We find ourselves at a crossroads between fragmentation and the persistence of the gender binary.
If the fragmentation progresses and manages to eliminate legal gender categories, identities and presentations marked by the gender binary and the social practices of “women” and “men”, the foundations for equality will have been laid, at least by category. of genre.
Undoing gender would allow us to make significant progress on the road to eliminating gender differentiation and its consequence: gender inequality.
Ungendering implies that sex is biological, physiological, and reproductive, but that it is not a good basis for social categorization, that sexual desire is fluid and not constrained by the opposition between two genders, and that gender is no longer a valid way of organizing societies.
To the extent that gender is an institution, undoing gender fragments it into its components and strips many of them of their binary structure.
Gender identity, traits, competencies and behavior are then understood as spectrums with “opposites” at extremes.
Gender, then, is no longer an institution.
More information
Judith Butler: "We fight against social domination, not against men and their anatomy"
Be that as it may, for the moment there are still institutional and interactional practices of gender inequality that must be made visible and combated.
And, in order to combat gender inequality, it is necessary to be able to distinguish women and men as legal and social categories.
If we want to make gender inequality visible, we have to be able to compare men and women.
And this is the origin of the new gender paradox.
On the one hand, we need the gender binary to persist if we are to combat the gender inequality it produces, but, at the same time, we need to fragment it more and more until it eventually disappears.
It is unlikely that a gender revolution will break out, because the multiplicity of identities of the people who question the gender binary and the diversity of their objectives make united political action impossible.
The different opponents of gender dualism have not recognized each other as allies and identity politics needs a separation between us and them.
They live on the border between the binary genders.
If they came together, they would give rise to a third gender, but many want to eliminate gender identities altogether.
Perhaps a gender revolution is not necessary to achieve gender equality.
Both the multiplication and minimization of gender identities have the potential to erode the differential treatment of men and women.
If we cannot determine or do not constantly allude to which gender each person belongs to in face-to-face interactions, women and men will become equals socially.
The more egalitarian the organizational policies are, especially with regard to salaries and promotions, the less relevance gender will have.
If we keep this goal in mind, we should all consciously participate in the deconstruction of gender and act and talk as if no one has gender.
It should be everyone's revolution, not just deliberately gender-questioning people.
It would be revolutionary if birth certificates, identity cards and driver's licenses did not indicate gender.
The changes that had to be applied to marriage licenses when same-sex marriage was legalized are examples of how legal policies have to adapt to changes in real life.
"Husbands and wives" have become "spouses."
People who deal equally with raising their children should be “parents” and not mothers and fathers.
Gender deconstruction practices are revolutionary in many ways.
Parents who minimize the gender of their children when raising them and men who take care of their children on a daily basis are revolutionaries.
So is the neutral treatment of boys and girls during the school years.
And egalitarian romantic dates.
All of us can erode the gender binary with our actions, however small.
What we could lose is the valorization of women, their history, their achievements and their rich and varied cultures that feminists have worked so hard to produce, maintain and make visible during the last fifty years.
It would erase the “feminine” focus on the qualities that characterize women: the relationship they have with their bodies and their sexuality, their emotional and affective capacities, and their special point of view in male-dominated societies and cultures.
When women broke into the domains of men, they had to emulate them.
In turn, men emulate women when caring for their children.
To the extent that differences between women's and men's leadership styles have made women perform better in crisis situations, such as the covid-19 pandemic, men could also emulate women when it comes to lead.
One of the great social problems that would not be solved by undoing gender is violence against women (physical abuse and macho femicide), in addition to sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape.
The ostracism to which men who have routinely exploited or raped women are now condemned, and their removal from positions of power has significantly enhanced women's ability to combat their sexual vulnerability.
However, to combat violence against women it is necessary for women to support women.
When women downplay their mutual gender, the results are disastrous.
There are women who have helped men in their sexual victimization of other women.
even more terrifying,
Maintaining women's identity and visibility may not be as necessary in societies where women experience more equality with men and where men have seen their power and privileges reduced.
The gradual deconstruction of gender could end up replacing gender practices now taken for granted in bureaucracy and labor organizations, as well as in informal interaction in everyday life.
But first you have to go through a period of conscious attention to gender.
In order to undo gender, you first have to be aware of gender.
Judith Lorber (New York, USA, 1931)
is a sociologist and professor emeritus at the City University of New York.
This excerpt is a preview of her book
De ella La nueva paradox del género.
Fragmentation and persistence of the binary
, which the Paidós editorial publishes today, March 1.
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