status quo that they find a place in higher office.
Can one say women in leadership are an obstacle because of biology and be taken seriously? When we examine the question from a moral perspective, it may be unthinkable to accept what is a blatantly prejudiced premise without revealing ourselves to be extraordinarily bigoted. Nonetheless, the implication remains, with several prominent glass ceilings still virtually untouched. At the very least, even if we were to accept the premise that there are no qualified women immediately, we have then failed to empower women sufficiently to rise to those ranks. Does this lack of female leadership reflect biological truths, or is it not merely a consequence of our patriarchy still being very much alive?
Some years ago, in the Mizo-speaking online sphere, there was animated discussion on the idea of a female pastor. While the general public reacted with amusement at the thought of dwelling on a public figure’s menstrual cycle, there was less in the way of discussing the crux of the issue – that the female body is mystified, considered strange or inconvenient to the degree that it warrants differentiation when considering a woman for leadership roles. In other words, a female body would get in the way of leadership.
This is also hardly exclusive to the so-called developing third world we live in. A similar attitude of thinly-veiled confusion and repulsion with female bodies was reflected in Hillary Clinton’s run for president in 2016, when there was briefly online discourse among social media users of her post-menopause brain and its capacity to handle the highs and lows of such important work. There were counter-arguments from the feminist perspective – that a post-menopausal woman would be ideal for a presidential candidate because she may well be the most hormonally stable form of human being. This too misses the mark – it lands on a biological essentialist premise that hormonal “instability” affects the menstruating female – and indeed the never-menstruating male – as less capable of leadership with soundness of mind.
Nature vs. Nurture
Leadership is hardly the only arena in which gender essentialism plays out in ways subtle and overt. At the heart of every patriarchal household is the implicit acceptance of essentialism. The mother is deemed inherently oriented towards servility and domesticity; her husband inherently oriented towards leadership, dominance, and power. This dynamic accepts the idea that the body is fate – that degrees of maleness and femaleness come with an inescapable psychological makeup which orients us towards particular ways of existing and thinking. The household is the first domain in which this dynamic plays out and shapes our worldview.
Socialization comes up often in discussions of nature vs. nurture – to what degree can we truly say one’s secondary sexual characteristics determine our fate? By now we know that there have been countless studies in India on gender gaps in children’s nutrition, in levels of physical activity, in behaviours that are encouraged or “corrected,” and so on. This aspect of parenting sets so much of a child’s psyche in stone during their developmental years. There is virtually no consensus on where the line is drawn between nature and nurture, and even experiments of genderless parenting generally imply experimentations with the gendered world, rather than forgoing gender entirely. Put it simply – we may never know, and we can only go so far when examining what is or isn’t biological vis-à-vis gender and sex.
Purity and Pollution in Gender
While the French Sociologist Louis Dumont put forth the concepts of purity and pollution as social tools to differentiate castes in their hierarchical orders in Indian society, a similar concept operates in the realm of gendered bodies. There is, as discussed, the nebulous idea of pollution of some form when it comes to the menstrual cycle. In fact, purity is a central concern when discussing female reproductive organs in any lengthy capacity. Mizo women are to this day embarrassed of discussing menopause and menarche at length; discussions are held covertly and away from the earshot of menfolk. Meanwhile, discussions and even jokes concerning sexuality are enjoyed and shared among men as a tool of social cohesion far from the sensitive ears of women, lest pollution – to which men are seemingly immune – fall unto otherwise innocent women, or so goes the trope in its bare essence.
Nowadays, it is popular in internet circles to reflect this pre-existing notion of gender essentialism in broad, all-encompassing ways. We are told, for example, that women are “wired” to depend on men and that females are inherently sexually selective in terms of status, power, money, and entangled in endless psychological warfare with other females in pursuit of male acceptance and romantic-sexual relationships. On the other side of this coin, there is the notion that males are inherently sexually charged creatures, slaves to the throes of their libido. We hear the age-old adage that maleness and sexuality are mutually implied, that all men approach women with lust and dominion in mind.
Sex becomes an arena of power. Well-meaning men often advise women to steer clear of males and protect their dignity closely. Their dignity, it is implied, lies in their sexuality, and overt sexualization is the enemy of the female body, which faces degradation with every sexual encounter. The degradation is implied to be physical and manifest in the body (take, for instance, the ancient emphasis on preserving the “hymen” – an eternal symbol of purity). If the gendered body is fate, a woman’s fate is a treacherous balance between purity and pollution; she must always be mindful to adopt puritan values while navigating the potential pollution that colours all her interactions with men.
Why Gender Matters
A key goal of feminism is to empower women, we say. But we have a hard time analysing the ways in which women are disempowered to begin with, and discussions generally do not move beyond the usual socially acceptable talking points regarding political representation and financial independence. And given that we still have a long way to go even in those metrics, it’s no wonder that the gender issue is still spoken of in simplistic and preliminary terms in our society.
This kind of nuance is tricky and difficult to present to a public audience that isn’t interested in complications and nuance. So far, one may be inclined to conclude prematurely that gender is therefore so inescapable that we should accept things as they are and probe no further, or perhaps that gender is all in our head and we shouldn’t bother with it anymore.
Something existing in the social realm – as a “social construct” – does not mean that it has no effect on reality. On the contrary, human beings being such incredibly social creatures, our social reality is arguably one of the most important realms of our existence. Therein lie our greatest gifts and our worst prejudices. When gender essentialism manifests in the social fabric of our society, it forces each of us to toe the line somewhere, both by punishing transgression and by rewarding compliance. Thus, glass ceilings remain unbroken, families continue to function as patriarchal units, and boys and girls grow up navigating complicated and stringent rules around sexual purity. For those who want this cycle to start changing somewhere and head towards an egalitarian direction, the gender essentialism question is inevitable somewhere along the line, and we must contend with the degrees to which we are willing to accept “innate” differences getting in the way of the trajectory of each individual’s life and ambitions. From this author’s perspective, no “innate” difference is acceptable social stratification by default, and each “innate/essential” claim must always be thoroughly challenged.
