Gender and the pill

How people understand the concept of gender is a topic that fascinates me, and today I'm going to talk about how contraception has influenced our understanding of what gender means.

In the pre-scientific western world, and for many people today, gender was all about procreation and was essentially the same thing as physical sex (that's a whole 'nother post, and we'll get to that later.)  Men fathered babies, and women had babies.  Easy.  And like all simplistic explanations, it's incomplete and doesn't hold true in all circumstances.  But for most people biology was destiny and the world really did work that way.

The reason the world worked like that in so many cases was that people couldn't reliably control their fertility, but in 1960 the first contraceptive pills were approved for use and that began to change.

If you think about it for a while, you'll see that effective, readily available, relatively safe contraception is one of the most important inventions in human history.  In terms of the effect it has on how we live our lives, it's comparable to agriculture, antibiotics, and the internet.  Contraception allows us to fit procreation around all the other things we want to do in life, rather than having to fit our lives around any pregnancy we or our significant others happen to have.  It should be obvious that contraception has revolutionized women's lives in particular, and allowed us all a level of freedom our great-grandparents simply didn't have.

This is not just sexual freedom, it's also the freedom to define what gender means in ways that have nothing to do with reproduction.  Caring for children is no longer an inevitable part of womanhood, so we are free to explore definitions of womanhood that don't relate to childrearing at all.  We can also start to explore the idea that gender identity sometimes has nothing to do with our reproductive organs, and there are many different ways we can identify.  We aren't automatically stuck with one of two roles in life according to whether we have indoor or outdoor plumbing.

Yes, I know it's a silly pun, but it's better than a stock photo of some contraceptive pills, isn't it?

As far as most western societies are concerned, this is a new development.  It's so new that we've only just begun to explore it as a society, which is why many people today still see gender as a question of indoor versus outdoor plumbing.  To me, this is really exciting.  I can't wait to see how our understanding of what gender is evolves over the next 50 years.

The make-over of Merida

I feel kind of under pressure to put up a good first post. How does one kick off a blog? 

I thought about writing about myself. Despite being a terribly interesting trans queer type person I get the feeling that 'all me' trans blogs are pretty common. I want to do something a bit different to that. Certainly I have some stories to tell and I will be telling some of them. But I decided for this blog that I wanted to take a bunch of different kinds of queer voices to collaborate and share each of our own perspectives on life as a queer, trans, or otherwise people. 

To start I thought I might talk about Merida. Merida is the star of Disney Pixar movie called ‘Brave’. This is a story of a headstrong young Scots woman, proficient rider, archer, and experienced in wilderness survival. Brave is not about a girl in a hopeless situation that needs rescuing, but a girl in a situation that is partly her own making and it is up to her to sort it out. The main story in the movie is in many ways about a conflict between what a girl is expected to be and what a girl is – and this is shown in Merida’s relationship with her mum.

Disney is known for a raft of movies with beautiful and often helpless princesses just waiting for their prince to rescue them. In Brave, Merida out guns all the boys and rejects her arranged marriage. She is fiery, stubborn with a strong sense of self. In no way is she a ‘perfect princess’, or a perfect person, and I think that is partly what makes her really awesome.  She is in many ways very ‘real’.

The picture of Merida on the left is the original from the movie. She is wearing clothing that is pretty practical for the outdoors – a thick warm dress, nothing fancy. She is kitted out with her favorite bow given to her by her dad,and she is ready for action. She has the craziest wild hair of a girl who does not give a stuff about making it pretty.  Hey body looks much more realistically proportioned than a lot of other princesses. Her face is of the young girl she is – it is not an idealised beauty and actually is decidedly plain for your traditional Disney princess.  

Merida was just been crowned as Disney's 11^th princess, on the 11th of May no less, and the picture on the right is her animated character make-over for this occasion. 

Wtf Disney? Where is her bow?  Why is she now so skinny?  What happened to her can’t-give-a-stuff hair? What’s up with the huge eyes?  What is with the off the shoulder dress? Would Merida honestly want to look like this? I think she would be horrified. What message is this sending to girls? 

Actually I can easily guess why they re-made her this way. If you put her next to all the other princesses she sticks out. This is a way of fitting her in with the crowd, pulling her into the flock to make her everything the character hated. She outshines them all and shows them up to be stereotypes of femininity. Perhaps this was an attempt to put Merida in her place.

You know, normally I have a little bit of respect for Disney. I had a friend who was able to have their gender reassignment surgery courtesy of their employee health insurance. I think this is awesome in an American environment where most medical insurance providers don't cover this.  

The change in design just speaks to me of something I feel is happening everywhere. It seems to me that equality of people is under increasing attack – this is equality in terms of gender, race, and ‘class’ and freedom from religion. This is something I have observed in my lifetime.  It is like the ‘opposition’ is getting desperate and is redoubling its efforts to put people in their place?

I have so many questions - why do we still have religion? Why are women still not being payed the same amount as the equivalent male in a job? Why are kids still being abused? Why do some people think it is acceptable to rape someone for any reason? Why are childrens' toys and clothing becoming increasingly gendered and sexualised? Why do we keep electing government's whose only concern is the betterment of a small group at the detriment of everyone else? 

These are things I want love to explore in this blog. I also have my own thoughts on being a post op queer trans kinky person and some of the lessons I learnt in my journey. 

I hope to see you soon!

Blog Mistress Nicole