Gender as a loaded question

Up until earlier this afternoon, I was of the opinion that my beliefs were half-formed inasmuch as gender and gender studies were concerned and, for the purpose of decision-making, ignorable. However, after a short discussion with a friend of mine, NP, I realized that I did have something to say. Worse, not only did I have something to say, but I was apparently saying things that were “evolved”, or well-formed. That makes me sad (because even without as much forethought, I had opinions more rigid than the others that NP had spoken to).

One more thing. Once the discussion concluded, however, it struck me that I’d observed that most of NP’s questions were loaded. For example, her first question was this: “Would you marry a woman who earns more than you?” This question assumes that the woman’s income is a factor in me making my decision. If I’d said “Yes”, I would’ve ended up acknowledging that I would have considered her earnings before arriving at a decision – irrespective of the outcome. If I’d said “No”, it would have been a simple refusal of commitment solely on the basis of something I’m sure I’m not acknowledging in the first place.

Because I was her friend and was having the conversation informally, I could clarify, saying, “That’s a loaded question. The question should have been: Do a prospective bride’s earnings matter if you had to decide whether you wanted to marry her or not?” If it had been someone else, someone who didn’t have the liberty to scratch the question and see through what the questioner was going for, the study’s results would have come out nice and biased. “Would you be OK with staying at home and taking care of the babies” was the other question that assumed too much, though not as much the first one. I wouldn’t mind at all, but I don’t want babies!

NP was only being curious, attempting to give form to something she’d already thought about. They seemed like loaded questions to me because I wasn’t sure in the beginning as to what she was thinking, and once that became clear, I could come clean. My caution is only directed at those who are concerned with field-work and surveys.

Anyway, the rest of the discussion proceeded smoothly, and was a bit of an eye-opener for me (like I said earlier). It jumped from one point to another and achieved coherence towards the end, so I’m going to just copy and paste the edited conversation here. As a primer: I explore the notion of gender as performance. It most definitely isn’t a new thing but it feels like it is, perhaps simply because not many people see it that way.

NP: Do you think today women have become more aggressive and dictate how a relationship plays out?

Me: In some cases, yes. Let me divide it into three categories. 1. The relationship is egalitarian, where both partners dictate what's happening. 2. The woman is aggressive and wants to dictate more of what's going on for reasons other than what constitute a relationship. 3. The woman is aggressive and wants to dictate more of what's going on for reasons within the relationship - these are subjective cases.

I think #1 is more often noted than #2. However, #1 would also mean the woman's role in the relationship has advanced toward the front, which I think is what you were gunning for.

NP: Why I am asking is, often men today seem really out of depth when dealing with women and what they want. So what I want to know is, why that is? Is it because the women are more vocal today and aren't shy about asking for things?

Me: Men are finding spaces which they used to assert their masculinity in being invaded by women, and that's troubling. However, how they adapt to it makes the difference. If they understand that those spaces in the relationship that were once open to assertion are now gone because of reasons that have nothing to do with a "gender-based" role, then it's fine. That they don't is what causes attrition.

It's not just being vocal - being vocal constitutes the establishment of an identity in spoken terms, in terms of an identity. There are other things that constitute that identity, and those are what I refer to when I say spaces.

NP: like what?

Me: Like the girl earning more than the guy.

NP: But what I am asking you is how you see men negotiating this change? Do you think these are issues that still bother men: urban, educated men?

Me: As far as I'm speaking for myself: I’d like see gender as performance. Gender is not just in the genitals but also in the mind, and if a girl chooses to live like a boy, it is her choice. In that case, however, I don't expect anything from that person.

NP: So to you it’s a non-issue…

Me: To me, gender is not a fixture of society. It was at a point, but in seeing gender as a choice - in seeing gender as coming with a set of decisions that some women are conditioned to make every day in one particular way - I can understand if some other women choose to play their gender-character differently. At the same time, because women play their roles differently, it is also necessary that I engage with my spaces differently. And that's why I say I don't care if my partner earns more than me or if she wants to go to work while I stay home and cook. I don't see earning or cooking as being the definition of what makes me me, just as I don't see earning or cooking as what makes her her.

On The Reawakening Of Dreams

As I was writing the entrance test that’s part of my application to the Columbia University today, my flow was broken, nay individuated, by the third and last question in the paper: “If given one month to report on a topic, what would the topic be? How would you go about studying and reporting it, and what media would you use to garner the maximum width of audience? Ensure that you don’t exceed 500 words.”

Of course, the last line was a terrible jolt to me; since I wasn’t being allowed to use the word-count companion, I began to type slowly, deliberately, counting each word as I put it down. Looking up at the clock, I saw that I had some 30 minutes remaining before the time would be up. I stopped typing and paused to think.

What would I report on? I had known the answer to that one for some four years, “The Impact Of Languages On Society”, but I could not go beyond thewhat of it all. You see, since the time I had completely structured the dream, per se, for myself, a lot of things had changed – the answers to most, if not all, of thehows had assumed different shapes and, with them, the whys, too. For example, if I were to present any statistical data after sampling and surveying (the methods for which have not changed significantly in a long time), I would have done so with tables with a small write-up accompanying each table. Now, I’ll have the tables, yes, but they wouldn’t be the nadirs of my hypotheses. Now, I have the Google Trendalyzer – more recently, it powered the Google Zeitgeist – together with Hans Rosling‘s Gapminder. With the coming of opportunities in programming and data visualization, the gap between raw data and the intended conclusion may have changed for the better. However, by being allowed to assume multiple perspectives with unchanging ease, the width of the audience that understood the praxis grew because the solution was now compatible with all the different ways in which the problem was being perceived by different people.

 

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Prof. Rosling"][/caption]

 

With that also increased involvement: presenting problems and solutions as seemingly dissociated elements only alienates the target audience because a) they feel excluded, b) they see no valid argument, or c) both. With the coming of Gapminder, which is a sterling example towards illustrating the consequential upgrading of perspectives it heralded (and, subsequently, the Trendalyzer), initiating increased audience participation became a 2-step process. In other words, affordable.

Soon, audience-participation and audience-inclusion was everywhere, eventually but quickly transcending crowd-sourcing into cloud-networking, where proactive attempts at bettering it only made it more intuitive. It was no longer necessary that I had to have all the resources to execute my projects; I could even be so much as a singular contributor – the plurality would be derived from a global network of research groups.

What did this mean for my hows? It meant that the long hours I had vouchsafed for perfect data representation had become short minutes, and I had time now to do so many other things – perhaps even spend them coming up with new ways to garner more meaningful data and chamfering the the conclusions. With more participation easierly (yeah, that’s a made-up word, but you get the semantic drift) available, undertaking standalone projects, or even aspiring to do so, would be foolish. In other words, unaffordable.

I went on to complete my paper so quickly that the examiner was surprised. I am sure I exceeded the word-limit but a few words, but I’m not worried. I’m sure they’ll get the point.

By widening the scope of the problem to include a malleated range of parameters to understand change at one end and widening the compatibility of solutions to address a longer list of issues at the other end, technology and the latitude of human thought have reawakened my dreams to a brighter world.