I think I'm on to something

[If we are working from the premise, that gender is theater, then the question is: theater in service of what?]

So initially, the purpose of masculinity, may have been to protect against nature.  But I imagine that was a small role (nature was pretty abundant -- the threat of wolves and bears and snakes and things has always been smaller than the threat from other people).  Mostly the purpose of masculinity, and the reason it is still valued, is because it offers protection. But protection from what -- other people displaying masculinity.

That seems pretty ironic.

Men's desire is a straight line, women's desire is a wave form

Sally Law in the latest issue of The New Yorker has a fascinating interview with Cindy Meston and David Buss, psychology professors at the University of Texas at Austin, about their book, "Why Women Have Sex." Here's the paragraph that jumped out at me:

[W]hereas men’s sexual orgasm tends to be fairly predictable and reliable in the sense of its occurrence, women’s sexual orgasm is highly variable. It's variable from woman to woman, and variable within the same woman from partner to partner, circumstance to circumstance, etc. Sexual attraction provides another example. Men’s sexual attraction tends to be based heavily on visual cues. Women’s sexual attraction tends to be far more nuanced. It’s affected by olfactory cues (how a man smells), personality of the partner (such as sense of humor and confidence), social status (how he is regarded in the eyes of his peers), other women's judgments of how attractive he is, and many other factors, in addition to the visual cues. The qualities women find to be sexually attractive in a man also vary across the ovulatory cycle, such as a shift toward finding more masculine features (faces, bodies, and voices) attractive at ovulation.

To put this simply, men's desire appears to be a straight line -- fixed, constant, predictable, cliched even (and often involves light blue eye shadow). But women's desire seems more like a wave form -- nuanced, varied, shifting over time. So why are men and women so rarely on the same page? Because the straight line of men's desire and the wave form of women's desire only intersect occasionally.

Now that may be putting too fine a point on it. But I think it is helpful to understand that men and women are not mirror images of each other, but rather seem to think about and experience desire in very different ways.













And of course Dr.'s Meston and Buss focused their research on heterosexual desire. It would be fascinating to replicate their research but focus it instead on homosexual relationships and those in which gender is more variable.

[Note: it's tough to write about this topic without slipping into using sex and gender synonymously. But as I pointed out in a previous post, sex is not the same thing as gender.

Also because I occasionally write on sex and gender (and use explicit language), it's interesting to see the keywords in the google searches that sometimes bring people to my site. Many many people who end up at my post, bleeding heart liberal, were not exactly looking for an exegesis on subconscious framing in political speech. But for the few dudes out there who were looking to get off, ended up here by accident, and maybe learned a little something new in the process, I guess that's to the good too.]

Sex is not the same thing as gender

This is a really simple concept but so many people don't understand it that it leads to a lot of confusion. Needless to say conservatives don't understand the difference between sex and gender but I find that even some good progressives are unclear on the distinction, so let me just try to break it down for a minute:

Sex is biological. In humans, each cell normally contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, for a total of 46. Twenty-two of these pairs, called autosomes, look the same in both males and females. The 23rd pair, the sex chromosomes, differ between males and females. Females have two copies of the X chromosome, while males have one X and one Y chromosome. (More here.)

Making matters more confusing, occasionally some people are born with two X chromosomes and at least one Y chromosome (more info here) or one X chromosome and two Y chromosomes (more info here). So even biologically determined sex, male and female, is not black and white, either/or.

Gender is socially constructed. Masculinity and femininity are socially constructed and socially defined. Both male (XY) and female (XX) can express masculinity or femininity as they so choose.

You can have an opposite sex marriage (a man and a woman -- as Carrie Prejean would prefer things apparently) that is still also a same gender marriage (both male or both female in how they choose to express themselves socially). So too you can have a same-sex marriage (two men or two women) that is still also an opposite gender marriage (one same sex partner expresses the traditionally opposite gender).

Because gender is socially constructed -- no one person is ever entirely one or the other, masculine or feminine. We are all a blend of both masculinity and femininity and that blend can change as we so choose. Indeed it is increasingly clear that a balance of masculinity and femininity is essential to the health of any organism.

As I understand it, the California Supreme Court is NOT deciding same-gender marriage. They are ruling on same-sex marriage (whether two people who both have XX or who both have XY chromosomes can marry each other). Same-gender marriage (because gender is socially constructed) is already legal in all 50 states.

The problem: and the understandable source of much confusion is that the words male and female can refer to either sex or gender. The words were developed during an ancient time in which people (wrongly it turns out) assumed that biologically determined sex and socially determined gender, were the same thing. Now we know that they are not. But the words male and female persist -- and are used interchangeably in conversation sometimes to connote sex and other times to connote gender usually without the speaker ever specifying which meaning is intended.

That's the reason that conservatives always get it wrong on same sex marriage. They incorrectly think that gender is biologically determined -- so any male (XY) who expresses (social) female traits is viewed as acting "against nature" -- against their "biological programming." Conservative love so called "natural law" -- unfortunately, they don't actually understand nature very well and so they usually get both nature and human nature wrong.

Update #1. Tuesday, May 26, 2009 is Stonewall Tuesday here in California as the State Supreme Court hands down their decision regarding Prop 8. I just want to remind everyone that no matter what they decide this thing is going to end up going before the voters again. If the State Supreme Court does the right thing and strikes down Prop 8 -- we're gonna have to put together a campaign to protect our justices from a recall effort. And if they do the wrong thing and uphold the heinous Prop 8 -- then we're gonna have to go to the ballot box to try to overturn their decision. So yeah, let's get ready to burn the mutherfucker down and make this place ungovernable if they uphold Prop 8 on Tuesday. But remember that we're still gonna have to win it at the ballot box sooner or later (probably in November 2010).

Gender and Race

I already Dugg this article earlier today but it's so good, I thought I'd give it some additional love in a post. The New York Times today published an absolutely brilliant piece from Gloria Steinem titled, "Women are Never Frontrunners." In the piece, Steinem looks at the role of gender and the role of race in the Democratic Presidential primaries and makes some observations on our media and culture that I found very astute. The whole article is worth a read but here are my favorite nuggets:

"But what worries me is that he [Senator Obama] is seen as unifying by his race while she [Senator Clinton] is seen as divisive by her sex.

What worries me is that she is accused of “playing the gender card” when citing the old boys’ club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations.

What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn’t.

What worries me is that reporters ignore Mr. Obama’s dependence on the old — for instance, the frequent campaign comparisons to John F. Kennedy — while not challenging the slander that her progressive policies are part of the Washington status quo....

This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It’s time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers. We have to be able to say: “I’m supporting her because she’ll be a great president and because she’s a woman.”

Here's the link to the full article.