In class this week Dr. J responded to part of the conversation about Elyse's universe by stating that it would be likely that most people, in a world in which everyone is born ambiguously sexed, would recognize that gender and sex are social constructs. I responded with a doubt, and I'd like to delve a little deeper into that doubt in this blog post.
Firstly, as I said in class, I don't think that the possibility that once a person picked their gender, people would retroactively assign a "natural" cause for whatever selection he or she or (n/a) picked. In my experience studying the history of race and racial conflict, especially within the United States, the case has often been that portions of society view things like the correlation between being a minority and going to prison or having lower test scores empirically; this generally involves a lack of sophisticated reflection on past circumstances and their subsequent power structures. Is it hypocritical if I chalk this down to human nature?
Put more simply, is it ridiculous to think that it is human nature to wrongly assign race/gender stereotypes to human nature? Seems kind of ironic...
Regardless, especially considering Elyse's universe as one that starts tomorrow with all of our current social structures intact (I'm not actually sure if that detail was ever laid out in class), I feel quite confident that people would continue to essentialize gender, even in the face of the new overwhelming and overt evidence that it is merely a socially created category.
Obviously there would be a difference if, perhaps, we considered Elyse's project in terms of race. Basically, children would be born into our world (with all of its unique racial hierarchies and whatnot) would be some sort of brownish median color. Then, with no health consequences, they are allowed to pick the racial/ethnic group that they want to join. This is a little more complicated than picking a sex, but you get the idea: hair, eye color, skin color, average height, etc. would morph into something within the recognizable range of whichever group the person picks.
Wait... this might not make sense. I think I will appeal to the comment section to help flesh out my race-based version of Elyse's universe- if such an idea is possible without contradicting everything we know about the genetic fallacies of race. Elyse! Do you think this is possible? If it is, I think it could be a useful tool for better understanding the hypothetical universes that we constructed on Thursday.
I'm not completely sure that I understand the scenario. But if I do, I think that, just like you said about gender, people would still essentialize race. Even if everybody appeared to be the same race, people would judge you/discriminate against you based on whatever race you chose to be. If I am misunderstanding the question and/or qualifications, let me know!
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh I love these hypothetical worlds! I think the idea of people choosing their own race is interesting, but I don't think it would ever work (besides obvious reasons). And at what age would we choose our race/ethnic group? Would we get to choose whenever we felt the urge, or would there be a designated age? And if we did get to choose whenever we felt like it, what age (like we discussed concerning real life intersex people and their decision, if it wasn't made for them as a child) is too early?
ReplyDeleteI think what would quickly happen is that everyone would choose a random skin color to begin with, and then procreate with someone of similar skin color or the same ethnicity. They would have children who would grow up around and be influenced by the people that had the child (who, once again, would most likely be the same skin color), and the child would probably choose the same skin color/ethnicity as their parents. Thus, I think this scenario could potentially be even harder to escape than the one we have now. We take skin color for granted, as something that can't be controlled. But make it something that CAN be controlled, and it puts that much more emphasis on it. It kind of reminds me of picking a sorority during rush. A lot of girls are legacies in a sorority, which means that their mom or grandmother (sometimes both) were also in that particular sorority when they were in college. This plays a huge part in which sorority girls pick. I've talked to multiple girls who chose the sorority their mother was a part of, even if they didn't feel at home or particularly like the girls in the house, simply because her mother would have been incredibly disappointed (and sometimes genuinely angry) had she chosen a different sorority. While this seems kind of silly in comparison, if girls take choosing a sorority this seriously, can you imagine how people would react to choosing something as definite and defining as race? Then again, I could be wrong and people could end up going the opposite direction and taking race way less seriously than they currently do. That's the beauty of parallel universes.
I think I would pick to live in Henry Universe over the other two options laid out in class. In class, I chose to live in our current universe over living in the binary-driven Phong Universe or the ambiguous universe Elyse designed. I did this because, although I was clear about what the pill did to our biological sex, what did it do to our sexuality? Would every human automatically become attracted to those who are sexually ambiguous? What about people genuinely prefer one sex or the other or even both sexes but not both sex organs on the same body? And the completely binary world is obviously very problematic as well-- gender norms that exist in our world would only be amplified when there was not even a chance that babies would be born intersex.
ReplyDeleteBut, a world where everyone is racially ambiguous seems appealing to me. Maybe it is just in my experience, but I have never heard someone claim (at least out loud) that they are strictly attracted to one race or another. Granted, that would be extremely frowned upon if someone did say that. Are we moving towards a world where one day it will be frowned upon to say you are only attracted to one gender? Will our children's children still date the opposite sex out of habit but never say that they wouldn't date a member of their same sex (I know a lot of people who haven't dated someone of a different race, but that certainly does not mean that they wouldn't). It's definitely an interesting conversation to have.
I actually think this would be a lovely universe to live in. I, unlike Emiko, think that if this universe had no preconceived notions of beauty, race, etc..., mate preference would be fairly distributed and children would choose different races from their parents with reasonable frequency. I think attraction has much less to do with how one looks him/herself but rather the society he/she is raised within. Caucasian people brought up in Africa are often times very attracted to African men. Many non-Caucasians who live in Europe and America are attracted to Caucasians people. A Peruvian person will probably not be attracted a Japanese one from lack of exposure. My Indian grandfather found Russians to be very beautiful people in his younger days but only after spending some time there. Under a similar presumption that the race one personally wants to choose will be mainly dictated by the society he or she is brought up around, I think children will just choose races that appeal to them, irregardless of their parents choices. If all these people enter race without preconceived notions, race will become a more dynamic, individualized idea, like getting some sort of super tattoo. However, this entire conception could fall privy to chaos theory like problems where small differences in the initial condition can cause much grander effects down the road. For example, lets say someone in this first batch of people was a great inventor. People in the future are going to be more inclined to choose the race she chose, thus leading to non uniform distribution in race preference, which will give higher statistical probability of someone great coming out of this race because more people are entering it than other races, and so on; the effect creates a positive feedback loop. In the end, I actually think its pretty much impossible to create a bias free system unless we somehow separate all babies at birth and give them no history of the past, which is ridiculous.
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