Sticking to the script

A post about Gender Role theory and body-reflexive practice,

UPDATE: this was written a long while back before I had really read enough to understand what I'm writing, so apologies for anything that might be way off the mark.

I’m writing from the sidelines of a rugby pitch on a Sunday morning, watching my son Jonah playing. He’s seven and I think he’s enjoying himself. He loves hanging out with people, struggles a bit to get out of the door when we have to go, but is always smiling by the end. I love a bit of sport and the other classic ‘dad activities’ (this week I put together a shed in which I plan to listen to the radio and drink beer). I’ve got two daughters who are at home with my wife Naomi at the moment, and who do gymnastics and brownies. How is it that we have got to this point where we have everyone filling their stereotypical roles in the family, despite both Naomi and me being (we thought) aware of gender stereotyping and really keen to make sure that we gave each of our kids equal experiences and opportunities?

Gender role theory describes how people develop their behaviour through social interactions and according to normalised ideas of what it means to be male and female. There is a lot more nuance to it, but essentially, from a cultural perspective, to be a man is to do what men do. Of course, the men that our boys look to for examples of male behaviour had themselves looked to the generation before them, so it follows that our ideas of gender are historical, as well as cultural, political and social. French philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir summed up her ideas of gender role in The Second Sex where she said “One is not born, but becomes, a woman”. That might not be the best translation but the meaning is clear: our embodiment of masculine and feminine behaviour is due to the development of an identity and not the binary of sex chromosomes at moment of fertilisation.

If gendered behaviour is not a result of biological sex, why then is it that male and female behaviour is so dichotomous? Why when given free reign to wear what they want will men almost exclusively reject dresses, and women keep much longer hair, men drink beer and women wine, boys hang out with boys and girls with girls. The clothes you wear, the jobs you do, the company you keep, the sports you play, the expectations of your work, make up, perfume, gym routine, housekeeping, gaming, driving. Why do women earn less, and men eat more? Why is the rate of male suicide so much higher, as is the proportion of young female carers?

For all of us who have asked the questions, we’ll have probably experienced the answers “well, it’s just because they’re boys/girls, isn’t it?!” But the who they are is what they have become, not who they were when they were conceived. An important idea that I’ve been reading about is body-reflexive practice, which comes from, amongst others, Foucault and Butler, and is used as a theme in the work of Australian sociologist Raewyn Connell to describe how young people try to ‘play the role’ of their biological gender, and thereby simultaneously, they set the stage for others about gender roles. A newborn, unaware of gender, will be given the things that they are told that they like, or dressed the way that they hear that those like themselves like, and then rewarded when they can recall and recognise these ‘personal traits’ that have been ascribed to them. An important part of a child’s cognitive development is going through the process of answering the question ‘who am I?’, and when society tells them the answer then it is rewarding to take it, in a manner not too dissimilar to a person finding the answers to complicated and contentious questions through their first return from a Google search, and then taking them on as their own view on things.

Despite Naomi and me trying to reinforce that there is no such thing as ‘boy or girl behaviour’, I’m pretty sure that through socialisation our children began to turn away from interests and patterns of behaviour that didn’t fit their gender role from about the age of 4 or 5. I have found it more pronounced in our son who shocked me quite a bit when he talked about being embarrassed by liking certain things, or his (I feel) begrudging consent to enjoy sports. Another French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, described an idea of habitus where young people get a sense of the role they should play as part of the theatre of life (I hope I haven't been too poetic with that and lost it's meaning). He described it as ‘a feel for the game’, similar to how a footballer might preempt the way that the game is going to go in the next 10 seconds or so because they’ve been playing for a while, but the clues are so subtle that it becomes instinctive. Bourdieu also talked a lot about the cultural capital that each person possesses and that we recognise in one another, like when we see a tall guy with big muscles and think ‘what a manly man.’ Another important sociological perspective on gender is that of hierarchy, or hegemony, which follows from notions of capital, but I’ll save that for another time. Suffice to say that in recognising our and other’s capital, we could place ourselves somewhere against them, and funnily enough it feels rewarding to be higher up that impossible pyramid.

Is any of this damaging though? I think it is, because alongside the reward that comes from playing a role is the social punishment that comes from going off-script. I also know that there’s a lot of damaged adults about, who have probably spent too long playing their roles and need a room backstage where they can stop for a bit. And really it shouldn’t be that anyone has to be backstage at all, and wouldn’t it be great if we could all just ignore the audience together! 

Unfortunately, it’s not at all as simple as the analogy though is it? Humans are hardwired social, and the social structures around us have massive inertia. But I reckon there’s hope. I see boys at school behaving confidently in ways that would have seen a person of my generation marginalised, and clearly there’s been movement in identifying when actions at an individual or institutional level are reinforcing unequal gender relations. For me the hope also comes from the structures that Bourdieu initially identified as the origins of our binary normalisation, culture and society; historical understandings of gender we are beginning to challenge, so let’s move on from them, and let’s assume that political systems are going to play fickle. We are responsible for changing cultures in communities, and if we’re careful with how we show children together what it is to grow up to become adults, rather than highlight a diverging path to man or womanhood, then the same sociological systems that might accentuate stereotypes can become ones where a celebration of self-actualisation can help it become a capital of value in developing minds.

Jonah’s enjoyed himself today and he looks dead happy, caked in mud. Hopefully he and his sisters have a long time until they find it all too embarrassing to have their dad giving them a cuddle, but already he’s told me he doesn’t want me to carry him to the car after rugby because it makes him look like a baby (even though I like it, I’ll stop it). For now I’m going to try and make the most of them being just children and try to convince them that they can stay young as long as they like as far as I’m concerned. Fat chance of that though; Leila starts at secondary school in only about half a year and no doubt it’ll turn out we got it all wrong!

Important ideas from:

• Beauvoir, S. . (1989). The second sex. New York: Vintage Books.
• Bourdieu, Pierre. (1997). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Connell, R. (2000). The men and the boys. California: University of California Press.