The End of Gender

Gender and Sexuality ANTH 2301 The End of Gender? Some people feel constrained in their gender identities and sexual behaviours in societies that uphold tight two-gender systems and strong heteronormative norms. In many nations, the goal of promoting more freedom in gender and sexual expression has been to eradicate discrimination against women and LGBTQIA+ people and to secure equal rights for them. This social movement has made significant progress both nationally and internationally throughout the last 50 years. A resolution endorsing LGBTQIA+ rights was passed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011. Following that, the UN pushed all nations to enact legislation shielding LGBTQIA+ people from prejudice, hate crimes, and the prosecution of nonheterosexuality. Currently, 29 nations—including the US, Canada, Mexico, Taiwan, and the majority of western Europe—allow same-sex unions. Nonetheless, gender nonconformity and same-sex actions are still crimes in many nations, often carrying the death penalty. When it comes to LGBTQIA+ people's human rights, advancements have made a great deal of people's lives simpler and given them the confidence to feel safe in their public lives, careers, and families. However, some campaigners worry that these legislative improvements do not go far enough. Legal concerns about gender and sexuality are not the only cultural ones. The rigid heterosexual two-gender system prevalent in American and European cultures is a patriarchal value system manifested in patriarchal institutions and actions. In other words, the heteronormative system of gender is inherently biassed. Is it necessary to abolish all gender and sexuality distinctions in order to attain complete freedom and full equality? Do gender roles have an intrinsic repressive quality? Some argue that gender-neutral language and social interactions should become increasingly prevalent in society. There's a push in the US to remove gender from common language usage. Prior to a shift towards specifying both masculine and feminine pronouns (he or she/him or her), the default way to refer to hypothetical people or situations where gender is not specified was to use masculine pronouns (he/him). However, new conventions require the use of third-person plural forms (they/ them) as singular pronouns instead, especially to include people who identify as neither man nor woman. For instance, one may state, "Everyone should wash their hands," as opposed to, "Everyone should wash his hands" or "Everyone should wash his or her hands." It should be noted that this is already a widely recognised aspect of daily English that people use without giving it much thought. For example, if your flatmate says, "Someone left a message for you," you're more likely to answer, "What did they want?" rather than, "What did he want?" or "What did he or she want?" Additionally, a convention is developing that lets individuals indicate which pronouns they prefer, whether they are neutral (they/them, other) or gendered (she/her, he/him). Will pronoun use shifts result in more equality and freedom in patriarchal societies? Perhaps. Gender-neutral pronouns are present in many languages, including Twi, which is spoken by the Akan people of central Ghana in West Africa. The Akans are patriarchal even though they are matrilineal. In Akan communities, gender also plays a crucial role in defining an individual's identity, dictating standards of behaviour, language, attire, and interpersonal connections throughout the course of a lifetime. Put differently, pronouns have little bearing on how gender is structured in society and organisations. While the English language pronoun system in the United States may evolve to become gender neutral, women and LGBTQIA+ individuals will continue to belong to those cultural groups. These classifications won't simply vanish. The idea that race is not a collection of biological characteristics that are objectively present in nature has been covered in earlier talks on racial categories. Instead, race is socioculturally produced, just like gender. Nevertheless, denying the existence of race as a social reality that shapes inequality in many nations would be naïve. Those who attempt to be "colour blind" fail to acknowledge the social reality of race and exacerbate the challenges associated with identifying and addressing racial inequality. Comparably, people cannot just move to a culture that is gender-blind since gender is a social construct. Gender and sexuality scholars contend that because of the cultural norms that permeate both public and private life, heterosexual males continue to enjoy forms of power and privilege in American culture. Adopting a "gender blind" viewpoint has the potential to conceal forms of violence and inequality that are based on sexual orientation and gender. Both gender and race are strong sociocultural constructs that are ingrained in institutions and social behaviours. Anthropology promotes acknowledging both the actual history of marginalisation and struggle as well as the diversity and complexity of those created categories. It's possible that modifications to pronoun usage are only the start of broader shifts to come.