Radical Feminism: De-Constructing Gender vs De-Constructing Sex.

Radical feminism is against the gender system and its sex role enforcement, and it’s completely for women having control over their own body. The way to dismantle patriarchy isn’t by lumping sex roles and sex into one box, and then de-constructing it. Sex roles are the product of  a hierarchy and structured around sex assigned at birth. If sex cannot be determined at birth, it is assigned by modifying individuals to fit the sex binary. Biological sex exists in nature, most humans are physically male or female, and a minority are intersex. The creation of a socially marked out sex binary is part of how the gender system functions, it lays the foundations for sex role scripts to be assigned.

Whats termed the gender binary has nothing inherently to do with biological sex. It’s a power structure, constructed by the patriarchy to assign roles based on sex.  The entire concept of masculine and feminine is based on nothing more than a socially constructed overlay, placed on top of male and female and its grounded in what the sexes are forced to do to keep the patriarchal system intact. Creating more gender options wont bring an end to this system, and they will only bring freedom of identity at best to those who fit them, true freedom of living will never be awarded until sex role scripts end for everyone.

The solution is to strip away the power structure completely, to stop socializing people into gender via sex role scripts. Everyone should be viewed as human first, sex second and sex identity along with all the things considered gendered now will be set free. At present we have a situation where man is one kind of human being, and woman is a different lower kind of human being there to serve man. If someone’s outside the sex binary and people aren’t freaked out simply because what’s in their pants may be different, it’s because they don’t know what’s up stairs in their head and are unable to know how to interact with them as a result. Society does not collectively have a template for seeing someone outside of the social boxes of man or woman. People changing their sex or being born outside the sex binary wont matter post patriarchy, it matters now because they don’t want to make a mistake when allocating someone to one sex class or the other and because people are passing through a socially created class system when doing so and this makes waves. The gender system has made biological sex political and that’s a fact outside individual control.

When radical feminists talk about sex as a class, and woman as a class they are talking about the class of woman created under patriarchy. The ones raised female from birth, and socialized into the subordinate class of woman. When sex role expectations are stripped away, we will be left with biology only. Most humans will still fit a sex binary, and will have different needs because of it, females will still be the ones having children with exception to a few trans and intersex people. The put it better humans with one type of biological system will still be the only ones having children, regardless of words used to describe it. It’s also likely some people will still develop sex dysphoria and wish to transition, but without sex role enforcement less people will develop a concept they have an identity incompatible with their biology. It will be impossible to have a personality incompatible with sex role expectations as there will be none so this layer of struggle will be abolished. This is because under patriarchy female biology and its capability is forced into a narrow box centred around reproduction and the sexed have to be clearly marked out. The patriarchy, its notion of man and woman and what it has to turn both sexes into to maintain the hierarchy, is not natural. Radical feminists are not going to remain silent on the fact that many are transitioning who would never have become dysphoric without the patriarchy. A lot of what is considered cisgender is a constructed illusion where people are living up to layers of expectations that are sex specific.

Pretending the biological sex distinctions themselves are constructed isn’t the way out of the patriarchy or its sex role system. The sexual diamorphic nature of humans very real, but the patriarchy wants everyone to continue to think their sense of self as a man or a woman is grounded in its constructed sex role based masculinity and femininity it continues to hold up as standard. Assigning a title to people based on biological sex distinctions is clearly constructed, and refusing to allow flexibility in this is clearly socially constructed. Its not clear if the human need to identify sex or have a sex identity is a product of this system or a product of human wiring itself. What is clear is there is no need to assign the sex role scripts, there is a difference between being called he or she (or other) and being told what to act like or look like because of it. Sex role scripts are an imposed direction based on sex, an obstruction to one charting their own course in life, ones sex identity, sexual orientation or gendural orientation.  Sex role scripts and the scripting of life based on biological distinctions clearly can go, and has to go.

The gendurality landscape and sex role script abolition

Gendurality is the dimension of self which gets labeled as masculine and feminine were instrumental and expressive aspects of self are divided based on sex. Traits and behaviours associated them become sex bound, and thought of as male and female behaviour leading many to think they have a masculine and feminine side resulting from a binary created within the self. Other things are then associated with those traits, wrongly associated creating a division in self which may clash with ones sex identity. Gendurality is one aspect of self bound by the chains of sex role scripts, its natural direction obstructed. Gendurality forms the basis for creation of what is termed social gender or sex roles.

The gendurality landscape

If gendurality was a big unmapped landscape, sex role scripts would be cordoned off areas of that landscape and the cordens would be named masculinity and femininity. The cordens would move with time and get more narrow or more wide as the definition of masculinity and femininity widens and narrows as the ages pass, this change in definition changes as the sex role scripts change in response to the system wanting different things from the sexes. Sometimes a barren desert separates them, other times they are so close together like two bubbles they could easy meld into one and if they did they would still not be whole. The cordons are made for the two biological sexes and people are adjusted to fit in them if need be. Under this system transitioners are expected to fit within those cordens, their sex identity is expected to be inline with the corden allocated to that sex.

There is a gulf between the cordons and this creates a gulf between the people in them and a gulf within the self of each individual, a gulf between whats masculine and what’s feminine between ones instrumental and expressive side, between mind and emotion. We are familiar with that gulf and may draw a spectrum through it connecting the two cordons and call this “gender expression”. But what lies undiscovered is greater than the two cordons together, greater than the blending of any definition of masculine and feminine we have ever had. Even having all the definitions of masculine and feminine from all the eras in time and culture in one place would not be as great as the freedom of living unbound by sex role scripts and free to plot ones own course through the gendurality landscape. The things inside the two cordons are not lost by breaking the chains of the sex role scripts. Choice is not lost and freedom is not lost the only casualty to them being knocked down is power, the false sense of freedom.

There are debates about who created the cordons and what it will take to break the cordens, some saying the cordons are natural and the only hope is to navigate around them, others say the cordons are constructed from two equal power based belonging to each sex, while others insist the two cordons were created from male domination of females. In this case the two cordons are not created equally, they occupy different amounts of space and the moving of the cordens results from changing interests of the ones in the corden where the power is. Knowing who created them and who holds them in place the hardest is more important than everyone trying to reset their allocated script and hoping it will lead them to freedom. The consequences of resisting the scripts are bumping into the cordens day in and day out and overtime learning to avoid bumping into them. Some don’t know the cordons are there and spend their days forever bounding off them in an attempt to go in their own direction, which they experience as trying to be themselves and being bruised by them and not knowing why. Many experience the battle as inside them, as life tugs on their chains and pull them in a direction that feels wrong for them, like the years are passing them by and their journey has yet to begin, the avenue they wanted to go down looking narrower and more obstructed as the years pass.

Some try embracing the two cordons by learning both scripts, others push to try and blend the two scripts using all their energy trying to get the two cordons to come closer together in the hope the bubble will burst and the two join together for good into one whole. A landscape of equality and choice where power is not dissolved and one where the creators of the original cordens dominate the new space and create several new ones within it. Here the outer perimeter remains intact and everyone feels a false sense of freedom just by getting rid of the two and are able to access all the things once out of reach. Here the original scripts are still in operation but are masked, all that happens is navigation around the rules of the script is made smoother.

Total eradication of the cordens turns everyone into an explorer able to follow their own inner compass, follow their own direction in life and in gendurality. The cordons of masculinity and femininity are totally broken down and as they are they release the sexed body, the sexuality and generality from the chains of the scripts. The thing thought of as identity becomes a direction, no longer obstructed and labeled and no longer transgressive as their is nothing to transgress. Here sex identity is easily discovered in oneself, clarity of it no longer obstructed by the created binary of masculine and feminine. Here those not born male or female are free to take the direction in biology and in life they wish, no longer do they have to be allocated a sex in preparation for being allocated a script based on it. Here one growing from male to female or female to male is no different from growing from teen to adult, a life stage un obstructed by others and one no one has to take for any social reason. Here sex identity has no bearing on what we do as in role or how we express as in presentation. Here wearing clothes termed pretty does not translate to femininity as ways of dressing are no longer allocated to people based on sex or sex identity. Here wearing clothes that are sturdy and functional (and look just as great as the others, depending on the observers view) no longer translates to masculinity as clothing choice is seen to be more about personality and activity and not sex or sex identity. Thats because instrumental and expressive and all associated with them are no longer sorted into a binary named masculine and feminine, the scripts no longer are there to sort them.

The whole of society needs to transition, in a direction away from sex role scripts, a journey that will take the whole of society on a one way trip, and what’s left behind is the power behind the scripts.