Some years ago, when I was younger and more curious, I was doing a bit of “research” for a story I was considering writing—in this case, I was performing a thought experiment. I had given the situation some thought, myself, but wanted to know what other people might have to say. So I went around asking people a fairly simple question; it went something like this:
It is fairly well accepted that historically, our society has been a patriarchy. That is, men have overwhelmingly controlled the majority of economic, political, and social power through much of known history. However, what do you think the world would be like today if instead, it had been a matriarchy? That is, if women had controlled the majority of economic, political, and social power through history, instead?
I asked this question of a fair number of people, and soon found myself intrigued by the answers I received. I asked more people, continuing to be interested in their answers. Even now, it is a question I still ask people from time to time—although not as often, as most people do not respond with anything I haven’t heard before.
Now, to be clear, the only difference I was attempting to intimate in my question was that women ran society instead of men. In effect, I was asking what people thought the differences between men and women were, especially when those people were in power. What are the intrinsic traits of being male? What are the intrinsic traits of being female? What are the differences? That is essentially what I was driving at, though I couched it in a somewhat more elaborate question (and one that might potentially avoid a kneejerk reaction).
It is worth noting that some people, upon being asked this question, immediately disagreed with the premise. They argued that our society has not historically been a patriarchy, and so the question is pointless. While I to an extent think some of their points have merit, I still find the contest irrelevant to the point I was driving at. Yes, many men historically might have been the public figures and their wives might have had a fair amount of control over their actions, but such argumentation really does nothing to answer my question. So to these people, I would attempt to find some other way of asking the question (or get dragged into a discussion of historical societies), as the argument over the existence of historical patriarchy is uninteresting to me. (For those curious as to my views: I do think historically society has been primarily patriarchial in nature, but I do not think it is quite as bad and oppressive as many modern authors would like to imply; this is not a discussion I typically care to delve into).
Upon getting beyond that (admittedly rare) sticking point, there was one other group who disagreed with the question: they claimed that a matriarchy was physiologically impossible. Either arguing that “it’s the way God made us” or using biology and psychology, a group (larger than I expected) argued against the premise of the question. Essentially, the claim was that even if for a short while women were to take control, it would relatively soon revert to being the men again, and that a patriarchy is inevitable. I do not particularly see the value in discussing that line of thinking, but rather, consider it an example of what I began to find to be a repeated pattern among respondents. What seemed to be the case among most (although not all) of the people I asked was essentially a projection: they concluded that a matriarchy would be exactly like their idealized concept of what it meant “to be female”.
And thus, the trouble starts, to my mind. There were some who claimed that in a matriarchy, abortions and birth control would be perfectly legal (because the current patriarchy is what is opposing those things)—and there were some who claimed that in a matriarchy, neither of those would exist (because babies are important to every woman). Some people argued that there would be utopian peace (since women never fight) and others who argued that there would be more war than exists in the world today (because women are backstabbers and hold grudges). The key thing I noticed here is that these responses are independent of the sex of the respondent. Indeed, all four of those responses and their arguments come from women. Women can’t even decide what it means to “be a woman”!
This example (albeit a bit protracted) demonstrates the problem of identity. As should be evidenced by my “Who am I?” page, there are a fairly large number of groups with whom I identify. Some of them are by biological accident (my sex and race, for instance), others by choice (my career and interests). And for many of them, at least one person has stood up and proclaimed “I am an X!” as though this particular X was entirely indicative of a mode of thought or of identity.
I choose women in my particular example because of my experience in the issue (by asking questions). I have also seen it for race, for sexual orientation, for country affiliations, for interests, and for even more ludicrous things. Indeed, the phrase “I am woman, hear me roar” is fairly well-known. As though being a woman encapsulated the entire identity. You can tell from the way I ended that introduction page that I do not particularly think identifying oneself as one particular group is a good idea. To me, it is folly, because it cheats that person.
Let us for a moment entertain the theoretical person who proclaims “I am homosexual!” as their entire identity. (Note that not everyone who says this makes this claim; admitting to being homosexual is one thing—I am specifically talking about those people who use that argument as to why they act the way they do outside of the bounds of their romantic entanglings). That person is making a claim that because s/he is homosexual, there is something inherent that you can know about his/her personality.
But let us look more closely at homosexuality. As last I paid attention to the landscape (which I concede to be some years ago), a general scientific consensus on why some people are homosexual is not entirely extant. While some have found potential genetic links, it is at most a handful of genes. Others speculate random chance, and others speculate psychological catalysts (a poor relationship with a parent is a particularly popular one). If it is genetic or random, neither of those is powerful enough to force a particular worldview upon the bearer. Even psychological reasons are hardly sufficient—the survivors of the terrorist attacks on September 11th are in disagreement over many things, from the reaction of the United States to how history books should treat the event. It seems ludicrous to think of homosexuality to be the one psychological cause that induces a rigidity of thought. Similar arguments can be made over race—even fewer, since no decent psychologist argues that race is caused by anything in psychology; it is an entirely genetic thing.
“But!” the skeptic would argue, “Certainly culture has a lot to do with it! You are right that biology itself does not cause it, but the way they are treated by society and the culture they have developed does! It is that culture that causes the identity!” And to an extent I cannot disagree. There is, for instance, a culture of education that many Asian families have: one that heavily encourages study and learning. It should come as no surprise (our skeptic would gleefully point out) that many Asian people therefore believe heavily in study and learning. I have found that this is, to an extent, the case. I have also met a number of Asians who disagree with this point of view, despite having grown up with it as their culture. And some who are ambivalent.
Certainly even homosexuals have some unifying aspect to their culture. It isn’t through interests or beliefs (as homosexuals come from a wide variety of backgrounds). The example, instead, that likely flies to mind is that of gay marriage. “Obviously, every homosexual would be for gay marriage!” our skeptic would say. And yet, there are some who are not. They are admittedly fairly rare, but there are some. Politically, it is true that many homosexuals follow the Democrat party—but there are those who are also Republicans. In fact, I can think of no one view that every homosexual person I have met agrees upon. They are as varied as, well, non-homosexual people.
Now, this may be seen as an attack on homosexuality; I hardly mean it as such. I respect homosexuals, especially in light of some of the things they have to deal with from society, and I respect the choice (or the biological mandate; there is no good way to phrase this that leaves it entirely scientifically open) of homosexual people. What I am instead attacking are people who form their entire identity around their homosexuality; such a behavior borders on intellectual suicide to me.
Homosexuality is also an easy target, because we don’t know what causes it, or if it is indeed a conscious choice. Let us then return to the nature of being female. This is a trickier issue because there are physiological differences between men and women. First and foremost is the simple genetic fact that women have two X chromosomes, while men have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome (I am skipping over the known biological deviances from this for simplicity as opposed to bias). It is this genetic difference that explains why men are more likely to go bald, be colorblind, or have haemophilia. There are also hormonal differences between men and women: men have more testosterone than women, and women have more estrogen than men (on average, in both cases). And so on.
These physiological differences between men and women could serve as an argument that there may indeed be something unifying about being a woman, or being a man. Yet, as my example above concludes, if there is something unifying, neither women nor men can identify it. Some women would say that the act of motherhood binds all women together, but I have met women who claim it did not. Some men would claim that being able to urinate while standing up is a bonding experience (despite the fact that this is not exactly a male-only trait) even though other men shy away from this and are embarrassed.
Indeed, in any (significantly large) group of people with a unifying trait, be it sex, race, interests, or anything, I think that people are different. There will be no one prevailing opinion. There will be nothing that everyone will be able to agree on. People are people.
This is not to rule out the influencing effect of people’s traits and background. A male is treated differently at many stores than a female. Presents given to girls are different than those given to boys—even by people who are completely unaware of what sorts of people the girls or boys are. Homosexual people are ridiculed for their romantic desires far more than heterosexual people. Caucasian customers are treated differently when buying food from an Asian market than other Asian people are. The experiences we have most certainly affect us and change us, and our physical traits influence the experiences we have. Because of our choices are the people we end up meeting and therefore the friends we end up making. Our interests change what literature we read, what movies we see, and what opinions we consider. These things do have an effect on us, and I do not want to belittle that.
On the other hand, we are so much more than those things. If someone treats us rudely, we can choose not to act rudely back. We can choose not to pay attention to people fawning over our looks. We can choose not to purchase products, or not to socialize with certain people. When we claim that our traits define us, we limit ourselves. We prevent ourselves from stepping out of that rigid definition we set for ourselves of what that trait means, and stunt our growth as people.
To an extent, I feel this with such emotional charge that it is difficult to argue rationally. I consider it a horrendous travesty to limit oneself, to build mental walls over what is and is not accomplishable simply because of some physical trait. To claim something as impossible simply based on what other people have told us in the past. It feels like a tragedy, to me, when people use their genes and their lives as excuses, attempting to explain away all of their problems and all of their behaviors on something they had no control over—when it is their very choice how to react to all of that. “Why,” I wonder with a nod to Robert Browning, “would people want to limit themselves? Shouldn’t our reaches exceed our grasps? What else is a heaven for?”
And so I find identity to be a problematic thing. It is certainly true that we are affected by many things we have no control over: our genes, our experiences. To define ourselves by one of these genes, by one of these experiences, is to limit our ability to expand our knowledge, to expand our thoughts. It very much feels to me as though it prevents our ability to become better people. And this, to me, is a great tragedy. So I will state this, because it is what I do truly believe: We are more than the sum of our parts; to be anything less is to cheat ourselves.