We are more and more subjected to a world of binaries. The binary of the third world and the first world, India and Pakistan, the modern and the primitive. This kind of thinking reduces social complexities into two mutually exclusive options. Such extremes approximations would be very convenient for us to label and bottle social realities , but the understanding that emerges out of such labels is desolate of truth.
Out of all such binary constructions, the one that operates the most covertly at an individual level is the binary of the gender. The construction of man and woman as being opposite to each other in terms of physicality, mannerisms goes back to time immemorial. The outcome of such a construct is generations shackled in the culturally defined notions of the man and the woman.
The social constructs of man and woman comes with its own attributes. Man is an objective being, a calculative, laser focused, goal driven entity, competitive entity. Woman is scripted as an anti-thesis of this, which is subjective, whimsical, caring and tender. These two prison are then populated through processes like parenting and schooling. We then end up with generations trying to live up to these labels and endlessly failing to do so.
The binary constructs of gender are so grounded and deep rooted that it becomes impossible to uproot them. The media and pop culture play important roles in reproducing and augmenting them. To facilitate the emancipation from such polar prisons of meanings , we need new ways of understanding gender and educating gender. We need to tell people what gender prisons are, how they have been created historically and how to shed them.
Understanding Gender : A Marxian Interpretation
Gender Spectrum is one framework through which we can understand gender. This presents gender as a continuum rather than two mutually exclusive choices of a man and a woman.
The gender spectrum is all the possible behavioral attributes that are available to humans.
One extreme of the spectrum has objectivity muscularity and rationality. The other extreme is characterized by subjectivity gentleness and emotional nature. As one moves from left to right objectivity muscularity and rationality decreases and subjectivity gentleness and emotional nature increases.
In primitive tribal societies the entire continuum (spectrum) was available for both the sexes. One could be a ‘man’ in the morning, a ‘woman’ in the evening and anything in between in the night. Gender was plural and subjective. Gender was freedom.
With surplus production in latter years the option was available for a part of the workforce to retire from hunting, and due to the biological reasons the female sex was left behind for child rearing and household duties as the male sex carried on with hunting. This sexual division of labor selectively amplified certain attributes in both the sexes. For males hunting had made them objective and muscular, for females child rearing had made them emotional and tender. Gradually with time these attributes became institutionalized, and to make males a better hunter they were trained to be objective and muscular and for women to be good at child rearing they were trained to be emotional and caring. This was done through institutions of socialization like family, school etc. These were social conduits through which sexes were driven to diagonal ends of the spectrum.
Such institutionalization of attributes over sexes contributed to gender alienation. Gender which represented a continuum and the sexes had the liberty to choose any point in that spectrum depending on time and social interaction has now been limited to two cages called ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’. The sexes were alienated from the whole universe of possibilities of behaviors within social interactions. This has generated a species that has false gender consciousness. The male sex of the species are vectored to behave and identify with a crucible of attributes called ‘Man’ and the female sex with that of ‘Woman’. It happened across ancient and feudal societies creating robust structures and processes which were near impossible to be questioned or broken.
Capitalism and Gender
By late 18th century with the advent of capitalism all this would change radically. Capitalism is the most dynamic and efficient force of production that humanity has ever witnessed. It is a juggernaut which will annihilate all value systems which come in its way of increasing productive capabilities and expanding profits. It has also had an overwhelming impact on the gender spectrum.
To understand its impact we need to understand the ideology behind capitalism. At the core of the capitalist society are Markets, the temple of freedom and individuality, where only two protagonists can exist; the seller and the buyer. Markets requires everything to be quantified, all humans to be rational and objective to participate in its theater. It had a God in the form of an invisible hand which requires a sacrifice of morals and which rewards objectivity, goal orientation and efficiency with material wealth (profits). People who do not conform to this value system would have restricted access to resources, for in markets conformity is freedom.
This philosophy has had a profound effect on the gender spectrum, the quiver of attributes required to participate in the agora of markets have historically been monopolized in the gender label ‘Man’. The gender socialization process has been structured in a way that only the male sex is vectored to wards these attributes. This gave the male sex an unprecedented dominance in the social structure created by capitalism.
Capitalism wanted males to be more ‘Man’ and females to abdicate the gender label ‘Woman’ and drift toward ‘Man’.
Culturally it was easier for males to gain attributes of objectivity and goal orientation since that was also the social expectation. But for females it was a rebellious proposition, the culture required them to be subjective, caring and sacrificial. This created a differential gender stress on the sexes. The 19th and 20th centuries saw movements and protests for the emancipation of the female sex from the gender label women. The notion of patriarchy which was there in ancient and feudal societies became much more abhorrent and was revolted against. The female sex gained political rights, economic freedom and an equal social status with males in many nations.
Capitalism hence brought one of the most important shifts in gender identity. It showed that gender labels were prisons which are to be broken and they were broken. But it broke the gender prisons in a biased manner. Capitalism glorified the gender prison ‘Man’ and decimated the gender prison ‘Woman’. Both the sexes were pushed towards one end of the Gender Spectrum: Man.
Hence in capitalism gender alienation is the most acute. Humans are alienated from an large possible set of behaviours and perspectives. They pushed into one world of objectivity and contractual nature of relationships. They are focused on ends with no concern for means undertaken to reach them. In ancient and feudal societies at least females could be ‘women’ but in the capitalist system which runs on incentives, no incentives are provided to be a ‘woman’ on the other hand incentives are provided for not being one.
Yes, capitalism has destroyed all gender differences but what we do not understand is that it has done it by making one polar end of the spectrum the standard. Everyone behaves in the same manner, everyone thinks in the same manner that is objectively and with instrumental rationality. This has created crisis after crisis.
Economics calls these crisis externalities, one that is external to the market, one that markets cannot comprehend with its objective mono-gendered way of functioning. The biggest example being climate change, the biggest market failure in the history of humanity with the potential to raze all species from the face of the earth.
In Political Science they are called “political externalities” refers to the idea that in the political realm, people’s actions impose costs and benefits on other unrelated individuals outside of contractual relationships. Examples being the rise of Extremists (like Donald Trump) resulting in limited labour mobility across nations, nations walking out of Paris Agreement, Aylan Kurdi washing upon the shores of Turkey.
The price we have to pay for being a Man in the economy and polity are steeply rising. We need to bring back subjectivity in the understanding of problems and in the solution we proposed for them, we need to realize the whole of gender spectrum and an amalgam of different behavioural traits are available for all the sexes. We need to secularize and democratize gender which will in turn help people to think with different perspectives and propose a diverse basket of solutions.
The Paris agreement was successful unlike the Kyoto protocol because in Paris we were able to incorporate subjectivity in the form of INDCs ( Intended Nationally Determined Contributions), bottom-up system-in elements through which countries put forward their agreements in the context of their own national circumstances, capabilities and priorities, within the ambition to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions enough to keep global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius.
We are humans, a species with infinite potential to change the lives of our own and other species on the planet. The system is pushing us towards a machine like existence. To realize our full capabilities we need choices and freedom to choose them. We need the entirety of the gender spectrum and not just a fragment of it. It is our gender that separates us from animals and machines, it is our gender that makes us human.
Gender is freedom
