If you want to solve one of the hardest riddles ever crafted, have a go at this:
Lisa wears men’s clothes, has short hair, and is indifferent to pronouns. They/she/he doesn’t care… In the eyes of society, what is Lisa?
The average thought process while trying to solve the above riddle goes something like this:
‘Lisa is a female name…
But women don’t wear men’s clothes…
& women don’t have short hair…’
*‘…’ used to represent lots of pauses of confusion at how someone could possibly exist outside of a binary. *
Conclusion: ‘Lisa is a man.’
Ask how they landed at that conclusion, and they will tell you the clothes and hair outnumber the name.
Alas, what would it take for the decision to swing the other way?
If you’re one of the JK Rowling fanatical types, you will likely say that you’d have to see what’s under ‘there’ to make a conclusive decision, ‘sex = gender’, as though what we have between our legs could possibly contain all that we have within our minds.
If this were true, though, then why are there trans women out there who are more woman than I, Lisa, an AFAB (assigned-female-at-birth) person (surprise!), will ever be?
When gender is all but a social construct, why does it exist?
The reason that gender exists is rooted in misogyny, through which, to get even marginally close to their male counterparts, women must pay the price. Sometimes, they will pay the price in overt ways, such as through having the expectation placed upon them that they will look after the children and the home. Other times, they will pay the price in more overt, literal ways.
Did you know that brands will often charge a higher price for the same product if it’s marketed towards women as opposed to men? This is known as the pink tax and has been an issue in the global marketplace for decades, so much so that women are paying 40% more for their essentials today compared to men.
The inequity of gender-based pricing is best illustrated by the cost of shower gel. You can typically expect to pay an average of £1.04 for a basic men’s shower gel, whereas the fruiter-scented women’s shower gels would set you back around £5.49, reflecting a 428% price difference.
The price of shampoo tells a similar story, with women’s shampoo generally costing £15.22 on average, compared to £6.11 for men’s shampoo — a difference of 149%.
As well as price increases, misogyny is also to blame for the media coverage that we are seeing everywhere, which aims to vilify, segregate, and demonise trans women.
People, especially men who are at the forefront of the witch-hunt against trans women (except she who cannot be named*, of course), cannot understand why a man would possibly want to transition and become a woman.
*How ironic that Rowling created he who cannot be named and is now the female equivalent of that…
Believing themselves to be the superior sex, what possible reason could any man want to transition for, if not to gain access to women’s spaces for sexual purposes?…
It’s all about socialisation.
It is through socialisation that our ideas surrounding what it means to be a man versus what it means to be a woman are formed, hence the importance of bringing young people up in an environment that fosters diversity and freedom of expression.
Buying dolls for girls and toy guns for boys. Enrolling girls in ballet and boys in karate. When the socialisation that we receive in our earliest years has the biggest influence on the rest of our lives, it’s unsurprising that so many men and women have such narrow-minded perceptions of gender.
Men are not naturally misogynistic. They do not see women solely as a body to be used for their pleasure. The image of the stereotypical macho man, however, does.
Alas, behind every woman, there is a little girl who was told that her purpose in life is to be soft, innocent, and submissive. As behind every man, there is a little boy who is told that his purpose in life is to be tough, strong, and dominant…
To end on a positive sentiment, though, there’s a reason why cases of trans people are on the rise, and it’s not due to the spiel that transphobes would have you believe. It’s not the result of some mass-scale brainwashing. It’s because, as the generations go on, people, slowly but surely, are realising that gender stereotypes are just that, stereotypes. They don’t matter. They are nothing but an(other) means of controlling the population.
Better to force people into one of two boxes labelled male and female than allow them to realise the truth: that binaries don’t exist.
No one has to prove their gender. I don’t need to keep my hair short to prove that I am non-binary. However I present is valid. Nothing can change who I am.
Because, again, for the people who didn’t hear it at the back…
Portfolio of Hope 