How do you transform a human being into a preset set of roles to fit in a society?
It is common knowledge that sex and gender are two different things. Sex is something one is born with, it is completely biological. While, gender is a social construct; gender consists of the roles that each sex is supposed to fit in. It is a carefully constructed way of an expected living. Strictly following the biological route, there are two sexes followed by two genders and the way these genders are expected to interact with each other is solely to maintain hierarchical dominance. Now, which gender dominates the other is a mystery I’ll leave to you.
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
The Second Sex (1949)
Simone de Beauvoir
The age-old resistance of women against the exploitative expectations the society holds for them has brought the question of what it really means to be a woman into the light repeatedly. Now, this is not the question of who can or can not “qualify” as a woman, this is a completely different debate. This is not a question of conscience but rather one of the social, cultural and psychological teachings that are sex specific.
Dissecting the construction of the term ‘woman’ leads one to another term, ‘femininity.’ Common societal belief: the more feminine a woman is, the better she is as a woman. Femininity roots from the Latin word femina meaning woman. Since the origin and how the society equate these two, we can call them related synonyms. But what is femininity? The UNGEI (United Nation Girls’ Education Initiative) defines femininity as someone who is “soft, nurturing, emotional, communicative, not having power, not being in charge of decision-making and largely being secondary (and not primary). Femininity is associated with being the cause, inspiration and victim of violence.” The striking blow of the association of the term femininity with violence opens ones mind. It helps one recognize the patterns in which women are represented in various types of consumable content – be it books, movies, songs etc.
Examining the condition of women in intellectual fields, Virginia Woolf presents the picture of a vicious chain of events. These events begin with women having no financial assets then (and comparatively less in the modern world) which deprives them of resources like education, social experience, travels, knowledge about interest specific fields and intellectual freedom. This further robs women of confidence in their own thoughts extending to even their identity.
“Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves.”
A Room of One’s Own (1929)
Virginia Woolf
This, according to Woolf, is the unfortunate inheritance that daughters have received from their mothers, grandmothers and their mothers. For if they, like the fathers, grandfathers and their fathers focused on building their financial assets, Jane Austen for example would have been “able to meet more people and travel. All this, according to Woolf, would have not only enriched Austen’s life, but would have made her novels ‘deeper and more suggestive’.” Unfortunately, women have fallen victim to this unfortunate inheritance which is keeping the gender ten steps back.
Women’s interests have always been looked down upon, TheMerakiProject conceptualises the problem exceptionally, “From the kinds of books women read, the hobbies they pour themselves into, the movies that make them feel seen, to the aesthetics they love—women's worlds are often ridiculed or written off as frivolous, shallow and unserious. Meanwhile, men’s interests—whether it’s fantasy football, gaming, action movies, or collecting mechanical watches—are simply... hobbies. Neutral. Acceptable. Sometimes even elevated to the level of art, genius, or intellectualism.” This unimportant air given to women interests translates to women centric issues as well.
Problems faced by women have a small corner in the society for eventually these issues are trivialized, excused or just laughed at. One of the examples being the #metoo movement. The #metoo movement brought infinite insight in the exploitation of women in the most visible of workplaces, the film industry. While the victims were vocalising their traumas, several memes were surfacing, dividing women in the ‘rapeable’ and ‘unrapeable’ categories. Maja Brandt Andreasen wrote in her article, “The credibility of women’s accusations against powerful Hollywood men is evaluated in relation to how attractive the women are deemed to be. Women’s experiences and stories of sexual violence are thus evaluated on the basis of whether or not it seems likely that a heterosexual man would find them sexually attractive.” In her research, Andreasen found quotes like ‘You know it’s your duty to doubt the #metoo allegations when Rebel Wilson tries to join the party’ and ‘The one time Harvey Weinstein was able to control himself’ written under a photograph of Weinstein with Hillary Clinton.
Who is a woman according to society?
A good woman should keep her head down when men are present, a good woman should never look in the eyes of men, a good woman should cover up for she might entice men, a good woman should not bother herself with having opinions, a good woman should not leave her house for she might be brutalised by a man, a good woman should exist for a man, that is what makes her a woman.
On the other hand, with the rise of male loneliness, where does this dependency of a woman's identity lie on a man? Who really is a woman?
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