In-Queer-Y: Gender Roles

Gender roles in theory have very strict bounds, especially in how one expresses their gender. Men wear pants, women skirts and dresses. Men have short hair while women wear long hair. However, in practice, gender exists as much more of a spectrum and contains many components that change as time progresses. In many ways, gender expression is much less strictly defined than it was before and has a sense of gender neutrality. Women now wear pants, and pants aren’t solely reserved for men anymore in the contemporary United States. However, there is still the distinction between tight pants, which are perceived as more feminine, and baggy pants, which are perceived as more masculine. Short hair isn’t restricted to men, but there are several general distinctions between male short hairstyles and female short hairstyles. And as many new labels are formed as society progresses and people begin to describe their gender in new ways, new expressions for such gender identities have come along as well.

Androgyny, also known as gender bending, is the mixture of feminine and masculine characteristics, often used to describe fashion or one’s outward expression of gender. Androgyny can be expressed in many different ways to various degrees: men wearing fishnets and heels with a button down shirt and a tie, women wearing suits and binding their breasts whilst wearing make up. Famous androgynous people include Boy George, British 80’s pop star, and Andreja Pejić, formerly Andrej the androgynous fashion model icon.

In these cases society responds very well to androgynous expression. These are two out of the many examples of how androgyny is taking off as fashionable and beautiful in 21st-century pop culture. The ethereal beauty that androgyny provides of being neither female nor male, but both, is not something new. In many cultures and faiths, angels, gods and other divine or mythical beings are portrayed as beautiful and androgynous to some degree.

However, there is a very large difference between how society responds to angels and models and how society responds to an androgynous person walking down the street. Typically people who have an androgynous expression of their gender are discriminated  against in society. How this stigma applies to androgynous men, women and non-gender conforming people also varies.

In the patriarchal society we live in, the man is worshiped, but not just any man: it is the straight and tough, manly man. Despite being so important and regarded as a strong quality, masculinity is actually immensely fragile. Women can now wear pants without discrimination because social change demanded they have that right. But it is highly unlikely that society will fight for the right for men to shamelessly walk around in skirts because why would a man want to? Is he a wuss? Is he gay? Even in fashion trends such as gothic, where it is popular for men to wear eyeliner and nail polish, men are ridiculed as feminine and weak. Keeping one’s masculinity is so difficult that the smallest hint of anything deemed female (a high voice, flowery perfume, a tight jacket) ruins your manhood and thus your value in society as a man.

Similarly femininity is just as fragile, but not because women are inherently delicate. Femininity is pretty. It is soft, sweet, vulnerable, pure. Masculinity is rough, dirty, strong, brutish. Not pretty. To add the smallest smudge of masculinity ruins the virginal purity of the girly girl, making her a tomboy. Why would you want to cut off such long beautiful hair or hide your womanly figure? Girls are raised to be princesses, not tomboys. Boys don’t want tomboys, they want a woman, or at least that is what we are taught, leaving girls just as afraid to wear basketball shorts or ties as boys are to wear dresses.

For gender non-conforming people it is perhaps the worst. When their androgynous gender expression leads to pointing out their non-binary gender identity, it too often leads to being told their identity is invalid, which is just one of the many struggles people of non-conforming genders face.