A Question of Gender

I’m sitting in on a college course on the criminal justice system. I’m a high school student, there as a guest to speak about a website I volunteer with. The professor throws out amazing questions and I keep putting my hand up. The students around me are bored or tired, simply wanting to take notes and not partake in discourse, so she and I are the only ones talking.

“Do men actually commit more crimes than women?” she asks.

This fascinates me. I have never thought about it. We discuss whether men are inherently more violent, or if it’s a matter of nature versus nurture¹. We discuss the frequency with which women are given lighter sentencing, why that might be or if it’s actually true. We discuss the way people who commit violent crimes have historically been classified as ‘other’, seen as ‘broken’ and flawed, rather than a product and reflection of the culture in which they are raised.

Ultimately, there is no answer given.

As the years go by, I appreciate the value of there being no definitive answer to the question. I appreciate that noticing invites more questions, and these question help me challenge the beliefs given to me by the culture in which I was raised. I observe, reflect and contemplate at key times, in big and little ways.

...

Two white women stand next to a stroller—one of those SUV-type models with three cup holders, several hooks for bags, a basket underneath the seat, and all-terrain tires. A little girl, no more than four, stands with them, her hair in pigtails sticking out unevenly from the top of her head, too short to flop over. The women clutch their paper coffee cups, the little girl clutches a doll. The woman not her mother asks, “Are you going to be a mommy one day?”

I walk by, on my own trajectory to somewhere else, catching this question as I go.

I wonder, do we ask little boys if they want babies? If they want a wife one day? About the house they’ll have when they get married?

...

On a train, a family of four are seated across the aisle, inward facing seats, a table between them. Mother and daughter facing towards the back, father and son towards the front. The son is about seven or eight. He is looking out the window.

“Tell your dad what you did in swimming class today.” His mother’s voice is harsh, judgemental.

“What did you do?” the father asks, with a furrowed brow.

The boy looks down, his hands clasped in his lap, his cheeks pink.

“He cried,” his mum says, accusingly.

“What?! Why did you cry?” This is dad.

“I was scared,” says the boy, his voice laced with shame.

“What were you scared of?” his dad is asks, rhetorically. “You’ve been swimming a lot. Big boys don’t cry.”

My heart breaks a little as I watch his lip tremble, as he absorbs the lesson that his feelings are not worthy of attention, a lesson both his parents were taught, and their parents before them.

I wonder, when did my brother get this lesson the first time? Or my dad? When was the first time they were told that fear was not okay? That they shouldn’t cry? Who told them not be be soft or tender and how often have they heard it since?

...

I read an article about men getting more exposure to fumes from passing cars, because of how they’ve been taught to walk curb-side to be polite to the women they walk with. I scoff at the absurdity, as if a person between me and the road would make a difference to the quality of air I breathe versus the air they’re breathing. And what is this about men walking curb-side? Surely that’s not a thing.

But it is, my dad tells me, when I ask. “Oh yes. It’s about being polite, and taking the most dangerous position.”

I wonder about other lessons of chivalry of which I know nothing. What other strange and arbitrary rules are taught to boys and young men about their role as protector? And how do these lessons of protection play into how women are seen as things and not people?

...

I’m gathering resources for an informative website for service providers working with victims of domestic violence in ‘same-sex’ relationships. There are many shelters for women, but only one in this city has beds for men. In fact, it’s not even in the city. It’s in a town a few kilometres outside the city’s limits, and there are only spaces for a handful of men.

I think of the lessons that create restricted ideas of what masculinity is and how it can be expressed. I consider the limited view we create when we think of domestic abuse as only physical, aggressors as only men, and relationships as only between a man and a woman. I reflect on the many moving parts that set-up the victim for blame, regardless of gender, as if the responsibility for abuse comes down to weakness on the part of the recipient, rather than a weakness in a culture, a culture that values dominance and control and devalues empathy and care.

...

There is nothing subtle about binary gender expectations.

Before my niece was born, the first question people asked varied only in the phrasing: “What’s the flavour?” Or “Pink or blue?” — as if this will provide meaningful information about who she is.

She might not even be a ‘she’. Perhaps, this tiny new being, will be a ‘they’ or a ‘zee’. Perhaps ‘He’ will suit better. Maybe marriage is in their future, or maybe not. Maybe they will be an engineer, an artist, a poet or all three.

I can know none of this, just as I have no idea what this child’s favourite colour or music will be, what interests they will have, or how they will inevitably change over time.

I can determine nothing for this child, other than what I have to offer. I want to offer her / them / xir / he the world I imagine, the one in which I want to live, where a human being is valuable for being a human being.

“I will always love you,” I whisper. “Just as you are, whoever you may be, no matter what.”

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1. How can it be anything but both? Always, always both.