On a recent visit to Bangkok I observed on a couple of occasions young men making selfie faces in the mirror in men’s public washrooms while retouching their facial make-up. I had seen in movies that women do that all the time in the ladies washrooms, but seeing it for real in a men’s toilet was a novel sight for me. At first I was amused, but later I wondered whether men’s make up is just a seasonal fad or a sign of social evolution towards dilution of boundaries between maleness and femaleness. After all, it is now pretty much established that maleness and femaleness are as much a social construct as they are a product of our 46 chromosomes and external genitalia.
Usage of the word ‘gender’ in the context of maleness and femaleness of individuals is a very recent phenomenon and grounded in the idea that one’s identity as a male or female is shaped by social influences. I have actually seen the word gender enter into usage and rapidly become mainstream. Google tells us that the word gender was used very little until about the early 1980s. I can recall when at that time, working as an editor in the Office of Publications of the World Health Organization (WHO), I would consistently strikeout the word ‘gender’ and replace it with the conventional word ‘sex’. All my senior fellow editors at WHO, who were masters of the Queen’s English, agreed that usage of the word gender for sex was Americanism that was beginning to sneak into the good old-fashioned English language and had to be curbed: gender was to be used strictly in the context of grammar. To some extent the usage was a bit of Americanism, as every ‘uncomfortable’ word in American English tends to get replaced by a euphemistic equivalent (e.g. ‘restroom’ for ‘toilet’). However, by the early 1990s, WHO editors were beginning to be convinced that the gender revolution was real and the word represented a new understanding of the socially shaped distinction between maleness and femaleness. By the late-1990s, gender had won the battle against the editors and had been mainstreamed fully, at least in WHO publications.
Going back to where I started, I think that we are seeing early signs of another type of gender-related revolution where boundaries between masculinity and femininity are gradually becoming more blurred. According to an April 2017 article in the Independent, a recent survey found that 43% of young people (aged 18-24 years) in the UK don’t identify themselves as either gay or straight, implying that shades of grey of bisexuality are fast emerging in society. Previously, a 2015 publication in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology had claimed that woman are almost never completely “straight”. Until very recently, these were pretty unheard-of things! I’ll venture a guess and say that these “new findings” have some direct or oblique association with the rise of gender mainstreaming around the world. Philosophers (and some physicists) say that we create the world, and possibly even the laws of physics, through our imagination and expectations. So I wonder what words like ‘man’ and ‘woman’ will mean in the future. What will feminism look like in 10-20 years?
Usage of the word ‘gender’ in the context of maleness and femaleness of individuals is a very recent phenomenon and grounded in the idea that one’s identity as a male or female is shaped by social influences. I have actually seen the word gender enter into usage and rapidly become mainstream. Google tells us that the word gender was used very little until about the early 1980s. I can recall when at that time, working as an editor in the Office of Publications of the World Health Organization (WHO), I would consistently strikeout the word ‘gender’ and replace it with the conventional word ‘sex’. All my senior fellow editors at WHO, who were masters of the Queen’s English, agreed that usage of the word gender for sex was Americanism that was beginning to sneak into the good old-fashioned English language and had to be curbed: gender was to be used strictly in the context of grammar. To some extent the usage was a bit of Americanism, as every ‘uncomfortable’ word in American English tends to get replaced by a euphemistic equivalent (e.g. ‘restroom’ for ‘toilet’). However, by the early 1990s, WHO editors were beginning to be convinced that the gender revolution was real and the word represented a new understanding of the socially shaped distinction between maleness and femaleness. By the late-1990s, gender had won the battle against the editors and had been mainstreamed fully, at least in WHO publications.
Going back to where I started, I think that we are seeing early signs of another type of gender-related revolution where boundaries between masculinity and femininity are gradually becoming more blurred. According to an April 2017 article in the Independent, a recent survey found that 43% of young people (aged 18-24 years) in the UK don’t identify themselves as either gay or straight, implying that shades of grey of bisexuality are fast emerging in society. Previously, a 2015 publication in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology had claimed that woman are almost never completely “straight”. Until very recently, these were pretty unheard-of things! I’ll venture a guess and say that these “new findings” have some direct or oblique association with the rise of gender mainstreaming around the world. Philosophers (and some physicists) say that we create the world, and possibly even the laws of physics, through our imagination and expectations. So I wonder what words like ‘man’ and ‘woman’ will mean in the future. What will feminism look like in 10-20 years?
