GENDER NEUTRALITY, CHANGE, AND THE LIBERAL MIND
06/25/2011
I just read an article about parents who are attempting to raise their brand new babies in a gender neutral environment. I tried to get a handle on what that meant. The one example I have is of a close family member who will not permit us to buy clothing for their daughter that is pink. They will, however, accept articles of clothing that are blue. My understanding from what I have read and from what I have learned is that “gender neutral” child-rearing means that an attempt will be made to avoid all preconceptions and expectations people may have as to what a boy or girls “should or should not be”.
Now, this is puzzling to me to some extent since it is now the year 2011 and 50 years have passed since we have been told by feminists that women can do anything that men can do and at least one thing they cannot do (bear children). We have been told that women have the ultimate say as to whether a child is brought into the world or is aborted. We have been told women have been discriminated against in the work place and laws have been established on their behalf to protect them from wage discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual discrimination. Formerly all-male organizations have now been mandated to accept women though not vice versa. Formerly all-male schools have been abolished though not all-female schools. More women are now completing college than males. More women are now dominating formerly male dominated professions (psychology being one of them). And women, though treated as a minority, have long been in the majority in terms of actual numbers in the population. Women are the primary wage earners in an increasing number of families. Newly married women are demanding and getting husbands who share equally in child rearing and homemaking endeavors. In short, women have made great strides, often at the expense of males, in the last 50 years. Being the father of 2 daughters and a grand daughter, I am pleased to see women achieve essential equality with males in all areas of life. So, since we have essentially achieved gender equality, what then is this gender neutrality about?
Apparently, it is about not having any expectations at all of a person based upon their gender. We should not expect boys to play with trucks and girls to play with dolls. Boys can play with dolls and girls can play with trucks. No doubt that they can, although the research suggests that more boys will select playing with trucks than girls and more girls will play with dolls than will boys. But, sure, there can be boys who play with dolls. Sure, girls can play with trucks and crash them into each other. The question is: should we buy trucks for girls and dolls for boys BEFORE they indicate what their preferences are? And is doing so encouraging one sort of behavior or another?
Look, if people buy little girls pink outfits because they think of girls as prissy and non-aggressive, there are certainly expectations there that are shaping the little girl’s mind in some way. On the other hand, doesn’t dressing her in every color except pink also have an effect on her as well? Does that not communicate something to the child as well? So, here’s the thing about doing gender neutral child rearing: it amounts to trying so hard not to communicate one kind of message that there is no telling what other kind of message is being communicated. No matter what you do, the child is learning something. So, if you want you child to be free to express its own wishes without being affected by gender expectations, then simply love your child whatever it chooses.
There is a fundamental error being made with the concept of gender neutrality. It strikes me very much like those people who will consider racism to have been totally eradicated when there are no people who can distinguish one race from another. In an effort to do away with expectations based on differences, the baby is being thrown out with the bath water. That is, we are supposed to pretend that we do not notice the differences. It is as likely that I will not see my skin color being different from that of an African American as it is that I will not notice the difference between myself and a woman when we both stand naked. I will notice the difference between a blonde blue-eyed person and myself. Between myself and a person with hair on the top of their head or a person who is clean-shaven. I will notice when a person is obese rather than skinny, when a person is very tall or very short. I will notice people with language accents and dialects different from my own. I will notice when someone speaks louder or stands closer than I am accustomed to. I will notice when a person has big scars, disabled limbs, or unusual piercing and tattoos. I will notice things that are different, not only different from me but different from what I accustomed to. A black man will be noticed in a neighborhood where there are few if any black people, as would a white person in a black neighborhood. A person wearing a burka will be noticed in Salt Lake City and a person wearing a crucifix will be noticed in a synagogue.
Recognizing differences is an essential part of being human. Differences mean change and recognizing and processing change is how we know we exist. Imagine being in a place where nothing changes. The sun does not rise and set, the surrounding remain exactly the same and there is no motion whatsoever. Nothing changes. Very quickly there is no time, for we only notice time as a result of the difference between now and then. But in a world where there are no differences, no changes, there is no before and after, no yesterday and today and tomorrow. Since everything is the same, there is no need for memory. So the mind does not move from there and then to here and now. No past, no present, no future. No change. Everything is the same. Within a short time, one’s grasp on reality and one’s sense of self starts to slip. In fact, when we put people into isolation tanks, they begin to hallucinate. In short, they create with their minds, things that change and are different in order to maintain a sense of existence. The mind depends upon perceiving difference and change. Believing that we should be able to eradicate the perception of difference is conceptually unsound.
I can pretty much guarantee you that there are very few people who are politically Conservative who espouse or believe in gender neutrality or a color blind world. It seems that it is those with a liberal orientation that are constantly pushing the notion that everyone is the same or should be the same. And yet, isn’t it ironic that in order to put the world right and get everyone to the same point, the liberals must constantly be on the lookout for those that are different. The see gender and want to eradicate the differences they see. They see race and want to eradicate the differences that they see. They see wealth or poverty and want to eradicate the differences they see. They see power and want to eradicate the differences that they see. For those who want the world to be the same for everyone, it is impossible to not see the differences. For things to “change” they must become different from what they are. The liberal is enamored of change. Interestingly, “change” is the only constant in their lives. Everything must always change until everything is equal and the same. They keep changing things in the hope that everything will become the same.
For the liberal, the world is a better place when it is color-blind, gender blind, wealth blind----and maybe, just plain blind. And, our blindness is meant to be in the service of eradicating expectations, generalizations, biases, bigotry, prejudicial judgments, and preferences for one thing over another. But in so doing, liberals, it would seem, must envision a world in which individual differences must be eradicated. For, after all, where does the perfect world of perfect blindness stop? Once we are all color blind, and gender blind, color neutral and gender neutral, will there not be some other difference among people that we as a species will use to differentiate one from another. It seems it is part of our nature to discriminate differences and if we cannot do it on the basis of race or color, then perhaps hair color, eye color, height, weight, intelligence, posture, age, use of cosmetics, body odor, ---the possibilities are endless….as endless as what we can know with our 5 senses, our rational mind, and whatever else we use to be aware.
All of this, after all is being done to accomplish what Jesus told us more than 2000 years ago: “judge not lest ye be judged for as ye judge, so shall ye be judged.” Liberals seem to want to legislate the abolition of a very human failing: our tendency to judge others. But, as the verse says, the punishment is already built into the crime. That is, as I read it and as it makes sense psychologically, the basis upon which you judge others will be the basis upon which you judge yourself. We don’t have to wait for some all knowing God to judge us. If we think people are bad when they behave selfishly, we will believe ourselves to be bad when we behave selfishly. The mind just seems to work that way.
So, given that it is almost common knowledge and wisdom among people that we should not be judging one another (though we invariably do), might there be some other reason for pushing for a gender neutral world. Who seems to be doing the pushing? Liberals, not conservatives. And, frankly, mostly liberal women, not men. Why? Because they believe they have been “victimized” by the assumptions people have made about them as females. They want a world where their daughters are not subject to the assumptions that constrained them from making the choices they might otherwise have made. Maybe, they think, they would have preferred to play with trucks and not dolls and, as a result, may have become doctors rather than nurses. It is a reasonable assumption to make. But it may have been far more reasonable 40 years ago than it is now.
Now, nearly every TV show has women in the power/intelligence role and men playing the somewhat dullish, charmingly stupid and subservient role. Now, no one actually believes that, besides functioning in face to face combat during war, that women are incapable of doing any job. And they are doing those jobs. It’s a lot like claiming that people who get cancer today from smoking cigarettes are the victims of the cigarette companies. Or that people who become addicted to drugs are victims of the drug pushers. There is enough information out there right now that everyone knows the effect that cigarettes, drugs and alcohol can have on people. It’s the same with information about women. Few people have been so isolated that they have not been indoctrinated by now in the fact that women can achieve what they work to achieve.
So, the most liberal wing of the feminist movement is where you will find the notion of gender neutrality being pushed the hardest. But, upon close examination, what will it take to achieve gender neutrality? While we are no longer allowing our girls to dress in pink and we are encouraging our girls to play with trucks, do we not also have to dress our boys in pink and encourage them to play with dolls? And if playing with dolls is detrimental to our girls, as the feminists believe, then what precisely is the effect to be on our boys? As we defeminize (in the traditional sense) our girls, are we not simultaneously emasculating our boys? A quick look at the effect of the last 40 years on our male population should leave no doubt. Fewer men going to college, fewer men succeeding in jobs, more men more concerned about moussing their hair than most of the girls they date. We are now in the era of the metrosexual male.
And what is the metrosexual male? Look it up. He’s the man who is rewarded not for his achievements and successes but for how much he helps around the house, takes care of the kids, and is sensitive to the needs of his wife who is increasingly the primary wage earner in the family and pursuing an upwardly mobile career. He is the one who believes that because he and his wife are equals, that he must accomplish less so that she can accomplish more because there is simply not enough time for her to do it all without his assistance with the mundane chores of life.
The push for gender neutrality also comes from another source. If there are no expectations of girls because they are girls and boys because they are boys, then there are no expectations that girls will marry and, if they do choose to marry, there is no expectation that it will be to a boy. And, similarly, there is no expectation that boys will marry and if they do choose to marry there is no expectation that it will be to a girl. If there are no expectations or predetermined role assignments, then boys can grow up to be mommies and girls can grow up to be daddies. A side benefit would be that a married gay couple with a child would not have to deal with questions about who is the husband and who is the wife or who is the mommy and who is the daddy. So a good deal of the push for gender neutral child rearing is coming from the gay community.
For both feminists and gays, gender neutrality is something that will make their lives considerably more comfortable and easier. But for the over-whelming majority of people, gender neutrality will become simply another “politically correct” constraint. Girls who behave femininely will be considered somehow lacking. Boys who behave masculinely will be considered boorish dolts.
There will be considerable social pressure on people to conform to a fairly typical liberal view of the world where people will only be well-adjusted if they cannot be differentiated from each other on the basis of gender. But, of course, the liberals will not see anything wrong with this sort of social pressure. They will insist that it simply means that everybody can be anything without anyone telling them what they must be. Except that they MUST be gender neutral.
So, this is the Hope and Change of liberal social policies. It is a sort of social engineering of the American citizenry in order to eliminate biases and generalizations based on human characteristics. The intention is good but the unintended consequences of such social engineering are often disastrous. While one attempts to fix one problem with a change, it invariably creates another.
Further, people will always be imperfect and will always have prejudices. I am reminded of a Star Trek episode where the Enterprise encountered a species that was black on one half of their body and white on the other. However, one group was black on the left side and white on the right and the other was white on the left and black on the right. The two groups were, of course, at war with each other. Today we are witness to Muslims of one sect hating and fighting Muslims of another. And, so it will always be with humanity. And, yet, the liberal mind continues to impose its ideals upon the masses, creating unintended consequences and trying to change the nature of humanity.
