Patriarchy

Patriarchy is a nightmare. It is a system of terrorism. I don’t care about hyperbole. It is a system that has destroyed many lives. It is a system that has brought many of us to the brink of death. And it is a system that needs to be completely obliterated.

Patriarchy is a system based on cis-het-male supremacy. When I was born, I was assigned male. I quickly learned as soon as I left my parents clutches to attend first grade at age 6 that I did not fit the cultural definition of a boy. It was not until Women’s Studies in college years later that I learned that I was a victim of patriarchy. Patriarchy hates women, queers and trans people. It is a system that delights in dude bros, the most toxic variety of masculinity you can imagine.

Patriarchy is a theoretical concept. It names the system of male supremacy we live under. It is not only a word of Women’s Studies or feminism, but it is heavily featured in both. There are some who may see the word patriarchy as second wave or as dated but I believe it is timeless. As long as there is sexism and misogyny there will be patriarchy. I actually look forward to the time when there is no need for the word patriarchy because it will finally be destroyed.

Men are the primary agents of patriarchy. They benefit from it and they revel in the privilege they receive from it. They hurl their hatred at women, queers and trans people every hour of every day. It is difficult to list all the ways that men foment patriarchy because the list is endless: through violence, rape, battering, exploitation, gas-lighting, LGBTQ bashing, economic domination, emotional abuse, employment discrimination and hyper-normative gender roles. Women, queers and trans people face a lot of time having to heal from the violence: physical, mental and financial that men commit against them.

Are women agents of patriarchy? I am not sure I would use the word agents. But women are very much affected by patriarchy. There are some women whose minds are colonized by patriarchal ideology. There are some women who have severe internalized oppression. So they act in collusion with patriarchy. Even though it goes against their own personal interests, they have internalized dominant ideology and hope to curry favor with the oppressor. The same goes for LGBT people who collude with heterosexism and cissexism. It is sad when women and LGBT people don’t realize how they are aiding and abetting patriarchy.

Patriarchy is world-wide. It plays out differently in different cultures, but the persistence of gender inequality is stunning. I don’t see an end to patriarchy in my lifetime. But I do see people rising up and fighting back against patriarchy. These are people called women. These are people called feminists. These are people called radical queers and radical trans folks. The Time’s Up movement and the #MeToo movement are encouraging signs. Women are stepping up and speaking out. Feminism hasn’t gone anywhere, but it has been strengthened. We may not end patriarchy, but we will commit a full-frontal assault on it.

 

Gender

What is gender? Many tomes have been written on that very question. First and foremost, I see gender as a mechanism of control. It is two and only two boxes and each person is stuffed into one or the other. When each of us are born, the doctor makes a cursory examination of our genitals and declares “It’s a Boy!” or “It’s a Girl!” This is not a benign utterance. It is a life-shattering declaration and prescription. The intent behind it matters not. It has a velocity all its own. When the attending room physician makes this declaration, the baby is off like a race car. We get placed on pink and blue tracks for the remainder of our natural born lives. If we obey, the ride is very smooth. If we disobey, it is one car wreck after another. It is no wonder that the vast majority of people obey. The bigger question is why some of us don’t. Or can’t. One can only withstand so many crashes. Eventually it can even be fatal.

Some may see my language as hyperbolic. It is not hyperbolic to me. As someone assigned male based on a brief glance between my legs, I am angry. I am angry that gender exists and that it affects so much in our society. If your own personal declaration does not match that initial declaration, you are in for it. If your declaration is the “opposite” of the initial declaration, there might be hope for you if you look as much as possible like the “opposite” of your birth assignment. If you don’t try, don’t care or don’t feel like either male or female, you are flushed down to the bottom of the social hierarchy of the society. You are trash.

As someone who has been treated like gender trash my whole life, I have had a front row seat to how gender is A) bullshit B) all about social control and power. It is about the perpetuation of cis-heteropatriarchy. Cis people, heterosexual people and men are seen as superior. Trans people, queers and women are seen as inferior. Gender is the glue that ties the whole system together. To get the glue unstuck you have to smash the gender boxes. This is why I am so committed to gender abolitionism. It is not a popular position, including in the trans community. But then again I don’t see anything good about gender. I am the negative nancy of the gender studies world.

If gender is an apparatus of power, and we need to smash it, what should we do? For starters, we should all be feminists, all be queer advocates and all be trans liberationists. Beyond that, we should opt out of gender whenever possible. Do the opposite. Undo it. Do it differently. Anything that goes against what the scripts of normative gender tell us we should do. Even if it doesn’t smash it, we can still fight it. It will be exhausting and we will be punished for it, but I’m afraid that is the price of the ticket.

 

 

Gender Abolitionism

I hate gender. I really do. I’d like to see it gone. For that reason, I am a gender abolitionist. I think the problem is that most people associate gender abolitionism with Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist [TERF] politics. I couldn’t be more opposed to TERF-ism and see it as hateful and not feminist at all. TERFs do not own gender abolitionism. I am unabashedly pro-trans and a gender abolitionist. I see no conflict between holding these two positions simultaneously. I think there needs to be more of an effort to articulate a pro-trans gender abolitionist stance. I’m sure I am not the only transgender person who is interested in dismantling the whole project of gender. I once heard a speaker say that gender is here to stay and that basically gender is a good thing for society to have. I disagree wholeheartedly.

I have some basic questions. Nobody can ever seem to answer these questions satisfactorily. They are:

Why does gender exist?

What is productive about gender? What good comes of it?

Why do people “do” gender?

Why can we seemingly not envision a world without gender?

What would it mean to not have (a) gender?

Why does gender have a strangle-hold over our culture?

How does sexual orientation function to strengthen gender?

Every day I get asked the same question: are you a man or a woman? Every day I have the same answer: I am neither. I am a human being who shuns gender and wants nothing to do with it. I used to take the more standard “gender diversity” approach i.e. we need to accept multiple genders. By expanding gender, we create more acceptance for our diversity. But this approach just doesn’t cut it and it doesn’t go far enough. Decades of genderqueer and non-binary activism has done little to put a dent into the tyranny of the binary gender system. Everything in society is till geared for cis men and women who are heterosexual. The rest of us are constantly made to feel like our existence is a mistake. The whole project of gender is incredibly oppressive. Gender is a battleground, not a playground. There is nothing “playful” about gender. It is tired and it needs to go.

I have been studying gender for 25 years and living as a gender minority for 44 years [i.e. my whole life]. I can sum up my study and experience of gender in one sentence: gender is total bullshit. It is a made-up cultural construction that exists for one reason and one reason alone: oppression. It exists to oppress women and those who don’t fit into their assigned sex at birth in some way. Women and gender minorities do not profit from gender in any way unless they collude with the hegemonic system. Cis men do! Unfortunately not all women and queers are feminist and thus do not have a critical mindset when it comes to gender. Even if one does not support the abolition of gender, one must acknowledge the existence of patriarchy. Patriarchy created gender. And it created gender as a justification for male supremacy, male entitlement and male violence. To get rid of patriarchy we need to not only get rid of sexism, heterosexism and cissexism. We need to get rid of gender, the very building blocks of patriarchy.

Someone once said the world would be a boring place without gender, that gender adds a ”spice of life” to our existence. I would submit that gender is very boring and that it deadens everything around it. I am made so unhappy that people continuously try to non-consensually put gender upon me. It feels like a kind of assault. It is high time we got rid of gender and this starts with dismantling the binary gender system and generating so many genders that gender would cease to have any meaningful existence.

Can you imagine a world without gender? I can and it is beautiful and dazzling and free.