Policing Gender Norms

Gender norms are much more fiercely policed within each gender than outside of it.

A male friend shared that he never fears that women will condemn him as not being manly enough for being sensitive, crying in the movies, writing poetry, following fashion trends, and enjoying manicures. It’s the men he knows – his father, brother, friends and male colleagues – who make him feel that there is something wrong with his way of being male.

I told him that I feel the same. I never fear that men will condemn me for being insensitive, obsessed with my career, prone to laugh at sentimental movies, bored with fashion magazines, loud, and brash. Every single voice that told me, “Clarissa, you are such a man!” was always female. Men don’t criticize my body and men never ever badgered me for being single (when I was single) and not having children. I know for a fact, though, that many of those men who have no problem whatsoever with my lack of gender conformity practically bully their male friends for a slightest deviation from the male gender norm.

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34 responses to “Policing Gender Norms”

Leah Jane

August 12, 2012

Sad but true. And it all seems to start with parents taking too much of an interest in reinforcing gender norms in their children, mothers obsessing over making their daughters “young ladies”, and fathers wanting to make their sons “real men”. Then it just gets worse from there.

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Benoni

August 12, 2012

If you don’t conform, there’s also the issue of parental disapproval. I’ve talked about the possibility of my homosexuality to my mother (who is female, obviously), and she said it “wasn’t the lifestyle she’d choose for me” and that she wanted me to grow up to be a strong, capable man with a career and kids, not a fruitcake. She probably wouldn’t bully any other guy about it, but because I’m her son and I’m the legacy she’ll leave behind, she wants to shape my male gender in the same way she would her female peers.

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bloggerclarissa

August 12, 2012

This is so sad. Parents, wtf are you thinking? What is supposed to be the purpose of this sort of badgering? Do you really want to see your children force themselves into a life they don’t want for the sake of your fantasies?

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1. Benoni
  
  August 12, 2012
  
  It’s partly to do with overbearing parents, but I think it’s also got a lot to do with the rigid gender expectations we’re all familiar with. A parent, like anybody else, believes a boy has to be a certain way to be properly male, so if their boy turns out differently they feel like they’ve failed as a parent.
  
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2. Mark
  
  August 13, 2012
  
  I think while you are right in certain cases. However I can’t help but feel for the most part parent’s are trying to help their kid’s navigate society the best they can. If the system is flawed then we must learn to navigate it or fight it. The fight though isn’t for everyone and can be hard. Why force that on your child instead of letting them decide for themselves when they can understand?
  
  Adhering to societal norms and learning how to operate within the system can be a powerful force.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 13, 2012
    
    “However I can’t help but feel for the most part parent’s are trying to help their kid’s navigate society the best they can. If the system is flawed then we must learn to navigate it or fight it. The fight though isn’t for everyone and can be hard. Why force that on your child instead of letting them decide for themselves when they can understand?”
    
    – I agree. I find it very sad when parents make their children fight their ideological battles. I’ve read articles by pseudo-feminists who refuse to buy Barbies and pink dresses for their daughters. I think that’s ridiculous. Small children don’t want to be different or stand out from other kids. The key here, I believe, is to step back and listen to what the child wants. Forcing him/her in either direction is wrong.
    
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musteryou

August 12, 2012

I was never brought up with gender norms, but encountered them as an adult. First, there was the policing in the workplace, just in terms of some weird covert competition. This wasn’t completely related to gender norms, but to the sense of rivalry encouraged in bourgeois society. I began skydiving and reading philosophy and the supervisor brought in a book by William James and put it on her desk, and spoke about her daughter going bungee jumping. Someone else pointed out to me that apparently we were in covert competition.

Later, when I was exploring the philosophy of Nietzsche, a bunch of males developed a trollish aspect and began heavily reinforcing gender norms. Males who study Nietzsche are generally cretins. They don’t understand what you are saying, because they require that everything only has a meaning in terms of a gender stereotype. So my writing about shamanism, which is atheistic through and through, must necessarily be new age shamanism. Or, my critiques of patriarchal excesses must necessarily be “about emotions”. These guys had truly embraced ideological solipsism, since all they were capable of understanding was their own aggression.

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David Bellamy

August 12, 2012

I have been ridiculed by women for crying at movies, but never by men. I am skeptical.

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Lamestllama

August 13, 2012

David, you big sissy. Now you don’t have to be so skeptical!

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1. David Bellamy
  
  August 13, 2012
  
  Lamestllama, from your name here I have no idea what gender you are, so your comment does not make any sense.
  
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2. Lamestllama
  
  August 13, 2012
  
  David If it helps I am male.
  
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Z

August 13, 2012

Of what?

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August 12, 2012

I have been condemned by both men and women for not adhering to gender stereotypes. I agree with you though that the criticism has been higher from women than men.

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zinemin

August 13, 2012

Interesting, because this is not my experience. I get criticized for not behaving womanly enough by both men and women. Maybe you know nicer men than I do. 🙂 I have had my father complaining about my hair and my male colleagues recommending me to get married and have children better sooner than later. I can say however that it makes me much more angry if men do this than women. Women just recommend their own lifestyle to others, which is “only” being insensitive. Men on the other hand want to tell me what my place is, which is not only insensitive, but extremely aggressive.
And I have also seen women making fun of men who cry. This makes me extremely angry as well. Again, you seem to know nicer women than I do. 🙂

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Priyanka

August 13, 2012

“Women just recommend their own lifestyle to others, which is “only” being insensitive. Men on the other hand want to tell me what my place is, which is not only insensitive, but extremely aggressive.”

Very succinctly put. It reminds of an elderly first-wave feminist telling me — in a very self-deprecating way — how in her younger days women’s rights activists disliked gay men almost more than hetersocial/heterosexual men. The men she knew apparently treated male homosexuality as a harmless illness, and ‘merely’ made fun of such men in private (and sometimes in public). Women in her circles, however, saw them as a very real threat, as people who could ‘unnaturally’ steal the husbands and eligible men away from them. It was almost like a contest for resources. Or so she said 🙂

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1. zinemin
  
  August 13, 2012
  
  That is exactly the point. The men criticizing me for not becoming a housewife are exactly the ones competing with me for academic jobs. The closer they are to me in their career stage, the more aggressive they get.
  
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Priyanka

August 13, 2012

I would have to modify this stance, Clarissa. (Heteronormative) Men and women choose different aspects of gendering to pick on, depending on the gender of the person they’re criticising. Also, of course, it depends on the individual men and women, the dynamics of a particular group, and the nature of interpersonal relationships.

A man might not criticise his junior female colleague or his daughter for being fat (or what he thinks of as being fat), but he might use his female superior’s looks to run her down if he feels humiliated by her. Similarly, he might both object to sentimental television shows his wife or girlfriend watches, and his son’s preference for figure-skating over football. Yet he may have no problems at all with his gay neighbours down the street, because they don’t influence his life in any way.

To respond to your own examples, several women I know have been called ‘cold’, ‘aggressive’, ‘feminazi’, ‘obnoxious’, ‘selfish’ and ‘bitch’ for the very things you say men have never criticised you about. Including the absence of children. But these women all received a great deal of support from the women in their lives. I also knew a woman who left her boyfriend because he was ‘too’ helpful around the house. She said she had been brought up a certain way, and it made her uncomfortable to be with someone who ordered salads at restaurants. However, she volunteered to work with victims of domestic abuse.

So I don’t think a simple binary really works here. What works is a contextual understanding of who makes whom uncomfortable/feel threatened under what circumstances, and why.

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Lamestllama

August 13, 2012

@Priyanka, thank you for a very astute set of observations 🙂

As a parent it can be hard letting you kids do stuff which isn’t seen as “normal” because you know that they can become the object of ridicule. It isn’t always that you feel there is anything wrong with what they do, just that you know it will cause them disadvantage in the future.

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1. Priyanka
  
  August 13, 2012
  
  Thank you, Lll 🙂
  
  Do you know, I agree in general principles re. parenting, but the reason I admire my parents their parenting is because they very casually, without ever making me realise they were doing anything radical or even very different, brought me up as a person and not as a girl. If you know what I mean.
  
  This is probably something that deserves a full post on its own. Keep an eye on my blog 🙂 I’d love to hear Clarissa’s opinion too.
  
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Titfortat

August 13, 2012

What works is a contextual understanding of who makes whom uncomfortable/feel threatened under what circumstances, and why(Priyanka)

Yes, I think the context is people who are typically not secure or happy within themselves find something to pick on, negatively, in others. Gender has little or nothing to do with that.

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Priyanka

August 13, 2012

Actually, Titfortat, I think gender has a great deal to do with it. It’s just that, how we view gender is often mediated by our relationships with the people in question, the culture one grows up in, and so on.

In India, for example, you will often find best mates of the same gender holding hands — to us, it didn’t signify a sexual relationship till very recently, when foreign films and so on showed us that was a way of publicly showing romantic affection. So now, more urbane people sometimes chide boys and young men from holding hands with each other. Yet if middle-aged men do it, it seems all right, because in our culture, there is also a general, unspoken assumption that one become more mellow, affectionate, perhaps ‘wise’, and considerably less sexual with age. This applies even to relatively young people in their late forties or early fifties. So it definitely still is behaving ‘gender appropriately’, but what one’s gender means changes with one’s age and culture of origin.

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Titfortat

August 13, 2012

@Priyanka

Oh I dont doubt that people use gender slurs. Im just pointing out that rarely, if ever do emotionally healthy people do that. Regardless of their culture of origin.

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Z

August 13, 2012

Gender slurs, I hear them all the time about both men and women, and I do think part of this has to do with the region I live in — it is semi acceptable here and although I do not think it is a sign of emotional health, many of the people who use them would probably be considered emotionally healthy by most measures.

But, I think what is meant here is a more subtle form of gender policing. I get questions, comments and criticisms that do not make sense unless one shines the light of gender policing on them. They are very convoluted sometimes.

Once, when I was about to drive up north from down here, I was told I must have been abused as a child. Why, I asked? Answer: because a healthy woman would be afraid to make this trip on her own, and I was not, so I must have desensitized myself to danger early on.

That is an extreme and ridiculous example, of course, but I have so many others. Having opinions and being relatively assertive as opposed to histrionic – helpless – pliant – victim scares my mother on my behalf … her idea is, I will never really be financially secure on my own since I am a girl, so I must get someone to support me, and to do that, I must appear to be more incompetent. That surely sounds silly to a Northern man but it is a fact that around here, there are indeed a lot of guys who think that way.

Then there’s an obvious one that freaks Latin Americans out, especially, enough so they will say it, although I am sure it also freaks people out here — I am not married, and my kids are adopted, and I didn’t even get them as babies, nor did I set out to get kids so as to satisfy a maternal instinct, I just sort of ended up with them as a result of a couple of situations. People are terribly uncomfortable with this lack of marriage, childbirth, and active desire to care for babies, but they relax a lot if they find out I am not a virgin and not gay. (“At least there is some man around,” they seem to say.)

Finally, around here, I notice that people really, really, want to be acquainted with whoever you are sleeping with. Women who have husbands in the same workplace, i.e. whose husbands are men we know and so on, have more credibility than others. Everyone wants to participate, however vicariously, in defining the woman’s life, knowing about it, making sure it is within parameters, and so on.

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1. Priyanka
  
  August 13, 2012
  
  “my kids are adopted, and I didn’t even get them as babies, nor did I set out to get kids so as to satisfy a maternal instinct, I just sort of ended up with them as a result of a couple of situations”
  
  One cannot, of course, label any particular form of parenthood better than any other — that would be silly — but personally, I think, this relationship comes closer to the ‘ideal form’ of parenting. The way you put it is shorn of all sentimentality, but it still makes my heart swell.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 13, 2012
    
    Z is a wonder woman. The more I learn about her, the more I gasp in admiration. She is who I want to be when I grow up. 🙂
    
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the twisted spinster

August 13, 2012

That thing some commenters are talking about, women making fun of men who cry: I’ve never seen that here in the South. Maybe it’s because men here are expected to get emotional, especially about stuff like God and Country, but it’s also acceptable to cry over your dead daddy, your lost dog, your broken truck… (Okay, maybe not the truck.) This is, after all, the region of country music.

Of course, they’re supposed to cry in certain ways and for certain things (no hysterical sobbing because you lost a football bet, for example) but man tears are taken pretty seriously down here in Dixie.

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zinemin

August 13, 2012

This North/South-divide is interesting. The same is true in Europe. Italian men certainly get more emotional than Dutch men. It seems like there is quite a difference between how manliness is defined in Northern and Southern countries. In the South of Europe, it has more to do with honour, while in the North, it has to do with being controlled and rational. As a result, Northern men regard Southern men as being half-women, and the other way round.
Both manliness ideals can be incredibly annoying and limiting. I don’t know which is worse. I am certainly currently more fed up with the ’controlled and rational’ approach at the moment. 🙂

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1. the twisted spinster
  
  August 13, 2012
  
  “Northern men regard Southern men as being half-women, and the other way round.”
  
  Not here. Oddly enough, Southern men are considered to be more masculine, while the bland, muted Yankee male is supposed to be bloodless and nearly neuter. It’s a stereotype both sides accept in their own way.
  
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Titfortat

August 13, 2012

@Twisted

You know what happens when you play a Country Western CD backwards? You get your wife back, you get your job back, you get your dog back. 😉

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  August 13, 2012
  
  A brilliant joke! 🙂 🙂
  
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David Gendron

August 13, 2012

“A male friend shared that he never fears that women will condemn him as not being manly enough for being sensitive, crying in the movies, writing poetry, following fashion trends, and enjoying manicures.”

I’m not sure about this (even though he’s right about men) but what I know is that here in Québec, there are many women that would condemn him for that.

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bloggerclarissa

August 13, 2012

I always want to believe that Quebec is more progressive. 🙂

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August 13, 2012

“Z is a wonder woman. The more I learn about her, the more I gasp in admiration. She is who I want to be when I grow up. :-)”

No, no, don’t! Don’t! Make more money, publish more, and above all do not spend 20 years with some sort of chronic depressive disorder!

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bloggerclarissa

August 13, 2012

Now that I have access to the great advice you offer, I will be able to find my own way much faster.

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