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A gender-free world= boring? (archive) - Clover - Dec 29 2024
The following below the horizontal rule is an archive of the blog post "A gender-free world= boring?" from the Burning Ax blog. Available as a Web Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20141015082821/http://burningax.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/a-gender-free-world-boring/
A gender-free world= boring?
One think I’ve noticed is that most people aren’t very enthusiastic about the possibility of a world free from gender.
Usually these objectors can be put into two groups.
The first one is made up of people who confuse sex and gender and therefore believe that gender abolitionist want to basically neuter everybody and eliminate any primary or secondary sexual characteristics from human’s body. But this is of course not at all what we mean. We see nothing inherently wrong with biological sex and understand fully well that it is a necessity for the survival of the human race.
The second group is made up of people who do understand the difference between sex and gender but think that a world without gender would be undiversified and boring.
Many believe that in a gender-free world anything deemed feminine or masculine would be forbidden and everything would be what we call androgynous: clothes, colors, personality traits, interests, haircuts, mannerisms, etc.
Basically: a dull place without variation where everybody looks like a model of perfect androgyny.
Which is not at all what we mean. Especially since the very notion of androgynous would not even exist in such a society.
Let me describe to you what kind of world gender abolitionists actually dream about:
When a child would be born it’s biological sex, being an actual physical reality, would be noticed but not a single assumption regarding the child’s personality would be made based on it.
Growing up, children would be free to chose what toys and clothes they prefer. If they want to play with toy trucks or dolls, it would be fine either way. If they want to dress comfortably or in frilly colorful dresses, it would be fine. Regardless of the child’s biological sex.
Certain personality traits would not be encouraged in members of one sex and discouraged in the other. Females would be free to be strong, brave and assertive and males would not be shamed for being shy and soft spoken.
No female child would be called a tomboy and no male child would be called a sissy. No kid would ever be bullied for what we in our gendered world call “gender expression”.
When children would reach puberty they would still be free to dress how they want. Females would not be pressured to wear clothes that reveal their bodies and males would not be shamed if they chose to. Everybody would have a free choice of accessories, which would not be categorized as “men’s” or “women’s” but people could should whichever they liked. Or chose to not wear accessories at all if that’s what they are more comfortable with.
Females would not be pressured to keep their bodies slim, soft and hairless. Males would not be pressured to be athletic and muscular. Expectations of femininity and masculinity upon the body would not exist and affect negatively people’s relationship with their own body.
Everyone could choose a career without fearing stigmatization within that particular field because of their biological sex. The most important thing would be competence and not what someone has between their legs.
Domestic work would not be considered “women’s work” and would be shared equally between the sexes.
Biological sex would only be thought about when relevant. Like for example in regards to issues surrounding sexual activity, reproduction or treatment of medical conditions related to a person’s biological sex.
And everyone would be free to be themselves without ever having to worry about gender expectations. Nobody would feel the need to repress certain parts of their personality and exaggerate others in order to fit into some gender role that is being forced on them.
This is somewhat simplified but this is what gender abolitionists fight for when we fight for a gender-free world. Not some oppressive dictatorship were diversity is forbidden.
Gender abolitionism is not about restricting people’s choices but about giving them greater freedom.
One other objection I often hear is that a gender-free society doesn’t sound very realistic. To that I say: does a world without violence sound realistic to you? Or without racism, misogyny, oppression and abuse of any kind? Does it mean we should stop fighting against this things?
The reason I’m a gender abolitionist is not because I’m 100% sure that a gender-free future is possible. I’m not, actually. But it is because I am convinced that, as Sheila Jeffreys puts it, gender hurts.
It hurt me personally and caused me to suffer from gender dysphoria and all the anxiety and depression that goes with it. And it is hurting countless others in countless ways.
Because I’m not out on some personal vendetta against gender. When I think of the harms it does, I don’t only think of how it screwed me over. But I think of how it is screws all of us over.
Most of all I think of the children who are, today in 2014, being sterilized because of people’s blind faith in gender essentialism.
Maybe gender can’t be beaten completely. Maybe it will always be around in one form or another. But we can and should work to minimize the harm it does. Because when gender leads to the eugenics of children, I don’t think we really need any more proof that it is hurtful and oppressive.
Lastly, I just want to say that an abolitionistic view of gender can deeply affect someone on a personal level. We are many who have found healing from gender dysphoria through radical feminism and gender abolitionism.
See for example this great video with radical feminist and former ftm Heath Atom Russell.
On a personal note, I can say that embracing a radical feminist view on gender deeply affected me. It changed how I saw myself and helped me see that there is no such thing as “born in the wrong body”.
One of the reasons I created this blog is because I hope that if someone is in a similar situation I was in just three years ago and stumbles upon this page, that they will find anything I write helpful at all. That maybe they will start their own journey towards figuring out the cause of their dysphoria and find healing. And above all: free themselves from the shackles of gender.
RE: A gender-free world= boring? (archive) - Elsacat - Dec 29 2024
I think the idea of true gender abolition freaks people out, like they're afraid they won't know who's female or male without assigning roles and appearances and "this is for boys and that is for girls" type stuff. I think there's a ton of homophobia underneath too.
RE: A gender-free world= boring? (archive) - Clover - Dec 30 2024
(Dec 29 2024, 7:36 PM)Elsacat I think the idea of true gender abolition freaks people out, like they're afraid they won't know who's female or male without assigning roles and appearances and "this is for boys and that is for girls" type stuff.Exactly! This comment and the overall article heavily reminded me of this one episode in Star Trek: The Next Generation where they kinda attempt to portray "gender abolition" in aliens and it is done in like, the worst way possible. Literally grey monotonous clothing, everyone acts/looks the same, any sense of wanting to not be a gray androgenous being was punished with creepy "reeducation" — I hated that episode for many reasons, but mainly how it made Star Trek writers promote and justify sexism/gender stereotypes as "natural" and "good" in a show that laudes itself on being progressive! (Big angery.) I know it's an "old" show (not even that old...), but they could have just not done that episode or not have been so oblivious to what gender nonconformity/gender abolition means.
RE: A gender-free world= boring? (archive) - YesYourNigel - Dec 31 2024
This is something that majorly pisses me off, and it's been getting more and more pushed in supposedly progressive spaces specifically as a response to trans shit, because doing away with gender entirely is UwU invalidating 🥺. Needless to say, misogynists trying to justify the patriarchy as an unchangeable and necessary part of life that us women should at least grit our teeth and enjoy instead of making a scene over it is a tale as old as time.
What fuels it to a lesser extent I think is this liberal feminist idea (born out of the idea that no disenfranchised group could possibly do anything bad or unbeneficial ever and should be above all criticism) that femininity is basically a kind of culture where humanity would lose some unique independent perspective and approach to life if it was abandoned (Though, due to women having the fewest oppression points, most rules applied to culture in other contexts conveniently don't apply to femininity, hence resounding applauses for men who offensively imitate or straight up identify as women, aka drag and TIMs). And maybe in a few limited regards I can see it, in the sense that there are certain aesthetics uniquely associated with women and rooted in gender roles. But like, almost all of it is modern consumerism rooted in misogynistic ideas that arbitrarily split useful and/or positive moral traits down gendered lines and severely, purposefully limit human lives and apply double standards to moral values. Turning women into anxious doormats that get sexually harassed and walked over en masse is not any kind of unique and special approach that needs to be preserved or respected. And if that means doing away with decades of exclusively pink-princess-based wardrobe, so be it.
But also it's not like people actually think a world without gender would just be a bunch of dour grays, so when this is even mentioned in good faith (aka by normies rather than trans activists telling women to shut up about how unsexy misogyny is because sth sth magical gendersouls - though really both sides will retort that you're wrong because someone is jerking off to this so it's above criticism, check mate), it's just a way to excuse the comfortable gender roles already in places, but not really considering the fact that, no, most of the world is not artificially divided into pinks and blues. In fact a better comparison would be that most of the world comes in all expected colours, and then one colour is assigned as "the girl colour". We already have unisex clothing, and most of history works outside of modern familiar modes of presentation (which is why we don't find it odd to see male ancient Egyptians in skirts, or medieval men wearing dresses). In fact most unisex clothing tends to just be male clothing, because that's how androcentrism works. So I think when people visually imagine a genderless world presentation-wise, they really only think of a lack of feminine presentation. Certainly they don't seem to bemoan all the "boring" history and cultures where women have been locked up and only men got to express themselves, or ones where there wasn't that big of a distinction between the visual presentation of men and women in the first place.
Outside of all this, I noticed a certain TIF subcategory of gender abolitionists - usually nonbinary ones - that idealises this idea of gender abolitionism from a trans perspective. First, it's always TIFs - even the most self-flagellating "Woe is me for being cursed with my male monsterhood" guys generally don't want to lift a finger to challenge the patriarchal status quo, and are probably jerking off while writing this, or waiting for women to hugbox them over how special they are. Men will never do anything for the sake of women. If women suffer as a result of the patriarchy, their solution isn't to fight it, but to exploit it for their own benefit, whether that be in a typical openly misogynistic way, or via whining about the woes of being a target of man-haters.
Women, on the other hand, know they can't just sit on their asses and not do shit. But women also undergo female socialisation, and demands that they prove they're not selfishly prioritising women as perfect angelic beings over normal male humans.
And furthermore, women want to hide, to disappear, to "not cause a scene", to not sow discord by their very existence, to not "drag politics into it" or "ruin men's fun". They don't want to suffer misogyny, but they also don't want to be hysterical feminazis that men don't like.
So the conclusion that many TIFs draw is "I don't want anyone to ever mention anything to do with my sex unless it's in a medical context." (lmao at thinking that said "medical context" isn't heavily skewed towards male biology precisely due to this "enlightened" erasure of women). Women who don't want to ever talk about the political nature of their very existence, who want to keep their heads down, who want to disappear and just fit into our androcentric reality, and don't understand that they can't not because meanie feminazis have to make it all about gender divisions, but because they're women and by their very nature excluded from the benefits of androcentrism. And what blows my mind is that each one of them thinks they're incredibly special and enlightened for having this predictably milquetoast female take!