Gender roles and stereotypes: Gender as binary

So, what are gender roles and stereotypes?

By gender roles we mean that there are “things considered for girls” and “things for boys”, like some games, clothes, places to go that are more appropriate for young men or young women. Ideas of maleness and femaleness, as well as masculinity and femininity can change based on where you live and how the society around you is built. These ideas may or may not resonate with you because, as we said, gender is more like a spectrum than a binary, and you could find yourself recognizing into a mix of them or none at all. Nonetheless it’s important to understand that these constructions affect how we’ve been educated since the early stages of our lives in the way we express our emotions, the toys we should play as a kid, the clothes to wear and so on. 

For example, it’s common to expect for people socialized as women to have a desire for a family and motherhood, to be feminine, kind, emotional, whereas for men to have ambitions and a career, to be masculine, strong, and brave. But let’s make a distinction:

• Maleness and femaleness are concepts that shape who you should be and what is expected from you as a man or a woman. I.e: men have to have ambitions for their career, be assertive, “rational” and firm, have “the boss” attitude; people socialized as women have to care about their domestic spaces, desire to have children and no other specific ambitions, and be “emotional”.
• Masculinity and femininity are characteristics of appearance and attitude conceived for the two genders. I.e: if you’re bold, choose sporty outfits or like watching or playing sports of any sorts, or if you don’t care about cosmetic and esthetic procedures for your body (that could be anything dealing with appearances, from using parfums to schedule appointments for hairdresser) you’d be considered “masculine” or “manly”. Quite the opposite, if you like delicate colors, puffy dresses and/or make-up and cosmetic and esthetics routine, you’d be considered “feminine”.

Gender roles are stereotypes because they are not based on natural, inherited differences but on generalized and oversimplified ideas of a certain gender that are constructed by society. As every stereotype, the gender ones come with strict gendered expectations that are hard to dismantle. Gendered expectations define what we learn to expect from an individual belonging to a certain gender: how to act, behave and appear. It’s not just a personal expectation that we project onto others as we watch them pass by: it’s a societal and cultural education in which we grow up due to societal normativities and that push us into a certain strict way of being. Go to module 5 to learn more about what we mean by normativities and stereotypes.

Gender roles are culturally determined! The idea of gender can be very different from every country, and also in the same country or city you can find some differences. This is also because gender is a social and cultural construct.

Of course, you can find yourself fitting a large part of the gender roles, but you can also identify as a woman and like sports, dress “like a boy” and be a phenomenal player; as well as you can identify as a man and be a great make-up artist. What we’re going to see is that the gender binary is just one of the various possibilities of being.

At the root of gender roles and stereotypes we find patriarchy. Patriarchy is a social system of oppression that privileges one gender over others. The etymology (from the greek “patriarkhēs”, which means “ruling father”) reveals us that the gender that’s hegemonic (the ruling, dominant) is that of men, specifically heterosexual, cisgender, able-body and white men. By creating a hierarchy between genders, it puts some genders in a condition of greater oppression than others. So for example, a cis heterosexual man has more privileges than a cis heterosexual woman, which is more privileged than a lesbian heterosexual woman, which is more privileged than a trans woman, and so on. Of course, this pyramid is a simplification. Our identities are a lot more complex than this and so are our relationships. But it helps us remember that we are part of this system. We all enact, react and are oppressed by patriarchy in different ways and it’s important not to flatten out these differences.

It’s also important to remember that the patriarchal system oppresses all genders because it attempts to confine them in the social norms, roles and stereotypes that we mentioned earlier. So, although patriarchy benefits men, because it advantages them in positions of power, the cost of that privilege is high. Ideas of maleness and masculinity often act like a cage because of their massive limits of what a man should be and how he should act. Gendered expectations are so demanding that it’s impossible to satisfy them all: the boxes in which we must fit in order to satisfy the patriarchal prerogatives are too small for all the possibilities of being, whatever your gender identity is. 

The 4 dimensions of Gender – Gender as a spectrum

In order to better understand what we mean by gender as a spectrum we can read it as made of 4 dimensions, which create, not as a straight line with just two far ends, but as a huge map with different directions. 

These dimensions are: gender identity, sexual and romantic orientation, gender expression and sex assigned at birth.  

Ok but why so many labels?

All of these words and definitions could seem frightening at a first sight. They seem too many and it’s worrying to think you have stuck them to your memory in order to be aware. Don’t you worry: is not what they’re meant to be. There is no final exam to attend and there’s no actual missing piece if you don’t know all of them.
These labels are meant to be tools for you, not weapons against you: tools to understand who you are, who you like and how to define your sexual identity entirely.  

As you will see in module 5, there are things such as “social normativities”. These normativities are those “unspoken rules” in which we grew up within that mislead us in thinking there is just one way to be and all the rest is simply out of the norm; so if you’re cisgender, heterosexual, able, allosexual, white, thin and rich man you’ve got more chances to be protected, represented and privileged than others. But we just saw that there’s more than that, reality is huge and nuanced. Labels help you navigate all the questions that could pop up in your mind while growing up and they really can be that useful. If you google the words or share information with your peers, you could find a lot of things that could actually resonate with you. 

Most of these labels were created from a political necessity; the creation itself of a new brand word imply the urge to take space in a world that is not used to consider your entire existence.  

As sexuality itself is a neverending discovery and may change during a lifespan, labels are not monolithic: most of the words that describe your sexual or romantic attraction, or your gender identity are not meant to put you in a cage: labels are not rigid and they could change; it’s pretty legit to you to change your feelings and your mind in your life: labeling is understanding, not restraining.  

That’s why it is counterproductive to do gatekeeping, which is an action that describes when someone purposely excludes another because they don’t fit the label perfectly. It’s understandable to misinterpret the usage of labels as dogmatic (unquestionable, fixed, incontrovertible), because that’s exactly how we used to consider categories in a society built up within normativities. But, as said before, reality is more complex than that and so are we with our sexualities. Gatekeeping it’s a common mistake made by people out and within the LGBTQIA+ community and it’s something that we urge to unlearn. Words are made to fit us, not reverse.

LGBTQIA+ issues and gender discrimination

Now that we saw how many possibilities of identification and orientation there are, we see more clearly that people may not recognize themselves in the gender assigned to them at birth, or they may have a more fluid sexual or romantic orientation, or they may be expressing physical characteristics that don’t clearly fall under one or the other gender, and many more possibilities. We can refer to these possibilities as gender nonconformity. 

LGBTQIA+ is an acronym that stands for: 

– Lesbian 

– Gay 

– Bisexual 

– Trans* 

– Queer and Questioning 

– Intersex 

– Asexual and Aromantic; 

– the plus sign (+) indicates that labels are always evolving and to be added; nowadays the acronym itself is much longer as different sexual identities have been recognized and claimed, but it’s very common to find the shorter version (“LGBTQIA+”) for referring to the community.

We described these words in the previous paragraph except for the Q which refers to two umbrella terms: 

• “Queer” is an umbrella term that includes all the identities diverging from cisgenderism and heterosexuality. In the past it was a derogatory term standing for “bizarre”, “weird”, but through the years the use of it has been very debated, as part of the community is reclaiming this term with pride and fierceness. It’s on you whether or not you use it to recognize yourself: the very essence of queerness is indeed that no one should tell you which words to use to define yourself but you.  
• “Questioning” is the act of reflecting and wondering about your gender identity and/or your sexual and romantic orientation. As we’re going to see later, we live in a society that takes cisgenderism and heterosexuality for granted, as the default. It could happen instead that you feel something different from those and whenever you start to investigate these feelings and these thoughts about your sexual identities and actually start considering who you are and whom you’re attracted to, then you’re questioning. Being questioning is not a seal to queerness and LGBTQIA+ belonging: you could realize that you’re perfectly fit in cisgenderism and/or heterosexuality as well, but questioning yourself is not a prerogative of LGBTQIA+ people so there’s room for everyone to wonder about yourself beyond what society tells you to be.

Because they do not conform to the gender norms (go to module 5 to learn more about normativity), people belonging to the LGBTQIA+ community face discrimination. Discrimination against people from the LGBTQIA+ community is called homolesbobiatransphobia. Marginalization, stigma and other forms of discrimination in schools, in the workplace, legal, educational and through media representations, for LGBTQIA+ people are essential topics to understand and dismantle in order to build up an education that can speak to everyone, no matter who you are and who you like. 

LGBTQIA+ people face multiple risks just being themselves. What’s key to understand is that violence comes in several forms, not only with harassment or physical assaults. When normativity makes you invisible and marginalized, it could feel like you don’t even exist and so you don’t have rights to express yourself at the best you could. 

Outing

Outing is when someone discloses publicly the gender identity and/or the sexual orientation of another person without their consent. If you meet someone that opens up to you about who they are and who they like, be sure they’ll be safe with you: if they’re telling you this, asking to not tell anyone else, respect their need as they’re probably safer that way, without spreading the information. 

Outing is different from Coming Out : 

• a LGBTQIA+ person is coming out when they decide, in their own personal time and with their own personal terms, when to tell everybody about their identity or sexual and romantic orientation; 
• a LGBTQIA+ person being outed is a person exposed without their consent about their personal life, without their terms being considered and probably being put in huge risk. There are still a lot of discriminations against LGBTQIA+ people so that being outed could cost you your job, your safety at home and at school. 

Coming out should never be a forced act. 

Tricking

Another act of violence similar to the outing is the “tricking”, in which the person belonging to the LGBTQIA+ community is forced to come out. Tricking is a subtle and manipulative way of targeting LGBTQIA+ people.

In fact, it’s important to clarify that coming out is not necessary for you to be validated as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. There are a lot of personal and contextual reasons why you could not be safe in doing that and nobody should press you to perform a coming out. Who you are and who you’re attracted to are still valid even though you’re not out publicly. A truly respectful community is the one that opens up to a point where even the coming out itself should not be necessary, because all of the normativities as we know have been dismantled and everyone is respected no matter what their gender identity or sexual and romantic orientation are.

Misgendering

Misgendering is when someone repeatedly and/or purposely address trans* people (in the broad definition mentioned before) with the wrong pronouns.

Elected names and pronouns are the ones trans* people choose to express their identity, and should always be respected. Unfortunately, things do not always go that way: people could get uncomfortable with your identity and could refuse to respect your name or your pronouns in order to establish their point of view over yours; that’s active transphobic discrimination. Of course, not everyone who mistakes names or pronouns does it purposely: it’s a matter of getting used to them and to recall the right ones, but it’s important to make an effort to learn and memorize them.  

Passing

Passing, in the context of LGBTQIA+ people has the meaning of passing as/passing for someone who’s not belonging to the LGBTQIA+ community. Passing is based on stereotypical gendered expectations and social normativities. For instance: your sexual and/or romantic orientation is not heterosexual/heteroromantic. Since we do not walk by with a target on us expliciting “I’m bisexual/pansexual/asexual” (or biromantic, panromantic, aromantic) and so on, people will assume you’re heterosexual/romantic because you’re passing as such, since the norm given as default is the heterosexuality.

Things are getting more complicated and dangerous when it comes about trans* people: for those who start any kind of affirmation path (medical, hormonal, surgical), it could happen that their bodies change due to the therapy; these changings expose them to constant judgment from other people, targeting them. This is not just unfair (as no one has the right to judge other people’s appearances), but dangerous for them in a society that’s starting now to understand existences beyond gender binary and stereotypical gender expressions. 

Racialization and LGBTQIA+ people

As in many other environments, also in the LGBTQIA + community, racialized people face intersectional discriminations: racism and homolesbobiatransphobia (go to module 5 to learn more about intersectionality). This is due to limited representation and stereotypes based on sexism and racism which result in racial fetishization, invisibilization and exclusion. Yet the fight against LGBTQ+phobia and racism seems disconnected.

With regards to gay men, Damien Trawalé explains that contrary to representations of men perceived as black, hypersexualized and over-virilized, men’s homosexuality is often vulnerabilized, fragile and feminized. Connected to this, is the racism and racial fethicization experienced by many gay men on dating apps. Miguel Shema on his Instagram profile (@pracisees_vs_grindr) calls out this kind of discrimination. 

The LGBTQIA+ struggle is also often instrumentalized to carry out racist and anti-migration rethorics. We can refer to this as homonationalism. Some european political parties (often far-right, but not exclusively) say that migrants and racialized people do not share the same values as European and Western countries in terms of individual freedom of people socialized as  women and LGBTQIA+, and criminalize them in the public discourse as potential perpetrators of misoginist and homolesbobitransphobic behaviors. The same happens with femonationalism: the instrumentalization of feminist struggles for racist ends, for example in the islamophobic rhetoric against the hijab.  

In reality there are many social environments that aren’t part of the “west”, in which the narratives around the gender binary are much less rigid and more fluid than the western ones.

The role of social media in understanding gender

Thanks to the internet and social networks, nowadays there are more opportunities to get in touch with experiences, materials and stories that help you widely open up your ideas of the meaning of gender. The direct testimonies given on social media (through written posts on Facebook and Instagram, or via videos on TikTok) allow people within the LGBTQIA+ community and also whoever is outside of it to have clearer ideas about the topics from an insight perspective, facilitating two main things: 

• For the people who start to resonate with the community to feel seen and included; 
• For those belonging in the normativities to learn and debunk some of the stereotypes and biases mentioned before. 

As mentioned elsewhere in this guide, the Internet is a multifaceted place where we’re still learning how to behave and coexist and it’s not always a safe place (see more on this topic in module 3 – GBV). At the same time, fortunately, there are more and more positive representations of people outside gender norms (e.g. Theo Putnam in “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”, many characters in “Sex Education”, etc.). More and more celebrities are coming out and taking on this role of representation too: Bilal Hassani, Moon (drag race France), Sam Smith,Kim Petras, M.J. Rodriguez (“Pose”) etc. And there are many local and national structures to support LGBTQIA+ people in their transitions, supporting them in moving away from abusive domestic situations, or giving them all the tools and information to understand better and acknowledge their needs. The more people are in contact with these representations, the easier it will be for them to understand and accept the differences around them.

We’re still lacking queer representations, and especially positive ones, where queer characters don’t limit themselves to their queerness. It’s just as important to show that they aren’t just defined by that, and their lives aren’t just made up of obstacles and discrimination.