During my high school and university days, it was the dawning of the Age of Androgyny. There were unisex jeans stores all over the place, along with the boutiques selling incense and Indian-print bedspreads, tops and dresses. It was an age not so much of gender diversity as gender uniformity. Everyone who had hair wore it long. Afros were a thing regardless of the colour of your skin. So was hair so straight you had to iron it regularly unless it was naturally perma-press.
Today marks the end of a mostly-virtual Pride Week. Yesterday I went on a bit of a rant at the Royal Canadian Navy over its RIMPAC exercise but today I'll highlight a couple of the more progressive measures they are taking towards inclusivity. Like their real-life Pride Parade on the canal:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/boat-pride-parade-rideau-canal-ottawa-1.5705150?cmp=rssAnd their move towards more gender-inclusive job titles, still controversial in some quarters:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/royal-canadian-navy-seaman-sailor-1.5702842But is there still room for gendered spaces in all this would-be broad-mindedness? Personally I hope so although if I were active on social media, I'm sure I'd face a flaming Twitter-storm of protest for that stance!
Some of the most positive environments I've been in in my life have been female-only. Like CGIT, like the Ottawa Women's Centre and the Consciousness-Raising group I briefly participated in during the mid-70s. Or like the Women's Committee of my union local at Labour Canada. Since I worked in a predominantly female occupation, there were also a number of all-female job environments I worked in too.
In many cultures, my own included, girls and boys were, and to a considerable extent still are treated differently. Certainly those of us growing up as girls and boys in Canada were not treated AS differently from each other as we would have been in some other parts of the world, but the differences were definitely there and have shaped our lives accordingly. For that reason, it's difficult if not impossible to ascertain precisely where nature leaves off and nurture kicks in when looking at sex-linked differences.
At this end of the twenty-first century, we are gradually adding concepts like gender identity and gender expression to our institutional framework of human rights. For the most part, I see this as positive. But it does bother me when I sense that we are no longer allowed to celebrate our differences and be our authentic selves. Take, for example, someone who dares to state publicly that trans-women are not quite the same as cis-women. I for one strongly believe that, even though (or perhaps precisely BECAUSE) trans-women are very much a part of my day to day reality. But I'm just a private individual, not a high-profile woman like, say, J.K. Rowling, who recently stood up for what she believed in by returning a human rights award she had received:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/rowling-award-return-1.5704196?cmp=rssAnd what of gender expression? If someone who is male opts to wear a dress or any kind of garment or make-up or other items the culture regards as feminine, is that really gender expression? Or is it just personal expression, wearing what they feel comfortable in, or whatever?
And to go even farther out on a limb, what about the racial equivalents to these gendered categories?
Race has in recent years been acknowledged to be quite an artificial construct. You can't necessarily peg it conclusively by skin colour alone, or by any other overt quality that I know of. So why is it considered so appallingly racist and culturally misappropriating for an ostensibly white person to publicly appear in blackface or brown face, while men in dresses or drag queen story times are celebrated as examples of alternative gender expression? What about a black person like, say, Venus Williams, bleaching her hair? What about using skin lighteners? Do we need categories for racial identity and racial expression?
We should dare to ask some of these currently unaskable, politically incorrect questions because only then will we begin to address them and move towards a truly inclusive society.
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