Ant 211 - Essay Assignment

Francisco Deleon ANT 211 Prf. Lessing Nov. 25/09 Gender Ideology Getting in the Way of Equality Our human history is one that has been marked by the constant struggle for equality. Many of the major conflicts in our history have to do, in one way or another, with equality, for instance, the American revolutionary war was, among other issues, sparked by the unequal rights between British subjects and the colonists. I could point to many others such conflicts, such as the American civil war or the many independence movements in the Americas, but the point is clear that all these confrontations involve a group of people reveling against the oppression from another group of people. That is the kind of struggle presented in Olga Gershenson’s article, “The Restroom Revolution will no be Televised: The Transgender Movement and the Politics of Unisex Bathrooms.” In this text Gershenson explores what role gender plays on those who do not fit with the traditional gender norms and how gender ideology allows for the open discrimination against the gender ambiguous. Although we have come a long way as a society, we can still see signs of gender discrimination in our daily lives. Gershenson explains that the segregation of bathrooms persist strong today because, in a way, it has become a tradition or a granted: “[E]ven though sexual segregation is objectionable in other spheres, the sexual segregation of the public bathroom is usually taken for granted” (Gershenson 1). This ideology of gender divides us into groups of male or female and by so doing it overlooks those who do not fit into either category. People often try to justify this discrimination by coming up with definitions of what is a female and what is a male supposedly based on science, but those

definitions are rarely consistent with each other or based on science. As Leith Mullings puts it in the article “On Our Own Terms, Race, Class, and Gender in the Lives of African American Women,” gender is a social construct: “It is not biology but society that ultimately determines the division of labor. The division of labor has varied according to historical circumstances, and it has been very different for different classes” (Mullings). Gender is a flexible term that varies over time to serve as a tool for discrimination for those at the top of the social pyramid, not unlike race or class. Judith Lorber defines gender in her article “Night to his Day’ the Social Construction of Gender,” as a “process of creating distinguishable social statuses for the assignment of rights and responsibilities. As part of a stratification system that ranks these statuses unequally, gender is a major building block in the social structures built on these unequal statuses” (Lorber 6). This is the reason why discrimination against transgender people can be publically displayed. It is because “gender” is a term that promotes inequality and segregation. Furthermore, males and females publically interact with each other all the time but when it comes to places perceived as private the situation somehow changes. In this case we are discussing bathrooms which are the must public places there are. But even in this public places the only privacy it creates is the privacy from the opposite sex. People feel they must be separated along gender lines so that any sexual practice cannot take place. And that is what it is about: its association with sex. Gershenson adds that “this ridicule and indignation come as a response to the deeply-seated anxieties about sexuality that the discussion of unisex bathrooms raises” (Gershenson 12). The idea of turning a sexually-charged place such as bathrooms into unisex creates a whole series of ideas in

people’s minds. However, this way of thinking is a unfounded and unrealistic fabrication of the mind. Gershenson says on bathrooms “it… is a sexually charged space, which fleshes out our taboos and fantasies, our fears and desires” (Gershenson 1), and also adds that “the moral indignation with which the Restroom Revolution [a transgender movement advocating for unisex bathrooms] and its ideology of ‘gender expression’ is attacked bears witness to the primal fear of sexual mixing” (Gershenson 13). These fears are no different than those black people face in the time of segregation in the sense that they are both based on misconceptions about a particular group and also about maintaining the social hierarchy as it is: “What this analysis shows is that space plays an important role in shaping and maintaining identities and power relations. Space emerges in this analysis as a central component in communication, as a means of power that is socially constituted through material relations” (Gershenson 22). Another way of putting it is that the transgender movement is very controversial because it is a power struggle between the status quo and what is right. Although people against the unisex bathrooms in Gershenson’s article claim their fears are about the well-being of the public, their rhetoric exposes that their fear is more about maintaining the current gender division of labor. Gershenson puts it best when she analyzes the rhetoric of those against unisex bathrooms:”…notice the kind of gender constructs that the anti-Restroom Revolution rhetoric represents: the weak timid females who should be protected from a violent invasive male sexuality by creating clear boundaries. Conveniently, these boundaries would not only protect women’s private “safe” place, but also would keep them disciplined and properly sorted, in short keep them in place.” (Gershenson 17). The kind of rhetoric shown tell us that the opposition to

unisex bathrooms is more about keeping the social hierarchy where men dominate all the others. The safety of the weak defenseless women is the only one considered while the safety of men is not even mentioned. The rhetoric seems to confirm that male is the dominant gender and that all others need to be protected by and from men. If one gender can assert dominance over the other, then it is no surprise that a group without a recognized gender role can be openly ignored, that being the transgender. As Lorber adequately puts it “in the social construction of gender, it does not matter what men and women actually do; it does not even matter if they do exactly the same thing. The social institution of gender insists only that what they do is perceived as different” (Lorber 5). As long as there are perceived differences, there is room for inequality. Although the division of labor refers to males and females, it is clear that it also affects directly the transgender. When we think of gender, we immediately think of physical differences, but what we don’t often think of is: why are these differences excuses for inequality? The truth is that they aren’t. No one would deny that there are visible physical differences, but these differences do not justify the segregation of the genders. Time and time again each gender has proven to be just as capable as the other. What it comes down to is that gender is a construction of society. Judith Lorber comments in her article “Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology,” that “bodies differ in many ways physically, but they are completely transformed by social pratices to fit into the salient categories of society…” (J. Lorber 15). She further adds “gender people do not emerge from physiology or hormones but from the exigencies of the social order, mostly, from the need for a reliable division of the work of food production and the social (not physical) reproduction of new members” (J.Lorber 22). This relates to the transgender

movement in the sense that they are not included in the gender division of labor in spite of the fact that gender is a social construct based on ideology, and as a consequence they can be openly ignored. Gershenson concludes that “it is the sacred division of gender into two, and the fear of losing it, that propels the opposition to the Restroom Revolution more than anything” (Gershenson 16). The fact that transgender people want to open a space in society is enough to create fears in people who already have a space, even over things everyone can benefit from such as unisex restroom. Ultimately, the transgender movement is a movement advocating equality. It is because it is seen as trying to take from the established genders that makes it such a heated topic. Throughout history we can point out many examples of how the people on top of the social hierarchy discriminate against those at the bottom. It is important to note that the discrimination is enabled by how those on top define what is right or wrong. For instance, there was a time when having dark skin was enough justification for turning a person into property, or being a women meant inferiority to men. The transgender movement faces a similar problem where society is reluctant to accept their peculiar status. Since they do not fit the gender norm they are open targets for those who define the norm. It is gender ideology that holds conflict the transgender movement and ultimately allows the discrimination against them.

Bibliography

Gershenson, Olga. “The Restroom Revolution Will Not Be Televised: The Transgender Movement and the Politics of Unisex Bathrooms.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Sheraton New York, New York City, NY. 2009-05-25

Lorber, Judith. “Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology,” Gender & Society. Vol. 7, No. 6, pp. 568-581. (1993)

Lorber, Judith. “Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender.” Race, class, and gender in the United States: an integrated study. Ed. Paula S. Rothenberg. Worth Publishers, 2000. pp 64 – 65.

Mullings, Leith. On Our Own Terms: Race Class and Gender in the Lives of African American Women. New York: Routledge, 1997