Like a Human
The disruption of a system built on social constructs.
It was one of the best Christmas gifts I had ever received- the Slime Pit from He-Man and The Masters of the Universe. As I look back on it now, this may have been the start of my Weird Barbie season. Bless my Peaches ‘n Cream Barbie and her slimy sea-green hair. She received no mercy from Dina, Barbie’s backup singer from her late 1980’s band, Barbie and the Rockers. My version of Dina was a bit evil, and I loved her for it. She was feminine, powerful, and had the best blue eyeshadow. She defied pink Barbie, and I was here for it.
I digress.
My mother had a gift-giving tradition of buying my sister and me one “boy” toy every Christmas. There was the Slime Pit, the skateboard, a pogo stick, and the blue boy’s 10-speed bike, which I completely adored.
As a child, I knew these gifts were meant for boys, and on some level, I knew why Elaine (yes, I call my mother by her first name, who knows why) gave them to us. As an adult, I asked her why she gave her girls toys from the blue aisle. She said, “I wanted y’all to be balanced.”
None of my friends ever questioned why I got a Masters of the Universe Slime Pit. In fact, I got extra cool points from Matt M. and Danny W. Two neighborhood boys I rode my boy bike with, but I never wondered if they got Barbie’s Glamour Bath and Shower set. Somehow, I knew that would never happen. Somehow, I knew that would be ridiculous.
I knew this because two phrases in this world define the strong and the weak. They drown the world in stereotypes and expectations.
Like a man
Like a girl
Isn’t it curious that one phrase gets the leveling up of adulthood while the other will forever be a child?
These phrases have very different meanings, as one is a compliment and the other an insult. There is no need to explain further. You know what I am talking about, a point proven by the systematic degradation of all things female. I recently learned there was a word for this - Femmephobia: systematic devaluation of femininity, by policing feminine qualities as they correspond with the dominant culture.
This week on Stark Conversations, I am talking with Samantha Martin, founder of Femmish, a research-based nonprofit focused on deconstructing the biases against the free expression of feminine qualities in all people.
Samantha is sharp. Her evidenced-backed words come rapid fire and land thickly in the heart of logic and common sense. She comes prepared to advocate for the acceptance of all humanity. Samantha bends to understand where people are coming from. Still, she won’t let that be an excuse to harbor a bias that oppresses any spirit who expresses a love of femininity - whether that spirit has male or female sex chromosomes or a combination of both.
Talking to Samantha is easy. All you need to do is listen. She brings the data. As she speaks, the way she say systematic lands like an anchor in my mind. It detours my thoughts to Dr. Bettina Aptheker’s extensive definition of feminism: Feminism means that women shall have at least as much to say as men about everything in the arrangement of human affairs, including especially the meaning, purpose, and activities of their own lives.
The system was set up for women to remain silent about the affairs of our lives.
Dr. Aptheker breaks this immense sentence into digestible pieces, pulling it apart and delivering it to the world in bricks of action-packed wisdom. In an incredibly inclusive part of Dr. Aptheker’s definition, she writes: Feminism embraces the fluidity of gender, and the right of people to pursue transgender identities and practices in accord with their propensities and wishes, free from all forms of discrimination, censure, and reprisal.
Samantha backs this work up. She pokes at the system.
As she explains the mission and research of Femmish, I am reminded how the absence of information creates illogical opinions and faulty assumptions. The uninformed brain leads to a bigoted, racist, sexist, classist, ageist, and religiocentrism society.
Oh, anyone else feeling a jolt of familiarity?
I will bend (like Samantha) to understand that our foremothers and fathers did the best they could with what little information they had. However, the key word here is “little.” Much of what is preached today and used as evidence that “women are the lesser vessel,” or the idea of only two immovable genders, is based upon books and information from hundreds, dare I say thousands of years ago. By the sheer fact of when they were born, the men who invented gender did not have the knowledge and understanding that we do today. They knew very little about the body and human psyche. And they knew nothing about the female experience.
The system was built to ignore women and make them the less desirable sex.
But sex is not gender.
Systematic. The anchor starts to lift.
One of the theories man got wrong, was the idea that sex chromosomes dictates how someone expresses themselves. But the way we dress and interact in the world is based on social expectations.
Sex chromosomes are biology, gender was invented by man- therefore a social construct. People created the idea that XY wears pants and XX wears a dress.
Samantha’s mission supports nature’s sense of balance and freedom of expression. She creates space for people to align with what feels correct within their spirit, femininity is for all who want to embrace it, and it is not the lesser of two. It is the equal of all. The rest of the opinionated souls can step back.
Samantha’s evidence-based research can help you understand this. She is reworking a crooked system.
When we round this conversation back to its starting point of femmephobia, we have to admit it is a peculiar thing to want women to embrace femininity and then use it as a launching point to devalue and degrade. Samantha’s intellect wraps itself around the hypocrisy of a double standard. She crushes it, exposing its flaws in logic.
However, if one is still unconvinced that femininity is just as great as masculinity and refuses to let go of stereotypes or the belief that human bodies with XY chromosomes shouldn’t be able to wear high heels, makeup and wigs, then please take a stroll with me through history. We are going to do a bit of research — Samantha style.
We will start with blue and pink.
In 1918, pink was considered an appropriate color for boys, and blue was considered feminine.
Stepping back further into time, men were the first to wear high heels. They wore makeup, wigs and corsets. Their clothing was ruffled and brocaded. Men wore their hair long and often tied back. However, the Victorian crown and church decided makeup was devilish for a man. They wanted a clear division between the sexes, so wives stopped sharing rogue with their husbands.
We’ll continue our historical journey with the church.
Let's not get wrapped up in the argument that the church made this decision because God ordained it to be so. The church of the Renaissance and Victorian Eras was not in the interest of saving souls. It was in the practice of producing profit, evidenced by the creation of monetary Indulgences for the forgiveness of sins one had yet to commit, all in support of Pope Leo X’s lavish lifestyle.
Society uses the ideas of God Almighty dipped in a defunct theory of science to claim gender and sex are forever bound to one another, and women must submit to men. Holy men invoked nature as evidence that God made gender is immovable. But they fail to do their research. If they had, they would find that Nature isn’t concerned with gender. Some plants and animals can transition between roles of reproduction. Nature shifts to find its balance, and the world keeps turning.
A system rights itself.
We’ll end our journey with a life lesson.
Humanity asks that you trust in one another’s experiences. And who are we to not? Who knows more about one’s experience than the spirit who has lived it, thought about it, and is willing to be vulnerable and brave enough to defy society and present as it feels is only natural? Let
humans be who they feel they are meant to be without systematically devaluing them. Your opinion does not belong inside another’s experience.
When we do what feels natural, we align with our purpose. Finding this alignment means we are balanced, just as Elaine wanted her daughters to be.
So, to recap, there is no:
Like a man
Or
Like a woman
There is only an alignment of the two that balances out however, a spirit needs to balance. The system works for all. So, in the end, there is only-
Like a human