This past week the clothing company J. Crew sent out an advertisement featuring a mother (who happens to be a J. Crew executive) playing with her young son. Both are having an uproariously good time. When you look closer, you realize that the mother has been painting her son’s toenails. Neon pink. “Lucky for me I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink,” reads the caption. “Toenail painting is so much more fun in neon.”
A boy with pink toenails! Oh the horror! Could anything be worse than that?
Fox News quickly responded to this development with a column that carried the rather bizarre (and highly ignorant) headline: “J. Crew Plants the Seeds for Gender Identity.” (http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/04/11/j-crew-plants-seeds-gender-identity/#ixzz1JRZhVHEV).
This odd piece of masculine panic, written by a Dr. Keith Ablow, is a mixture of opinion and ideology masquerading as fact. His stance is that gender bending is bad, and there are several reasons why:
Confusing our kids. Dr. Ablow believes that the mom in the picture is instilling gender confusion in her son and in other kids. These kids, he claims, will subsequently need psychotherapy to deal with this issue. Just why this possibility is of any concern to Dr. Ablow is not entirely clear. Perhaps he is just driven by compassion. (But I doubt it.)
"Psychological sterilization"? Dr. Ablow then asserts that gender-blending imagery leads to “psychological sterilization” (a term Dr. Ablow admits that he made up). He also admits that the consequences of “psychological sterilization” are utterly unknown. Even so, he implies that we should all be terribly worried about it – even though it may not in fact exist, and, even if it does, it may not have any impact whatsoever! But better safe than sorry! Head for the hills, boys! (But leave the pink in nail polish at home!)
The old "slippery slope" argument. Dr. Ablow then argues that it is a “truth” that it is unwise to “encourage little boys to playact like little girls.” If pink toenails are ok, he asks, then why not a sundress? Good point, Dr. Ablow! Why not, indeed? Maybe that item will appear in next summer's catalog.
Gender identity is "chosen"? Dr. Ablow goes on to suggest that we should not encourage our children to "choose" their gender identity, but rather we should encourage them to be comfortable with the one they were born with – otherwise we will throw our species into “psychological turmoil.” This is more worrisome, apparently, to Dr. Ablow, than are war, violence, famine, plague, nuclear meltdown or nuclear war. After the calamity of pink toenails, what comes next? The atrocity of men wearing skirts into battle? One can scarcely imagine it!
(Or maybe one can. My male Scottish ancestors did just that. They marched bravely into war wearing kilts. And they were a fierce foe. It is not for nothing that the male kilted regiments in the British military ultimately became known as “the ladies from hell.”)
But all of the research suggests that gender identity is not, in fact, chosen. Whether or not my ancestors experienced themselves as male or female doubtless had nothing to do with the clothes they wore!
Trans-panic (and lies). In still more fear mongering, Dr. Ablow also raises the specter that gender confusion will lead to “crowding operating rooms with procedures to grotesquely amputate body parts.” This statement is disingenuous in any number of ways, including the fact that in the United States gender reassignment surgery is a very rare - and very expensive - procedure, and those who choose it must pass strict psychological screening and then pay for the operation out of their own pocket. And the U.S. does not now – nor will it likely ever – lack for available operating rooms for those who have the ability to pay. (But many people actually go to Thailand to physically transition, where the fees are lower and quality of care is excellent.) And Dr. Ablow fails to express any concern whatsoever about the immense resources consumed by the far more common (and usually entirely unnecessary) procedures of elective cosmetic surgery.
The slope gets even more slippery. Dr. Ablow then absurdly suggests that if we begin messing around with gender, the next step is to encourage people to try to change their race. If we change genders, he asks, ”Why not make race the next frontier? What would be so wrong with people deciding to tattoo themselves dark brown and claim African-American heritage? Why not bleach the skin of others so they can playact as Caucasians?”
Before making any comments on race, Dr. Ablow would do well to find out something about it. For a supposed “expert,” his ignorance is rather astounding. He seems to fail to consider that lighter people already do try to darken themselves through tanning and other methods in order to imply that they live a life of leisure. And he seems utterly unaware of the racial history of North America (and indeed most of the world) where a color-caste hierarchy privileges light skin over dark. For him to suggest that it would somehow be a new phenomenon for people with darker complexions to try to lighten their skin is astounding. Nearly fifty years ago Malcom X wrote very movingly about the great (and often painful) lengths that many African-Americans would go to in order to look more white. But perhaps Dr. Ablow is just not quite up to speed on the writings of Brother Malcom – or on the work of any recent theorist on racism and race relations.
On "Truth" with a capital T. But back to our main theme of gender: "Why should we hold dear anything with which we were born?” Dr. Ablow muses on. “What’s the benefit of non-fiction over fiction? Well, the benefit is that non-fiction always wins, in the end. And to the extent that you take flights of fancy into masquerading through life, life will exact a psychological penalty.”
Again with these mysterious psychological penalties! And perhaps someone needs to tell Dr. Ablow that things that many people consider to be “fact” are in fact often highly debatable, and even if they do happen to be true, the truth does not always win out. For example, lies that remain with us today include: Nero fiddled while Rome burned (he didn't), the Vikings wore horned helmets (they didn't), Columbus discovered America (he didn't), Marie Antoinette said “Let them eat cake” (she didn't), and Napoleon was short (he wasn't). Yet these fictions have all endured. “Facts” are not always factual, and, when repeated enough times, some lies become the accepted truth. Non-fiction does not always win.
Unleashing the forces of female sexuality. Gender bending is bad, Dr. Ablow asserts, because as girls become more assertive, they are more willing to have sex with boys at an earlier age. This is a problem, he says, because it means there is no longer “the same typically ‘feminine’ brake on such behavior.” Here he drifts from “facts” of gender to an ideology that seeks to control female (and male) sexuality by declaring that females are not as sexual as males, and that girls have a natural role in acting as constraints on boys’ sexual behavior. Neither of these assertions is borne out in fact.
The end of kids. The end of security. Dr. Ablow also argues, somewhat perversely, that gender blending will mean the end of both the nurturing of children and of military security. He writes of how terrible it will be if “neither gender is motivated to rank creating a family above having great sex forever and neither gender is motivated to protect the nation by marching into combat against other men and risking their lives.”
Huh?
(Let me take a moment here to clear my head…)
Okay, I am back. As for his first objection that gender blending will mean that instead of parenting we will all want great sex forever, can someone please explain to me just what the issue is here? I utterly fail to see how creating a family and wanting to have great sex forever can not coexist. While it is true that having a toddler around might diminish an adult couple’s sexual spontaneity, the choice between having a family and wanting great sex is a false one. (I think Dr. Ablow’s stance here says far more about the rigid lines that he draws in his own life than it does about us as a society.)
And in terms of warfare… there are increasing numbers of females in the world’s militaries. And these women do not lack the drive and dedication to defend their countries.
A violation of the divine order. But at the end of the day, it seems that Dr. Ablow’s main objection to gender blending is this: it violates the divine order of things. He writes: “These folks are hostile to the gender distinctions that actually are part of the magnificent synergy that creates and sustains the human race. They respect their own creative notions a whole lot more than any creative Force in the universe.” So it would seem that Dr. Ablow ultimately believes that it is an affront unto God (his “Force” with a capital F) to blend the genders. But that’s just an opinion. Not a fact.
Yearning for logic among the opponents of equality. Selfishly, I really wish that the proponents of rigid gender norms occasionally had a logical argument or two that I could engage with intelligently. But there is just no way to do this because their “rational” arguments are actually all quite irrational. And the whole thing really just comes down to ideology and to values. But arguing from a place of values presents two problems for the defenders of patriarchy.
First, they would have to actually assert just what their value system really is: it is a philosophy that says simply that men are better than women. And that boys should never be allowed to wear pink toenail polish because to do so is to be girly, and girly means inferior.
The second problem they have with arguing from a place of values is that someone else can simply say in response: “Well, I hear what you are saying, but I respectfully disagree.” And this is something that the defenders of the patriarchy simply cannot tolerate – the notion that their stance is just one of preference, drawn not from some natural law or divine mandate, but rather from a sense of masculine supremacy.
All of the real, empirical evidence suggests that our society’s gender divisions are hugely exaggerated. Women and men are far more allies than we are opposites. And, as previous gender theorists have argued, if these rigid gender differences are indeed “natural” and “innate,” then why do their defenders feel the need to spend so much time and energy working the enforce them? After all, no one has to spend any time shoring up other "natural truths" like gravity!
As for me, I prefer my nail polish purple… with sparkles.