Genderation X

Her : Fancy going shopping with me today, love?

Me : Not really. If it’s all the same to you, I’d much rather stay at home and try to smooth out the wrinkles in my scrotum with an orbital sander

Guys, back me up on this. I can’t be the only fella in the world who has been seen wandering aimlessly, with a slightly vacant expression, in the women’s clothing section whilst their other half is trying on the 27 dresses she’s selected from the rack?

That vacant expression is not boredom. What you’re seeing is someone fervently praying to whatever Gods, Goddesses, and non-binary divinities who will listen.

Please, please, please, let her pick the dress that matches the bags, shoes, belts and sundry accessories she already has. Otherwise this is going to turn into the mother of all shopping trips.

Although these days we really should say the birthing person of all shopping trips.

Typically, if a bloke needs a new pair of jeans he’ll head straight for the shop that has the manufacturer he likes. Decent fit, decent colour, decent price - job done.

In and out. Ten minutes. Tops. And with plenty of time left to get back home and watch the match with a beer and a bag of Doritos.

On my recent Easter trip up to Manchester to see mum, I was accompanied by my daughters. We decided to head out on one day. Where would you like to go? I asked. The eldest, who is in the middle of some house restyling, suggested she’d like to go and find some paint. A museum? A movie? Something else? No. Paint.

But don’t worry Dad, she said. It’ll only take ten minutes. I know exactly what I want and it’s on offer.

After well over two hours in the fucking DIY superstore - where several embarrassing pictures of me asleep in the garden furniture section were taken - we finally left with several pots of paint.

How could anyone possibly spend that much time deciding on what sodding colour to paint a wall? It’s not quite the right shade of sunburnt fuchsia - what about the autumnal harvest with a hint of wild blueberry?

I tried my best. I really did. My selection of toys and stuff for presents when they were growing up included things like slingshots, construction kits, things that flew and various other bits and pieces that went splat, shriek, or otherwise caused a reasonable degree of controlled mayhem.

We did have a lot of fun - but it was to no avail. Eventually their passion for the subtlest shades of paint asserted itself.

Where does this passion come from? Yes, I know it’s stereotypical, but stereotypes exist for a reason, right?

I can understand how you can engineer hatred. We saw lots of that during the last two years where the media and official health organisations did their level best to promote hatred against the selfish unvaccinated, or the anti-maskers. There were many examples such as the following

Look at how guilt and fear and moralizing are interwoven and weaponized in this messaging. The implicit message is, of course, that if you don’t do this you’re some horrible person, maybe even a monster.

Engineering hatred through the use of these tools is well-established and part of the playbook of governments everywhere.

But how does one go about engineering passion? What sort of ‘conditioning’ would I need to undergo to become desperately interested in, and fascinated by, the shade of paint I put on my wall?

In the comments on my last stack, Nova123 made some really thoughtful and interesting observations that got me thinking. I recommend you read them in full, but here’s a snippet:

Gender has a lot to do with social constructs; society has determined certain behaviors and roles to be more "masculine" or "feminine". I think it's good that this is breaking down, so both men and women have more freedom to express their power, strength, love and compassion without social limitations or judgments. It's becoming more accepted for men to clean the house and cook and care for the children, and women to be the primary breadwinner and take out the trash if they want.

I agree. I didn’t know, back then, of any father, or birthing person (barf) who would deliberately place artificial constraints on their daughters. The message was very much “aim for whatever you want, do your best, work hard, succeed, you can do it. We’re here to support you”. And this was over 30 years ago.

I’m sure there are some parents who do, but none of the parents I met consciously tried to enforce notions like “you’re a girl, you need to be interested in cooking and dolls and girly stuff”.

Nova points out the confusion today that surrounds the notion of sex and gender and gender roles. It’s a confusion I share.

Feminists spent ages trying to dismantle various stereotypical notions - things like girls wearing dresses or liking to play with dolls or loving pink. These were all socially conditioned things and constrained girls. Yet today we’ve seen many examples of parents who will say things like “we knew Johnny was really a Jemima, because she was interested in playing with dolls and wore dresses”.

The very stereotypical notions we all worked so hard against are now being used as part of the judgment in whether a child is (allegedly) actually a boy or a girl.

I don’t properly remember and so I have to go on mum’s account here (but take it with a pinch of salt as my mum is probably romanticizing somewhat), but I didn’t start talking until I was 3. Mum and dad were worried and so took me to see various doctors and the like. I did start talking - but it was in full sentences. It was as if I didn’t want to do it until I could do it properly. Until I had it reasonably well figured out.

Mum and dad didn’t try to teach me to read, but I could read well before I went to school. I was a bit of an awkward sod and totally bored at school. I ended up doing everyone else’s work for them just for something to do. The head teacher had to ask mum and dad to have a word with me to try to get me to stop doing it.

This is all part and parcel of my characteristics and my personality. I was fascinated by puzzles and trying to figure stuff out - the noggin just didn’t settle down at all. Thankfully, I’m much calmer now - and a whole lot slower.

But where did this come from? Is it a boy thing? Well, perhaps partially. We know that babies who are only a few days old do show sex-related differences. Boys tend to be more interested in things whereas girls tend to be more interested in faces. They’ve measured the differences in attention paid in very young babies.

Note the word tend here. It’s very important.

So, perhaps, part of my fascination with things and how they work stemmed from my sex - or was at least being nudged by it.

Gender roles exist, but the burning question, for me, is to what extent they are socially conditioned - or, to use the current terminology, socially constructed?

Gender roles exist in the animal kingdom too. Would we describe these as “socially constructed”? One would hope not - at least not in the same sense as we take this to mean in the case of humans.

Is the passion for subtle variations in paint shades merely a socially-constructed thing? Is there a place where girls go to get their “aren’t scatter cushions wonderful?” training?

I jest, but it’s important because we’re building a society, or trying to, on the notion that there is, fundamentally, no difference between girls and boys. It can be a good, positive, thing to eradicate any conditioning that constrains - like the notion that a “woman’s place is in the home”. It certainly is, if that’s where she wants it to be.

We definitely need to get a better handle on all of this. I think there are real sex-related tendencies we have. Not all women will agonize for hours over cerulean sunset and turquoise frost. Similarly, not all men will spend hours, beer in hand, watching a bunch of other guys kicking around what used to be an inflated pig’s bladder.

What we definitely should not be doing is to use some a priori notion of typical tendencies to determine the gender of someone.

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