This content is locked. Please login or become a member.
Challenging What It Means to Be a Man or a Woman
The 70s rock star Patti Smith once said any gender is a drag. And I think what she meant by that are these narrow expectations of what it means to be a man or a woman. We’ve had a long debate — and you know, whether in the halls of academia, around our kitchen tables — that nature versus nurture.
Are men and women essentially different in our brains and our behavior? Well, I think the evidence is pretty strong now. The idea that hormones account for all of our differences just isn’t true. As a male, I’ve got female hormones in my body just as females have got male hormones in theirs. You know, 98.6% of our genetic makeup is exactly the same. Our brains are not different at birth. Our nature is that our brains are plastic. Our nature is that our brains are extremely underdeveloped at birth. Our nature is that we have this very long period of development, very slow period of development.
And so, what’s happening during this process is that boys and girls are reacting to, are absorbing, [and] are reacting against the ideas and ideals that society has about boys and girls, men and women. Women are still disproportionately responsible for looking after kids and looking after aging parents and looking after housework. Our definition of manhood hasn’t been how feely and connected you are. It’s how tough you are and how this you are. It’s not obviously not a conscious process, but it just becomes, well, becomes natural or so it seems.
Women were the first to rise up and say enough of this, enough of these narrow limits that determine what I can wear and what job I can do. And men have been a bit slower catching up to this idea that these limitations hold us back. These are really complex things. And I think many of us are learning that we feel trapped within these narrow boundaries.
The Transformation of Fatherhood
The biggest example of a change in men’s lives and men’s gendered behavior in the definition of manhood is right now in the transformation of fatherhood.
I remember when my kids were young (this was years ago). If I couldn’t go out or do something or go to a meeting some night because I was looking after my kids, people would say, “Oh, you’re babysitting tonight.” I’d be thinking, “I don’t babysit my own kids. I don’t help her out. I’m a parent.” Well, that was still a bit unusual back then. But now when I talk to young fathers, increasingly young fathers are saying, “I’m striving to be an equal parent. I’m striving to take on half of the care work in my home.”
Now the significance of this is huge. It’s because women are burdened with childcare and housework that women can’t advance in the workforce as far, women don’t go for that promotion, women don’t travel as much for work, and so forth. So with men doing half of the care work, it’s going to be a major boost to women’s empowerment, to equal pay.