I find it essential to have consistent and precise terminology in these discussions. I would like to distinguish between
inherent negativity and
cultural negativity. Ferex:
- Expecting every woman to cut off her legs would be an inherently negative gender role.
- Expecting every woman to dye their hair purple would not. However, if purple is considered to be a negative trait, then the gender role is (componentially) culturally negative.
- Expecting women to never have orange hair, because orange and feminine contradict each other, indicates that orange hair is (gender-specific) culturally negative.
(I have been discussing componential cultural values regarding gender roles - purple is bad, and women should have purple hair. This is distinct from gender-specific cultural values regarding gender roles - orange is good, and
additionally, it's okay for men, but bad for women. These are
obviously difficult to tell apart in practice, but imagine an androgynous person doing something. Is that thing bad? Then any corresponding gender role will be componentially negative. Otherwise, it will be gender-specifically negative.)
Many gender roles will be "merely" culturally negative at first sight, rather than inherently negative, but they are often related to a deeper inherently negative role. Ferex, submissive is bad, right? Culturally, we consider submissiveness to be a generally bad thing, and objectively, submissiveness means that you're less likely to stand up for your rights, making oppressive gender roles more likely to persist. That is, submissiveness is both culturally negative and inherently negative.
Additionally, we have
restrictiveness, which is entirely orthogonal to inherent and cultural negativity. Restrictiveness represents how many choices a gender role conflicts with, the degree to which this conflict is considered negative, and (possibly) the degree to which the conflicting choice is prevented by society, whether coercively or directly.
Femininity could be encouraged for women, but also considered to be negative.
More often then not it isn't so much that femininity is considered a negative so much that it is extremely restrictive
Indeed, I might agree that the feminine gender role is more
restrictive than the masculine gender role. (This has certainly been historically accurate, but I'm less sure of it today. The restrictiveness variable
alone could be lower for women than for men, considering that it is a composite of "how many choices are off-limits" and "how bad is 'off-limits' anyway" and "what happens if I go off-limits". A masculine woman would, perhaps, be less ostracized today than a feminine woman. But femininity itself - what does that cover? Is it less
inclusive than masculinity? I'm not sure; if it is, then the composite of
restrictiveness might still be lower for women.)
...and considered a negative in most situations.
I have no idea what this means. Are you saying that restrictiveness is considered negative? If so, that's a
personal statement of value, which is distinct from my analysis of the cultural values associated with gender roles and their violation. In less compact language, you're saying that femininity is bad because it keeps women from doing things (which somewhat resembles my
inherent negativity concept). I'm saying that femininity (or components of such) is
considered to be bad by contemporary Western culture (or tends to be).
There is a strong idea, even today, that femininity and, for example, being a soldier are opposing ideas.
This has several components: first, we've got the restrictiveness concept present, in that society tends to prevent women from becoming soldiers. Second, we notice that society assigns "woman and soldier" a negative value - . Then we have the general negative gender role ("woman should not fight") which corresponds to the general positive gender role ("woman should be weak and unable to defend herself") which is
inherently harmful to women, mostly because it is related to violence and submissiveness/passiveness (i.e., not standing up for one's self).
There is more of an idea that femininity and masculinity compliment each other but are mutually exclusive (Which is easy to see why that ended up being a harmful view overall)
Ah, but we can imagine the following scenario: women can do X (so says society). Men can do A, B, C, D, E, ... W, Y, Z. It certainly harms both men and women, but it harms women
far more.
It is uncommon that femininity or masculinity gets a blanket idea of negativity.
I disagree, although we have the complicated concept of....
This is hard to explain or define. Suppose that purple hair is bad. Everybody knows that purple is associated with passiveness, or sluttiness, or unintelligence, or something like that. But it is more accepted for a woman to have purple hair than for a woman to have brown hair.
So at the same time we have
positive values (woman-has-purple) and
negative values (purple-is-bad). I'm not sure if this is actually real, but it seems pretty likely - femininity, or aspects thereof, are commonly associated with negative things (stupid, bitchy, slutty, et cetera).
Though at the same time... Back when women fashion was incredibly dangerous there was a LOT of criticism put towards it. Then again that isn't that femininity is a negative so much that one aspect of it is.
Ah, so when you say "dangerous" you're referring to
inherent negativity.
Sorry just an aside.
Sorry, I just wrote a huge analysis only somewhat related to your aside. Still, it was fun and I had a few insights while writing it. (I only added the componential/gender-specific distinction at the end, when I realized that it was necessary to describe the difference between woman-soldier-bad and submissiveness-bad+woman-submissive-good.)
(What in the four hells... over three double-spaced pages?)
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Topic: Gender/sexuality etc. - What Even Is A Gender Anyway (Read 142769 times)