Gender studies is
a perfectly respectable area of social study in academia, first coming to
prominence in West Indian intellectual circles in the 1970s and 1980s and
continuing. It approaches our
deep-rooted gender inequalities in the Caribbean demonstrated, for example, in
the types of jobs women are in. It
studies and explains sexism, racism, classism, and other systemic
inequalities. It attempts to explain the
irony of the patriarchy coexisting within a system of matriarchal families, and
our long tradition of female economic autonomy.
Distinguished Caribbean
academics such as Christine Barrow, Edith Clarke, Keith Hart, Donna P Hope, Patricia
Mohammed, Rhoda Reddock, Olive Senior, Catherine Shepherd, Raymond Smith, and Kevin
Yelvington, to mention a few, have researched how sexual orientation and gender
in the West Indies are conceived, studied, discussed, and experienced.
There are hundreds
of books and dozens of academic journal articles on the subject. “The Caribbean Review of Gender Studies”,
is a highly thought of journal of the University of the West Indies, focusing
on publishing research on gender studies.
Perhaps the most
threatening area of all this research has been the study of how dominant
masculinity has persisted and resisted the extending of civil rights to
women. The patriarchy is not happy with
gender studies.
The result in
recent years has been a public onslaught on the so-called “gender ideology”. These attacks are backed by extremist
Christian and Muslim clerics and organisations.
The one thing these groups agree on is that the traditional family is
under attack. They believe children in
the classroom are being indoctrinated to become homosexuals, and that “gender”
is a dangerous, if not diabolical, ideology threatening to destroy families,
local cultures, civilization, and even “man” himself.
Evangelicals and
other fundamentalists make such incendiary claims to defeat what they see as
“gender ideology” or “gender studies”.
They object to “gender” because it is said to deny biological sex, and
it undermines the natural or divine character of the traditional family. They fear that, if we start thinking along
gender lines, men will lose their dominant positions. They believe that children are being told to
change genders. They preach that our
children are actively being recruited by gay and trans people, and our boys and
girls are being pressured to declare themselves as gay in educational settings
where an open discourse about gender is caricatured as a form of indoctrination.
These extremists
worry that if something called “gender” is socially accepted, a flood of sexual
perversions, including bestiality and paedophilia, will be unleashed upon the
earth. Anyone who listened to or
participated in the Constitutional Reform Town Hall Meetings held in Anguilla
over the past several weeks, will recognise this language. It captures the rhetoric and the reasoning used
by the Christian fundamentalists who addressed the meetings. Our Christian fundamentalists make the outlandish
demand that any new Constitution must contain a clause confirming that the only
marriage that will ever be recognised in Anguilla is one between a man and a
woman.
The
principal aim of this woman-hating and homophobic movement is to oppose
progressive legislation won in the last decades by the gay, lesbian and
feminist movements all over the world.
In attacking “gender” they oppose reproductive freedom for women and the
rights of single parents. They oppose
protection for women against rape and domestic violence. They deny the legal and social rights of
homosexuals. They oppose legal and
institutional safeguards against gender discrimination. They support conversion therapy, forced
psychiatric internment, brutal physical harassment, the killing of gays, and
the criminalisation of abortion.
It
is easy enough to debunk and even ridicule many of the claims that are made
against gender studies or gender identity, since they are based on thin caricatures. The truth is there is no single concept of
gender. Gender studies is a complex and
internally diverse field that includes a wide range of scholars. It does not deny sex, nor does it threaten
any unbigoted male. It tends to ask how
sex is established, through what medical and legal frameworks. It explains how our understanding of sex has
changed through time. It examines what
difference it makes to the social organization of our world to disconnect the
sex assigned at birth from the life that follows, including matters of work and
love.
We
generally think of sex assignment as happening once. But what if it is a complex and revisable
process, reversible in time for those who have been wrongly assigned? To argue this way is not to take a position
against science, but only to ask how science and law enter the social
regulation of identity. “But there are
two sexes!” Generally, yes, but even the
ideals of two distinct forms of male and female that govern our everyday
conceptions of sex are in many ways disputed by science. Research has shown how vexed and
consequential sex assignment can be.
Fundamentalists
and extremists claim that the very concept of “gender” is an attack on
Christianity or traditional Islam. They
accuse those who discuss “gender” of discriminating against their religious
beliefs. And yet, it is evident that the
enemies of freedom do not come from the outside. Acceptance of blind dogma is to be found on
the side of the would-be censors.
Opponents
of “gender” seek recourse in the Bible and Koran to defend their views about
the natural hierarchy between men and women.
They push the distinctive values of masculine and feminine (although
progressive theologians have pointed out that these are based on debatable
readings of the early texts). They claim
that assigned sex is divinely declared, suggesting that contemporary biologists
and medical doctors are curiously in the service of 13th-century theology.
Chromosomal
and endocrinological differences complicate the binarism of sex. The evidence is that sex assignment is sometimes
revisable. The anti-gender advocates
wrongfully claim that “gender ideologists” deny the material differences
between men and women.
The
anti-gender movement is not a conservative position with a clear set of
principles. It is a fascist trend. It mobilizes a range of rhetorical strategies
from across the political spectrum to maximize the fear of infiltration and
destruction that comes from a diverse set of economic and social forces. It does not strive for consistency, for its
incoherence is part of its power.
It
is depressing to see that there are even a few women who have joined this
homophobic, misogynistic, and anti-liberal movement. No freedom loving Anguillian should be
opposed to gays and lesbians having the same marriage rights as we
heterosexuals. Thankfully, there is hope
in the coming generation of leaders.
They generally do not subscribe to two-thousand-year-old views on sex
and gender. As always, the youth are the
future.[1]
[1]
With thanks to an article by Judith Butler, visiting distinguished
professor of philosophy at the New School University in New York, and published
in the Guardian Newspaper of 23 October 2021, the source of much of this
article: (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2021/oct/23/judith-butler-gender-ideology-backlash).
