Return of the Son Daughter of Gender Theory

Martha weighs in on the comments thread that wouldn't die:

Just stumbled upon this - fascinating. If you don't mind, Helen, I'd like clarification on just a couple points.

1) Enforcing femininity. I think anonymous has a point here. If it is, as you say, ambiguous ("flexible canon of gender roles") and further divided between 'high' and 'low' class versions, who has the ability to say what's in and what's out? And if it is biological, isn't it less about conforming to societal expectations (decidedly unfeminine - Paris Hilton style) and more about being 'yourself' gender included?

2) Do you actually think a genderless society could come into existence (given discussion of biology, and tossing in historical insight)?

3) Why are femininity and feminism incompatible? For instance, you don't think learning, debating and living at Yale destroy your femininity - but you wouldn't be there if it weren't for first and second wave feminists.

To the first: sure, there's no Pope of femininity. There's no Pope of America, either, but we still think that "quintessentially American" and "profoundly un-American" are expressions that have some content. Definitions are flexible, but that doesn't imply that words mean whatever I want them to mean, or never mean anything at all. As for enforcement: come on. What do you think I recommend?*

I've taken a lot of fire for my vision of a genderless apocalypse, but I'm not ready to throw it overboard just yet. Here's a new spin on it: a world in which no one has to grow up (think the big babies in Wall-E) is a kind of genderless society. Gender roles are deeply bound up in what it means to become an adult: most rites of passage are gendered; we use expressions like "be a man" when we mean "grow up"; the most important sign of adulthood is becoming a parent, a deeply gendered development. Those who would infantilize us and those who would de-gender us are in alliance.

Another route by which we might arrive at genderlessness: it becomes socially unacceptable to do or say anything that reinforces gender "stereotypes." Misogyny becomes the new racism. If that becomes entrenched, biological differences won't matter; we'll simply deny them. They will probably bubble up in unexpected ways, the way that disincarnate suburbia yields Fight Club, but remember that everybody panned Fight Club when it came out as an ultra-violent, immoral fantasy.

As for the third point: the short answer is "Like hell." I have very little beef with the first-wavers, but remember that even before they came on the scene you still had the Bronte sisters, Queen Christina, Catherine of Siena, Hildegard von Bingen, Judith (as in "and the head of Holofernes"), Joan of Arc, and... and... and. Feminists have made advances from which I have benefited, and some which have brought me nothing but grief. More importantly, no matter how much we agree, they're still not on my team.

*It came up in conversation with this guy that no one enforced gender roles more strictly than gay men of a particular generation in New York City, and, as Camille Paglia has pointed out many times, no one throws shame around more liberally or to greater effect than a certain kind of gay man.