Sex and gender continue to be a surprising point of division. Surprising to me anyway.
The movement for equal rights for women stretches back more than 100 years. In the US, the Women’s Rights Movement marks July 13, 1848, as its birthdate. And it took more than 70 years from then for them to gain the vote nationally, only coming with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.
In the UK, while rare, some women had been able to vote up until the Great Reform Act of 1832 which then restricted the vote to “male persons”. In 1918, women over 30 gained the right to vote, though there were other conditions that applied. Only in 1928 did all British women get the vote on the same terms that applied to men.
So here we are in 2024 and we still don’t have true equality between men and women.
There’s still a gap in the pay between men and women in the UK. It’s most pronounced for people aged 40 and over, but it still affects most people younger than that too.1 The Office of National Statistics data shows that there have been some years this century when some younger women earned more than men, but based on the provisional data for 2023, on average women aged 22 and over were still earning less than men and the gap was actually growing.
Women in the US compare poorly to men too, in 2022, they earned just 82 cents for every dollar a man earned.2 And while that’s a big improvement over the situation in 1982 when they earned just 65 cents, the difference has been fairly static this century.
At the top of the corporate world, women don’t seem to be fairly represented either. In the UK, in 2022, women led just 21 of the biggest 350 companies on the London Stock Exchange.3
In the US, of the largest 500 companies as ranked by Fortune magazine, 53 of those companies are led by women.4 At about 10.4%, better than the 6% of women CEOs in the UK, but still a poor result when we consider that about 50% of people are women.
The number of women in government is better though. Of 650 Members of Parliament in the UK, as I write this, there are 255 women.5 Not quite 40%, so still not truly representative, but a lot better than the corporate world.
The US doesn’t do as well in this form of representation. Across Congress and the Senate, just over 28% of members are women.6 Little better than a quarter of the seats.
Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus…
So how come women aren’t still truly equal in our modern societies?
I guess stereotyping is still a factor, even if we try not to succumb to unconscious biases. Men and women are obviously different physically and each may be better suited for some roles as a result, though those differences may not be as clear cut as we’d imagine.
Surely men are always going to win out in all physical head to heads, aren’t they? Not necessarily, research has found that women are generally faster than men once the race distance exceeds 195 miles.7
So while it’s easy to fall back on typical stereotypes, they’re not always going to be helpful or accurate.
Are men and women really distinctly difference?
As a species, we’ve evolved in massive ways in the more than 200,000 years since our first Homo Sapiens ancestors set foot upon this planet.
There’s no longer the same need for the distinctions between the sexes. In our modern societies, most roles can be fulfilled equally well by most men and women. The stereotyping that may have seemed to make sense once really doesn’t.
Let’s consider an arbitrary scale, with the left end of the scale labelled most assured and individualistic and the right labelled most questioning and collectivistic. This isn’t a definitive scale or method for assessing differences between men and women, it’s just to help illustrate a point. We could as easily imagine other types of grading scale with different qualities at each end.
Anyway, on the suggested scale, I’d personally expect us to see more men grouped towards the left end of the scale and more women towards the right. However, those would just be trends and we’d see both men and women ranged across the scale at all points. Whether that’s a case of nature or nurture or perhaps both, who knows?
Anyway, have you heard the suggestion that if you give a group of monkeys typewriters, eventually they will write the complete works of Shakespeare? While I feel I understand the idea behind this, it always feels like a bit of a big ask in reality.
However, put a group of men and a wall in the middle of nowhere, and you can be sure that eventually they will have a competition to see who can pee furthest up the wall. Forget about the typing monkeys and how that feels like it’s a bit of a stretch. We both know that this one will definitely happen, and probably surprisingly quickly.
All the more astonishing is the guaranteed fact (I personally guarantee this) that they’ll formulate an intricate and complex set of rules that the competition will have to follow. At least getting the urine samples for the drug testing shouldn’t be a problem.
Substitute a group of women for the men and even if we give them penises (a subject we’ll kind of be coming to shortly), I’d bet the house on the monkeys presenting a beautifully leather-bound collection of the typed complete works of Shakespeare before even just one of the women thought that peeing up the wall might make for a diverting bit of fun.
I remember decades ago being dropped by a taxi with a friend in the early hours of the morning. It had rained a bit earlier, but by then it was a dry and mild morning and so, at about 3:30am, we decided to walk the length of the high street.
On the roofs.
So we climbed onto the roof of the shop at one end and then walked, climbed and jogged all the way to the other end. The flat roofs were a breeze. The eaved roofs less so.
I recall the post office in particular, two floors and quite a high-pitched roof. As we jogged across, I could see his feet just in front of me slipping recklessly with every step he took each side of the ridge tiles and, looking down at the street below, I wasn’t sure he’d survive a fall from there.
“He must be an absolute nutter,” I thought to myself.
That event would never have happened if I’d spent a pleasant night out with Mrs Forclift before being dropped by the taxi.
Thwack.
Aaaiiiiiiiieeeeee!
Thud-a-dud.
Those three lines there describe what would have happened if I’d alighted from the taxi with the delight of my life and said, “why don’t we take a stroll down the high street…on the roofs?”
The “thwack” is the sound of a clenched fist impacting upon my nose.
The “aaaiiiiiiiieeeeee”?
It’s been said I have a bit of a little-girly scream (see, I told you stereotyping was still a problem) and I consider that a generous and profoundly inspiring compliment.
The “thud-a-dud” is the sound of my barely conscious body hitting and bouncing on the ground.
And the “bhwooooooof” is the sound of the air being forced from my lungs from the kick to my torso.
Ah, did I not mention the “bhwooooooof”. I’m pretty sure she’d have gone for a kick to the body if she thought I was trying to get up too quickly.
And as I lay crumpled on the ground, she’d explain how she gave me the opportunity to understand some of the pain I would feel if I fell off a roof, without any of the hassle of actually having to climb up there in the first place.
Now, let’s compare and contrast that to what most likely happened when my friend or I, not sure which, suggested the idea of taking a stroll down the high street at 3:30 am on the roofs, even though they’d be a bit damp still from the rain earlier that night.
“That’s a ducking brilliant idea!!!!!”
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Of course, what I’ve just done with one analogy and a story is demonstrate my own stereotypical views of the gender differences. While, based on all the men and women I’ve known over the decades, I stand by it entirely, it’s still just a lazy generalisation.
And clearly, as we can see by the differences in wages and the representation of women in various aspects of our societies, the attitude isn’t unique to me, lazy generalisation is alive and kicking and another form of division within the general population.
Despite that, we have hopefully moved forward with most people making a conscious effort to avoid discriminating behaviour based on sex. Openly sexist behaviour like that of the British radio presenter Alan Partridge8 is more of an oddity now whereas it was absolutely normal behaviour when I was a kid.
It does still exist, but it’s more obviously a sign of intellectual and emotional inferiority nowadays. Most commonly exhibited by men who have been dumped out of a relationship by a girlfriend or wife who got bored of them or found someone better. We all know how painful rejection is, but most of us get over it and move on, even when the treatment was unreasonable.
There is a subset of men though, who seem to suffer scarring that they never allow to heal and because of their own insecurity and weakness, at least partially dehumanise women and treat them as if they have a lower value than men. They don’t see the irony that it’s their inability to control their fear of not being the boss in any future relationship that drives them to try and exert control over all women. If they really had the strength they believe they have, they wouldn’t need to always be putting women down and trying to be domineering masters.
I’m sure with the right help, most could find a healthier balance in their lives again. Unfortunately, the only therapy most of these men ever put themselves through is online groups of other similarly afflicted men as they all moan about how unfair it all is and amplify their hatred of women.
The problem doesn’t end with these online covens of fragile men though, the responsibility stretches further into society than that. I’ve said that openly sexist behaviour is rarer now, but it’s still there and oddly tolerated by many.
I used to be signed up to dozens and dozens of email marketing lists and one person stood out for their divisive approach. This person is a big name in their sector and many other marketing gurus are supportive of his work. He himself acknowledges that he’s regularly accused of sexism, but he denies that he is sexist.
Here’s an isolated sentence from an email.
“When I talk about trolls I am referring almost entirely to guys who have female thought patterns.”
In an email of 100s or even 1,000s of words, a sentence like that could easily slip by unnoticed. Even here, it may seem pretty innocuous to many.
Let’s rewrite it. Not extensively, we’re just deleting one word and adding two in its place.
“When I talk about trolls I am referring almost entirely to guys who have black people thought patterns.”
Does that change the offensiveness level of the statement?
If his regular emails were occasionally peppered with casual racism instead of casual sexism, do you think he’d still be supported by many other leading marketers?
Personally, I don’t believe for one second that they’d risk being seen as endorsing or tolerating repeated incidents of racism for fear of the damage it would do to their businesses. I think they’d they’d have cut him adrift years ago rather than risk tainting their own brands.
But we clearly use a different scale when considering levels of offensiveness in terms of racism in comparison to sexism.
…And Those Other Genders Are From Uranus…Really?
The writer Henry James said “The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is noninterference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.”
Feels like good advice, doesn’t it?
The universe is 13.7 billion years old. If you live for 100 years, your lifetime will still be just a blink of an eye to the universe. There are so many things that you could spend your life aiming for, but surely happiness should be near the top of the list.
Why live a life of unhappiness when there are no guarantees as to what, if anything, comes after the moment when your heart finally stops beating?
And if we deserve to be happy, doesn’t everyone else also deserve to be happy, as long as they don’t try to interfere with our happiness?
In the first sentence of this section, I referred to sex and gender. I’ve been deliberately referring to men and women and avoiding the words male and female.
Gender seems to have become weaponised and incredibly divisive.
Why do some people feel so passionately about the subject of gender and the gender that some other people choose to identify with?
The phrase that’s spread across a couple of headings in this section, the “Mars/Venus” and “Uranus” headings, is one that I’ve seen on t-shirts advertised on various websites. Well, I added the “really?” just because I’m so incredulous as to why anyone would feel the desire to wear that message.
What’s it matter what gender someone else chooses to be? If they’re happy and they’re not actively trying to make us unhappy, isn’t that great? Shouldn’t we put our time and energy into trying to be happy too, assuming that doesn’t involve us actively trying to make anyone else unhappy?
For some reason, though, our societies seem to have birthed big subsets of people that appear to measure happiness on a relative, rather than an absolute scale. So if they can make other people less happy than them, the result is the same as making themselves more happy.
What is Gender?
There seems to be some confusion about what gender is. While I know clarifying this won’t change how some people feel about the subject, the definition is important.
The male sex or the female sex, especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones, or one of a range of other identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female.
That’s courtesy of a Google search.
So the key point for us to remember is that sex refers to our biological condition and generally means male or female, while gender refers to classifications defined by our societies, that don’t have to align to just male and female and may be user-defined.
I appreciate that some people have very strong negative feelings about the modern interpretation of gender in our societies, but I don’t understand why. Do you?
Generally, feelings of hatred are driven by fear or disgust.
Fear may seem an unlikely motivator, but it could be a factor for some. Perhaps the fear that it’s contagious, maybe if you expose children to it, they’ll catch it. They’ll become confused and want to change their gender or become attracted to people of the same sex. Maybe some people are even scared that they themselves could catch it and the next thing they know, they’ll be “off to Swansea now for a massive lez off”.9
While it may sound stupid to us, it could be a real concern for some and if so, we should try to understand and empathise. Only by listening and talking can we have any chance of bridging such differences.
With luck my own experience might help to offer some reassurance to those in fear of catching homosexuality.
A while back, Mrs Forclift and I watched a film called Red, White and Royal Blue. If you’ve not seen it, it tells the story of a fictional British prince and a fictional son of a fictional US President falling in love.
So basically a horror movie in some households.
However, the moment the credits rolled, I didn’t jump up from my seat, flip the bird at Mrs Forclift and tell her to “pack your things luv, you’re moving back in with your parents. If you need help carrying your suitcase to the taxi, I’ll be next door giving Dave’s sweaty plums a tongue bath like he’s never experienced before. Oh, and be sure to tell your dad I’m looking forward to seeing him at darts on Thursday. And I mean, REALLY looking forward to seeing him!”
If anything it just reminded me why I’m not a fan of snogging men. Stubble’s such a turn-off. And that scene where they made love for the first time and Henry’s reaching down with his hand to…well, you know? Oooh, icckkkky! What, you don’t know?
Er…okay.
Well…um…er…got it, you know that chapter in The Very Randy Caterpillar, the kids’ picture book from the ‘60s? You know, the chapter where he pops in to see Mitchell Mudhut and Mitchell Mudhut doesn’t want to see him and pushes him back out through the door, but the the Very Randy Caterpillar pushes back in and gets pushed out again, but pushes back in again and this goes on for 17 pages until The Very Randy Caterpillar feels so queasy, he vomits up all the flour he ate when escaping from the bakery? That chapter?
I…
As a child…
As a five-year-old, I used to guffaw and guffaw every time we read that. Now, with nanny’s shocked face still burned into my memory…errrrr…I see how that scene…ummmm…a surprisingly rich seam of symbolism…oh dear me…not immediately obvious to a young child. Clear?
Good.
Anyway, so Henry and Alex are doing that. I’ll be honest, it’s not a thought that appeals personally, but what one, two or more people do in their own private space shouldn’t be an issue to anyone else, should it?
Anyone who’s seen me eating spaghetti bolognese will tell you it’s not a pleasant sight, but does that mean I shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy spag bol in the comfort and privacy of my own shower cubicle?
Which neatly segues us to disgust. Disgust is an emotional response and it’s not something that can be easily controlled. Just because we don’t feel disgust at something and someone else does, I don’t think we can then condemn someone for an automatic response they don’t have immediate control over.
That said, they can also accept that they don’t have to shout their disgust from the roof-tops. For example, if it’s acceptable for hetero couples to kiss in public, surely there shouldn’t be any reason gay couples can’t too? It’s not obligatory to stare and averting our eyes takes so little effort, even the most modern of digital fitness trackers won’t register a fraction of a calorie burn for it.
I know I’ve veered a little away from the gender issue, but I think they’re quite closely connected. So, returning to the strong feelings towards gender, we do need to also recognise that there are some genuine concerns too.
There are some specific points that people should have the right to worry about without being condemned as bigots. While it’s important to respect the rights and wishes of those whose gender doesn’t match their sex, we can’t ride roughshod over the concerns of others at the same time.
I think two of the most obvious concerns are worries over the use of public toilet facilities and participation in sports.
While we should be supportive of everyone who wants to change their gender, don’t we also have to remember that we all live in a world of compromises? I’m sure we’d all want to change aspects of our lives if our fairy godmother offered to wave her wand and give us our perfect life. And shouldn’t those people who choose gender reassignment also have to accept compromises too?
Clearly I’m no expert on gender reassignment, but from what I’ve read, men who have been through puberty before reassigning to female may have physical advantages.
Don’t the athletes who have always been female deserve a level playing field? Various drugs are banned to prevent individuals from gaining an unfair advantage. If gender reassignment can lead to an unfair advantage in some cases, then don’t other competitors have a right to not want to compete against those who may enjoy such an advantage?
We’ve all had to make decisions in our lives where we chose one course of action knowing that it would mean another course of action would be closed to us. We prioritise things and make decisions based on those priorities.
Is it any different if someone chooses to undergo gender reassignment that they’re prioritising gender change over competitive participation in a sport in future? It’s not unreasonable to be supportive of someone’s gender reassignment choice while not being supportive of their desire to continue in a sport where they may now have a competitive advantage, is it?
And similarly it’s not unreasonable to support a man’s wish to live as female or a woman’s wish to live as male while also expecting them to use public toilets that match their genitalia, is it? I appreciate that may lead to some unusual scenes, but no real harm. I can’t imagine suffering any kind of distress if I have to take a pee stood next to a fella wearing a dress. Decades ago, I took a pee in a pub toilet stood next to a fella who had an absolutely huge penis. Imagine a baby’s arm clutching a satsuma and a big baby at that. I’m sure the desperate feelings of inferiority I suffered had a much more profound detrimental effect on my mental well-being than a man in a dress ever could.
Obviously in an ideal world we’d have public toilets assigned to all possible genders, but even if that was made law today, it would probably take decades to implement.
Surely it’s a lot more straightforward for us to take Henry James’ advice and not get upset about other people’s choices if they’re not causing us any real harm.
Take Them, Not Me
So while we should be understanding of people’s real concerns, the concerns of genuine bigots is a different matter and a large part of the anger and hatred does seem to come from real bigots.
I said earlier I didn’t understand why people behave in such an aggressive way over something as mundane as gender, but part of the reaction may be easily explainable.
If you’ve not heard of Dylan Mulvaney, then like myself, you’re probably not hanging out on TikTok. Apparently, she’s a bit of a big deal there, though not universally loved. She used to be a he and TikTok was where she shared her experiences as she transitioned gender.
It’s just someone living their best life and trying to achieve happiness in the time she has on this planet. I’ve not found any suggestions that she’s trying to convince other people they should change gender. All she’s doing is sharing her own experience.
She was already facing trolling, including from some high-profile individuals, but things got dialled up to 11 for the most bizarre of reasons.
She made a sponsored post on Instagram, which included a shot of her face printed onto a can of Bud Light.10 She also drank from a normally branded Bud Light can.
Oooh, the trashy tramp!
Doesn’t that make you furious? Someone having the bare-faced nerve to drink from a can of man’s beer while wearing a dress. It’s unnatural.
There was a huge and nasty backlash to this. We’ll consider how Budweiser handled this later in Profit Before People.
For now, let’s consider the boycott of Budweiser beer that resulted. In a very short time, a movement grew online encouraging people to stop drinking Bud Light. All because they printed Dylan Mulvaney’s face on one can of beer. Now, for full transparency, I did see a comment somewhere, in which someone claimed there was more than just one can, maybe dozens. Now, yeah, sure that changes everything. If Budweiser printed dozens of cans, they really are some sick puppies, aren’t they?
While the movement was a fantastic example of people power, the motivation for it feels pretty ugly to me.
The reaction of a large group of people, both before and after the Bud Light can, takes me back to school.
It takes just one bully with influence to decide that one specific individual deserves to be singled out and have their life made hell. Most other kids are so happy that it’s not them being singled out, they’ll join in with the bullying and target that same one kid, and for no reason other than “better them than me”.
Could it be the same mechanism at play with Dylan Mulvaney? Were just a few people with significant exposure on social media able to build momentum that others jumped on to feel part of the pack?
One of the most striking and surreal things that stood out in all the hating was a video of the musician Kid Rock opening up on some cases of Bud Light with an assault rifle.
To say it’s been emotional doesn’t seem to do it justice.11
Since then, Kid Rock has described it as a temper tantrum and in another interview, made comments about transgender people that aren’t far from those I’ve made above.12
So he’s now clear that he has no hatred for transgender people and yet despite that, he somehow got caught up in the snowball of hate that had started rolling down the hill.
How many other people who have no hate for transgender people also got caught up in the moment just because they know it’s safer to be in the chasing pack than out front with the quarry?
There are always going to be people in society who just want to hate and will target those they think are weaker and vulnerable. We just have to accept that these dark and ugly souls will always exist.
But we have power. I get why kids who are still learning about the world and themselves can get sucked into behaving like this, but shouldn’t adults know better? We can either supply oxygen to feed the flames of their hate or we can starve those flames of oxygen and make the hate burn out.
Hate in any format drives division and when we’re divided, we’re just handing even more power to those at the top of society.
- https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/genderpaygapintheuk/2023 ↩︎
- https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/03/01/the-enduring-grip-of-the-gender-pay-gap/ ↩︎
- https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/genderpaygapintheuk/2023 ↩︎
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2023/03/17/ten-percent-of-fortune-500-companies-are-now-women-led-the-changing-face-of-leadership/?sh=15b3c0433498 ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_House_of_Commons_of_the_United_Kingdom ↩︎
- https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/01/03/118th-congress-has-a-record-number-of-women/ ↩︎
- https://www.ultrarunnermagazine.co.uk/women-are-leading-the-way-at-ultra-long-distances/ describes the results found, though this article offers an alternative interpretation of the findings – https://trainright.com/women-faster-than-men-ultramarathon/ – either way, some women do beat some men and that applies across all physical activities ↩︎
- https://youtu.be/gkM_98p0JOk?si=m7YpuBeSbHFlVERO&t=19 ↩︎
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnTKCyRwtM8 ↩︎
- https://www.instagram.com/p/CqgTftujqZc/ ↩︎
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee3Jh5qRDMo ↩︎
- I think the suggestion that the transgender and gay communities will bring hatred upon themselves “as soon you bring our kids into this” feels a bit paranoid. You don’t learn to become gay or transgender and I think kids are much smarter about this than adults. Also, I’m not aware of any organised movement to promote homosexuality or transgenderism to children. I don’t believe that books that address such subjects should face broad bans. Kids need to know about the real world – they’re not going to be indoctrinated by printed words. Anyway, here’s the comments in full – https://www.foxnews.com/video/6341209454112 ↩︎