I do not know how to write this piece for multiple reasons. Firstly because gender is a topic I have regular discussions about but have rarely tried to collate into one succinct thought piece. Secondly because this is not something that is easy to talk about, it is something entirely separate from me and yet very familiar, it is always felt but usually at the peripherals.
I have many issues with the construction of gender and most of all with the way in which it impacts how people grow up and view themselves and others. I think about gender often, somewhat because of who I am as a person but largely because I am made to think about it every time I leave the house and, on occasion, inside my own house.
I am reminded that I am a “girl” by a huge majority of the men I walked past in the street because of the way they look at me or the way I witness them viewing other women. It may just be a look, a glance, a comment under their breath and if each encounter existed in a vacuum I probably would also shrug it off, play it down. But it is not, it is constant and relentless and it is every day from almost every man and it does wear me down.
It is difficult for me to express my genuine feelings on this topic because I very quickly become angry and that stunts everything else. I want to express that it is not these relatively minor harassments that cause me such distress but what they represent, where I know they come from. I know that many people will tune out of this discussion because they have become accustomed to the narrative that women are being over-dramatic, I know some people will think “it’s not that bad” or that it does not apply to them. I know many men and boys who do not and will not actively listen to what I am saying because they do not view themselves as part of the problem. This is why I have to try and subsume my anger because it is not an effective form of communication (I am still learning this, I still shout). I have found that it encourages a defensive reaction instead of an engaged response and while I am angry and I wish I could shout until they listen, it is becoming increasingly important to me that these discussions are actually had between boys and girls, not just between me and female friends or me and my mum.
Sarah Everard was last seen in South London on Wednesday 3rd March and in the following days it was released that her remains were found in Kent. On the same evening that she walked home alone, I drove through Clapham Common with my flatmate, we picked up my flatmate’s boyfriend from the train station and returned home. I wish I had the words to express the overwhelming pain I feel for Sarah and her family, because of the tragedy of this event and because it feels so close to home, emotionally and geographically.
Since this entered the newstream my instagram feed has been largely made up of infographics about sexual assault statistics and stories shared to inform men “how to make women feel safer”. I have been grateful to see that a handful of boys I know have joined this conversation, speaking up about the role they play in contributing to the violence and aggression imposed upon women everyday. There is undeniably an issue of violence by men here and that has been an urgent matter for too long. What I do not see is many people deconstructing the environment that permits and encourages this behaviour.
Away from the society in which I live I perceive gender as an entirely constructed concept, when I move through society I am aware that, despite this, gender is implemented so early on in life that it inevitably becomes a foundation of many peoples’ identity. Gender as a construction does not inherently have to be negative, but its formation stems from misogyny and was exaggerated then solidified by capitalism and so, for me, the current widespread conception of gender as a binary can never be helpful.
Perhaps if I grew up without any concept of gender I would not view myself as existing within one, however, I was raised as a girl and if that was where gender began and ended I would not be writing this. Unfortunately being a girl became something I had to live up to, to perform, it was not just who I was and how I existed but a role I had to fill. This does not mean I have always done that but I think it is true to say that I have always felt that pressure and have always felt some guilt or shame when I did not conform.
I went to a single-sex school, something that I reflect upon now as quite a bizarre institution. As stated previously I do not agree with opposing gender binaries and yet, having said that, I am very grateful that I was not at school and in lessons with the boys that I knew growing up. From eleven years old I was being told horror stories on the way into school about girls being kidnapped and trafficked for sex work. At school we were often shown videos on a Friday morning on how to avoid being a victim of paedophilia, which I vividly remember causing me to have panic attacks. We were informed again and again the consequences of “sexting” and how we would be putting ourselves at risk to predators if we exposed ourselves. And after all of this I would leave school on a Friday afternoon and socialise with boys who berated me with sexualised comments on my body.
These were boys who also had kind families and grew up in a large city full of diverse people, they went to a good school where they were encouraged to critically think and have a curiosity for life experience. I know this was their experience because my friend’s brother attended the same school. I only spent a few hours with these boys every week, as opposed to the 8-4 school day with them, and even in that little time I learnt a lot of what it meant to be a girl. They would constantly talk about porn and masturbation, something that would not be discussed within my female friendships until many years later, and even then very much with shame involved. They forever let us know their opinions on our bodies, too skinny too fat too tall, I was once cheerfully asked if I had ever considered gaining weight to get bigger boobs and then losing the weight again. No actually, I had never considered that because I had never thought about my body before.
What infuriates me the most is that these boys were likely not intending to be malicious, I doubt they set out to be the catalyst for years of insecurity and shame. They simply did not know any better and yet they were exactly the people in a position to know better. So what do we do when there are so many boys who are causing so much unintentional damage? As a society we are constantly, on the most micro levels, perpetuating the culture that eventually leads to men raping and murdering women. It does not make sense that it is only women who see this connection.
I have had to change how I view myself and how I view gender because I do not want to let men make me feel that I do not want to be a woman, I have had to stop defining myself in relation to others. I had to look within myself and see what was me and what was a reaction to men and what was a performance of myself as a female. It was depressing how much was not genuinely me. During this process (which is still ongoing) I had to completely reassess how I viewed men and women and how gender constructions made me view myself. This is not something I have worked out yet, not at all, but it has shown me how deep rooted the problems of gender are and how passively too many people allow these expectations to exist.
In case it has not been clear enough, the specific behaviours I attempted to stop were: not saying what I was thinking around boys, feeling that how I looked was directly correlated to how boys perceived me (that I would not be listened to or acknowledged if I had not at least tried to look “nice”), not voicing discomfort around boys, feeling jealous of other girls because of how boys treated them etc. The list really does go on and I am embarrassed to say it. But I will say it because if I had internalised all of this information that actively harms me and the gender I identify with then I know the boys have done the same. They have also swallowed the idea that women are inferior, that women are in competition with one another to win the boy, that women are people who are not quite men and do not have penises.
For me there are two options moving forwards; do not participate in our society that is phallocentric and misogynist (to say the least) in an attempt to not perpetuate it’s harmful elements, or to try harder and continue having really quite uncomfortable conversations with people who often do not want to hear it. The former is honestly more appealing to me at the moment with the ways I have experienced boys acting towards me as of lately, but the latter is likely the path I will be taking. There is so much more left to be said and for reasons entirely unbeknownst to me I seem to still have a glimmer of hope that everyone has good within and is capable of change. So I will carry on but I really am sick and tired (sick and tired!) of being hurt, disappointed and discouraged by so many boys who are acting without that intention. This, for me, is what needs to change: boys and men in their neutral state are causing harm, there are some (not nearly enough) who actively leave this neutral state and move through life in a thoughtful and considerate way but the vast majority that I have encountered are very comfortable in this neutral position, and plenty are comfortable on the negative side of neutral.
Some reading that has been crucial in my thinking on this topic is bell hooks’ Feminism is for Everybody and Mary Poovey’s Uneven Developments: the Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England.