Critical Analysis

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Performances

In the last chapter, we reviewed what we know about the role of biology in contributing to the gender binary. After searching our genes, hormones, and brains for the source of our di!erences, we concluded that while men and women may not be biologically iden- tical, we’re not particularly dimorphic either. This may be because, while there are some biological forces pushing us apart, there are likely others—the potential evolutionary benefits of similarity, the responsiveness of our bodies to cultural influences, and the inter- sections of our identities, for instance—that bring us closer together.

We’ve also conceded that we do act in gendered ways much of the time, leading us to pose the question:

I f m e n a n d w o m e n a r e n ’ t n a t u r a l l y o p p o s i t e , t h e n w h y d o t h e y a c t s o d i f f e r e n t l y s o m u c h o f t h e t i m e ?

Indeed, men and women do seem to be quite di!erent in their choices about how to use their time and e!ort, often in ways that match ste- reotypical expectations. Women, for example, are 3.9 times as likely to major in education as men, while men are 4.3 times more likely to major in engineering.1 Men prefer to play sports for exercise, while women are more likely to do Pilates, yoga, or dance.2 Women are

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more likely than men to say that religion is “very important” to them and participate actively in religious activities.3

Even though we are rather similar, then, we often make divergent choices. These choices apply to an amazing range of activities and are both obvious and subtle. It’s not just in careers and activities. We embody gender in little ways, too. It’s in how we look at our fingernails, for example (with our hand held out and fingers splayed or with the palm turned toward us and the fin gers curled in), how we hold a cigarette (between the thumb and forefinger or between two forefingers with the palm facing in), or how we hold hands with a partner of the other sex (men’s palms are usually pointed backward and women’s pointed forward such that her body is placed just slightly behind his as they walk). So, there are many differences between men and women in practice.

In this chapter, we explain such gendered social patterns as a consequence of social interaction, working on, through, and sometimes against individual biological or psychological predispositions. We argue that we learn complex sets of gendered expectations that tell us how to behave as men and women in varying situations. We sometimes act in gendered ways out of habit, but also come to understand that if we fail to do so, others may tease, hassle, or hurt us. We aren’t simply socialized as children into gendered roles that we

W hen men and women hold hands, who leads and who follows? how do we learn to hold hands “right ”? gender becomes part of how we inhabit the world, sometimes in the subtlest of ways.

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then automatically perform as adults. Instead, the process of acquiring a gen dered sense of self is an active and ongoing one.

None of us, however, simply follows gendered expectations thoughtlessly. We become crafty manipulators. We make exceptions (for ourselves and oth ers), and we apply very different standards depending on the situation and the person. In response, we each develop a way of managing gendered expecta tions that works for us as unique individuals—sometimes, even, as gender nonconforming ones.

Sometimes it’s easy to follow the rules and sometimes it’s incredibly hard. Following rules creates cultural boundaries that are often painful for the peo ple who are on the wrong side of them, by choice or circumstance. Sociologist Michael Kimmel says it beautifully:

For some of us, becoming adult men and women in our society is a smooth and almost effortless drifting into behaviors and attitudes that feel as familiar to us as our skin. And for others of us, becoming masculine or feminine is an interminable torture, a nightmare in which we must brutally suppress some parts of ourselves to please others—or, simply, to survive. For most of us, though, the experience falls somewhere in between.4

The guy who hates football or has a gluten allergy to beer sometimes feels like an outsider. So, too, does the woman who wants to wear a tux to the prom or can’t walk in heels. The man whose body is limber and powerful and who loves to dance to classical music may in fact train rigorously to be a ballet dancer, but he pursues these pleasures at the risk of critical assessments from others who question his gender or his sexuality. Likewise, women who are tall and strong and enjoy playing basketball sometimes find that the pleasures of their own bodies can come at a cost to their social life if oth ers judge them to be “unfeminine.”

Still, because it’s easier to obey gender rules than break them—and life is challenging enough as it is—many of us behave in gendered ways most of the time. So, we contribute to those gendered patterns that we see around us, sustaining the illusion that the gender binary is natural and inevitable.

HOW TO DO GENDER

Sociologists use the phrase doing gender to describe the ways in which we actively obey and break gender rules. Gender rules are instructions for how to appear and behave as a man or a woman. They are, essentially, the social construct of gender restated in the form of an instruction. Such a rule was at the

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center of a story told by psychologist Sandra Bem about her fouryearold son, Jeremy, who decided to wear a clip in his hair to preschool one day. Bem recalls:

Several times that day, another little boy insisted that Jeremy must be a girl because “only girls wear barrettes.” After repeatedly insisting that “wearing bar- rettes doesn’t matter; being a boy means having a penis and testicles,” Jeremy finally pulled down his pants to make his point more convincingly. The other boy was not impressed. He simply said, “Everybody has a penis; only girls wear barrettes.” 5

Jeremy’s schoolmate stated his objection in the form of a general rule. It wasn’t that he didn’t like it when boys wore barrettes, or that Jeremy specifically didn’t look fetching in a barrette, it was that only girls and no boys under any circum stances should wear one. Jeremy’s schoolmate articulated a rule for all boys that Jeremy had broken: Only girls wear barrettes.

You could likely brainstorm hundreds of such rules if you tried. They apply to every area of our lives, specifying how we should dress and decorate our bodies and homes, what hobbies and careers we should pursue, with whom we should socialize and how, and much more. Most of us do gender when we get ready in the morning; stand, sit, and walk; choose leisure activities; do our work; curate our personalities; and do routine activities like eating, bathing, driving, and even having sex.

Every day we do thousands of things that signal masculinity or femininity and we do them according to gender rules. When using social media, for exam ple.6 Women’s choices tend to reflect the rules that they are supposed to be attractive, social, and sweet. They are more likely than men to try to make them selves appear beautiful or sexy in their pictures and to feature friends and fam ily members. Women also post more pictures overall. Men, in contrast, appear to respond to gender rules that dictate they be active, independent, and anti authority. Their profile pictures often include images of them playing sports, looking tough, and getting into trouble. While women are almost always look ing into the camera, men will sometimes be looking away. Men are also more likely than women to be alone in their pictures or posing with expensive objects. There are gender differences in how men and women react to others online, too. Women are more likely to react and more likely to do so positively, with con gratulations or encouragement. Men’s reactions are more likely than women’s to be argumentative, insulting, or ironic. These are, of course, only average dif ferences, and the men and women you know may be different, but most people follow the rules much of the time.

Many of us learn a huge variety of gender rules implicitly, gradually absorb ing them as we become increasingly acculturated into our families, communi ties, and societies. Some rules are relatively rigid (e.g., men do not wear eye shadow), while others are more flexible and negotiable (if, in your part of the

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thawb, often with a pinkandwhite head covering. The color pink doesn’t have feminine connotations in Arab countries the way it does in the West. And in Belgium, pink isn’t for girls, nor is it gender neutral; it’s for boys. Flowers are another icon of femininity in the West, but certain floral patterns on a kimono clearly signal masculinity in Japan.

What women and men don’t wear is also dictated by gender rules. In the United States, it’s against the rules for women to expose their breasts in public. We take this so seriously that whether women should be allowed to breastfeed in public is still a hot debate. This obsession with hiding women’s nipples seems unduly conservative from a European standpoint; in some parts of Europe, it is perfectly acceptable for women to sunbathe topless. Americans might be surprised to hear that Europeans describe Americans as irrationally prudish. Many Americans, as well as Europeans, in turn, condemn the “veiling” prac tices associated with Islam. Like Europeans judging Americans for covering their breasts, Americans tend to think it is irrationally prudish for women to cover their heads. Only because the idiosyncrasies of our own culture tend to be invisible to us does it seem obvious that women should cover some parts of their bodies but not others.

It often isn’t until we read about, travel to, or move to a different country, or otherwise very different cultural milieu, that we encounter rules that are notice ably unfamiliar to us, revealing our own rules as culturally specific. When we do, we become briefly aware of making choices, deciding either to follow or flout these local gender rules, before they again begin to seem “normal.” For example, one study of Japanese women who went to work at multinational firms abroad found that carrying a briefcase or drinking beer with colleagues was initially alien to their idea of femininity. After becoming more comfortable in their new environment, however, many did not want to be assigned back to Japan, where this would not have been acceptable behavior for a woman.8 We get practice at adapting to new gender rules throughout our lives because the gender rules we encounter are constantly undergoing both subtle and dramatic shifts.

Historical Variation in Gender Rules

While the rules for doing gender often feel timeless, they are, in fact, always changing. Consider the earring.9 In the 1920s, only women of Italian and Span ish descent and sailors pierced their ears. For the women, it was an ethnic practice, similar to the small dot or bindi that Hindu women wear on their fore heads, while sailors wore them in the hope that a gold earring might serve as payment for a proper burial were they to sink, wash ashore, and be found by strangers. An American girl born in the 1930s wouldn’t have pierced her ears,

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Historical Variation in Gender Rules

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but she might have worn clipon earrings. Clipon earrings went out of style and pierced ears went mainstream in the 1960s.

In that decade, boys probably wouldn’t have worn earrings of any kind. When their sisters and all her friends were getting their ears pierced, the only young men doing so were hippies and homosexuals. Twenty years later, during the ’80s, male musicians and athletes popularized wearing earrings, but only in one ear. If a man decided to get an ear pierced, he would have gotten it in the left ear if he identified as heterosexual and the right ear if he were gay. A few decades after that, the side of the head would be irrelevant and the piercings would have signified nothing.

Whether and which ear is pierced is no longer culturally meaningful, but earring style remains so. Women are more likely to wear either elaborate or dainty earrings to signify femininity; men typically wear simple studs or small hoops. And now we pierce other things, too, and in gendered ways. Bellybutton piercings are found almost exclusively on women, whereas men are more likely to stretch their earlobes with plugs or pierce their septum (that wall of tissue that separates the nostrils).

Gender rules change. They change across time, as the ear ring example illustrates, and also from context to context.

Contextual Variation in Gender Rules

Many of us take for granted the rules that guide our own gender display and easily adapt to cultural change. Our flexibility tends to mask the fact that the United States itself is a turbulent mixture of subcultures. Accordingly, doing gender, even in our daily lives, requires that we simultaneously know the rules of the cultural mainstream as well as those of the alternative cultures we visit. In other words, we need more than one pair of gender binary glasses.

Goths are a striking example. Amy Wilkins, a sociologist who studied a group of selfidentified Goths in the Northeast, explains that they defy conventional gender expectations. Both women and men strive to attain a distinctive, even frightening appearance:

Goths tell the world and each other who they are by making their bodies freaky. Goth bodies are cloaked in black, pierced, tattooed, dyed, powdered white. The Goth style juxtaposes medieval romanticism with bondage wear; puffy velvet with

Michael b. Jordan, villain of the mega-hit superhero movie Black Panther, wear- ing his earrings. or, to protect the gender binar y, we might say "studs."

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skin-tight PVC. Goths may sport dog collars and spikes, or fishnets and corsets—all in somber colors: black or blood red.10

Goths cultivate a countercultural appearance, but they also go to work at places like banks and elementary schools. Some of them “do Goth” all the time, but most will adjust to more mainstream expectations when necessary, washing off the white powder when they’re at work and leaving the dog collar at home.

Goths are an example of cultural traveling, moving from one cultural or subcultural context to another and sometimes back. Belinda did another kind of cultural traveling when she came out as a lesbian. As she joined a new community, she encountered people who policed her into a whole new set of subculturespecific gender rules:

Basically, within the lesbian community, I was completely made fun of. I used to have people make fun of me for carrying a purse and looking “too girly” and, “Oh, you're not really gay.” Just those kinds of comments. So that was really hard for me when I was coming out because I just wanted to be taken seriously, you know? . . . So, my response to that [when I first came out] was to kind of change to become less feminine, change my body posturing and the way that I dress and cut off all my hair and that kind of stuff. 11

Like Belinda, many of us have to adapt to new contexts and even adjust our look for different audiences. We all make cultural adjustments throughout our day and week. A guy driving home from a night at the sports bar with his bud dies, during which he yelled at the TV, threw back beers, and pounded the table, will likely resort to a polite and professional manner the next morning at work. Both of these selfpresentations are versions of masculinity. Likewise, a college student may comfort crying children at her job at a day care center, look to hook up at a party that night, and drag herself to class in sweats the next morning prepared to discuss the week’s reading. In each context—the nurturer, the flirt, and the student—she does femininity differently.

The gender rules that apply to varying contexts can be quite nuanced. Know ing exactly what style and behavior rules are appropriate for a wedding (is it a day or night wedding?), a first date (is it coffee or dinner?), and a job interview (do you want to project creativity or reliability?) requires sophisticated calcula tions. Most of us make these cultural transitions rather easily, often flawlessly. And thank goodness. People who are incapable of “tuning” their behavior to the social context are at risk of coming off as psychologically disturbed or willfully deviant. The same glowing, silver gown that made an actress seem so glamor ous on the red carpet at the Oscars would make her look drunk or deranged if she wore it at the grocery store the next morning.

In sum, we learn a set of gender rules that is specific to our societies. We also learn how that set of gender rules varies—from the funeral home to the class

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room, from Savannah to San Francisco, and from age eight to eighty—and how to adjust to those changes. We don’t get just one pair of gender binary glasses when we’re kids; we get many pairs. And we’re constantly getting new prescrip tions as needed.

LEARNING THE RULES

Children begin to learn gender in infancy.12 They can tell the difference between male and female voices by six months old and between men and women in pho tographs by nine months old. By the time they’re one, they know to associate deep voices with men and high voices with women. By two and a half, most children know what sex they are and are “reaching out to social norms,” trying to learn the rules.13 By three years old, they tend to prefer play partners of their own sex and think more positively about their own group compared to the other.

Parents sometimes have to make hard decisions about how much to encour age their children to embrace or reject gendered expectations.14 Some are ada mant that gendered behavior is biological and see gender nonconformity as a sign that something is terribly wrong. Others feel equally strongly that gendered behavior is purely social and unnecessarily constraining and are as quick to

attendees at a gothic festival in poland congregate, showing off their unique fashion. they likely tone down their appearance when in less goth-tolerant settings.

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push their children away from stereotypical behavior as other parents are to encourage it. Most parents are somewhere in between and, for reasons we’ll explore later, are more comfortable with their girls’ gender nonconformity than their boys’.

Children grow up in households, then, with varying levels of gender confor mity and adherence to gendered divisions of labor. Sometimes taking out the trash is a dad’s job, sometimes it isn’t, and sometimes there’s no dad. All chil dren, then, learn the gender rules followed in their homes, but they also have to contend with an outside world that generally affirms gender difference. Most toy stores still sell “boy toys” and “girl toys,” categorized in binary ways and coded with gendered messages about which sex is smart, caring, pretty, and tough.15 Teachers sometimes separate school activities and games into boys versus girls; community and school sports are usually sex segregated, such that girls and boys rarely play alongside or against each other.16 More often than not, children’s television and books tell genderstereotypical stories.17 By the age of five, kids have absorbed a great deal of complex and even contradic tory information about gender.18 These are a child’s first pairs of gender binary glasses.

Once children have gender binary glasses, they often begin to act in ways that reflect them, especially if their parents or peers reward or display gender stereotypical behavior.19 Children orient themselves to toys they believe are gen der appropriate and begin to make assumptions about other people based on their gender. In preschool, they use gender as a criterion for whom to befriend and play with. They actively engage with the gender binary, sometimes even invent ing gendered beliefs based on their observations, like one fouryearold who announced confidently to his parents on the way home from an Italian restau rant: “Men eat pizza and women don’t.”20

Developmentally, gender rules are absorbed just like all the other rules kids are busy learning, like how to cross the street safely, what’s fair between sib lings, and how to behave in a classroom. Growing up is all about learning rules, and kids themselves can be pretty rigid about doing things “right.” This rigidity peaks around age six, which is exactly when many parents throw their hands up and give their sons toy guns and their daughters Barbie dolls. Though this rigidity is often used as evidence that gender is biological, psychologists have shown that it is largely because children aren’t yet capable of absorbing and negotiating the rules in their full complexity.21 Childhood rigidity is a learning phase more than proof of biological predispositions.22

As children learn that gender norms are not quite so strict, they become much more flexible about their own and others’ conformity to gender expecta tions. They also actively resist these expectations and, as the story about Jere my’s barrette suggests, they teach each other the rules they (think they) know. Children, then, are participants in their own and others’ socialization. They, like

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us, are negotiating gender rules from the getgo and setting up consequences for both one another and the adults around them. Sociologist Emily Kane, for example, describes giving into her preschool boy’s desire for a set of trading cards glamorizing images of violent combat.23 She preferred not to encourage her fiveyearold to identify with this version of masculinity, but when her hus band found him quietly crying after school because he was excluded from play ing with his friends—“all the boys had these cards,” he explained—she relented.24 It was a choice between allowing her child to have a toy that she did not like and a son’s loneliness and alienation. She bought the cards.

As we grow up, our ability to do gender in ways others will accept is not so rigid as to require a specific set of trading cards. Especially if we’re exposed to children and adults who resist gender rules, we begin to see more flexible pos sibilities for ourselves.25 We also learn to navigate gender rules in more sophis ticated ways. Most of us become more tolerant of ambiguity and contradictions. But we continue to reach out to gender norms, continually learning and adjust ing to new sets of gender rules that we encounter as we interact with new people, new places, and a changing social terrain.

Learning the rules, then, is a lifelong process that we actively negotiate. This means that a model of socialization in which genderless children are taught a gender role in their childhood, one that they then carry out over the rest of their lives, is wrong. This assumes that children are victims of their environment, infected with rigid versions of masculinity or femininity, never to recover fully. This is the model of socialization that assumes giving boys trucks or girls Barbie dolls is “injecting” children with a “virus” of sextyped dualism that they will carry in them forever.

This “injection” idea of socialization fails on three fronts. First, it suggests that socialization is somehow finished by the time we’re adults. Second, it leaves no room for the possibility that we actively consider and resist gender rules, something that Jeremy was doing even in preschool. Third, because the model fails to acknowledge that people resist and change gender rules, it can’t explain cultural changes, such as the ones that made pierced ears acceptable at differ ent times for women and men.

Accordingly, sociologists prefer a learning model of socialization that sug gests that socialization is a lifelong process of learning and relearning gendered expectations as well as how to negotiate them. We don’t get socialized once and for all but are constantly being socialized. This gives us credit for being smart members of our culture. We aren’t cultural dupes; we are cultural experts who consciously and strategically adapt our behavior to changes in our social envi ronments. We do this in negotiation with others, learning to manage conflict along the way, though usually without resorting to dropping our pants like Jer emy. We may get Barbie dolls but use them in unexpected ways, digging holes with their pointed toes or throwing their heads around like balls. Boys who are

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encouraged to play with trucks rarely grow up to be truck drivers. We are pre sented with symbols of gender from our childhood onward, but how we use the meanings our culture intends them to convey is partly up to us.

WHY WE FOLLOW THE RULES

Like the contents of the gender binary, then, the rules only seem simple and stable over time. Instead, they are complicated, constantly shifting, and even contra dictory. We learn them, better understanding their intricacies as we grow older. And we follow them, more or less, much of the time. We do so out of habit, for pleasure, and because of encouragement and punishment from others.

Habit

Sometimes we follow gender rules because they are part of our culture. We simply become habituated. We get used to walking and sitting in a certain way, own a wardrobe of already appropriately gendered clothes, and have experiences in rewarding genderconforming activities.

All this repeated practice allows us to do gender without really thinking about it. Psychologists call such frequently repeated behaviors “overlearned”; they are learned not only by our minds but by our bodies—like riding a bike or typing on a keyboard—so we no longer need to think about them.26 Men’s shirts, for example, are typically made so that the buttons are along the right and the button holes along the left; women’s shirts are typically made the opposite way. When was the last time you had to stop and think about the relative location of the buttons and button holes on your clothes while getting dressed? Your hands just automatically go to the right places. Such overlearned knowledge often becomes especially noticeable when someone transitions from identifying and displaying masculinity to femininity, or vice versa.

Once we have overlearned a rule, we don’t experience it as oppressive but as natural, however arbitrary it may be. Accordingly, it’s often easy to follow gen der rules, especially ones that are fundamental in our culture; we mostly do so unconsciously. American men don’t often deliberate, for instance, about whether to pee sitting down or standing up. We potty train boys in the sitting position, but then make active efforts to train them to pee standing up such that, as men, the position is something they mostly take for granted as normal. On the flip side, it never occurs to most American women to pee standing up, even though, with parental training and practice, the majority could probably do so with little mess

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(or, at least, no more mess than that frequently left behind by men). In some parts of the world, such as Ghana or China, women do stand up to pee, whereas men in Germany and Japan often do not.

Many of the gender rules that we follow, then, are simply a matter of habit, overlearned and often nonconscious.

Pleasure

More than simply being habitual, following gender rules can be quite pleasur able. For a man who has overlearned conventional American masculinity, it is rewarding to enact that masculinity at a sports bar with the guys. He knows the script, the beer tastes great, and his team might win. The same is true for enact ing those aspects of femininity that are overlearned. Many women, for instance, enjoy dressing up and looking nice in a specifically feminine way.

For just this reason, we may especially enjoy opportunities to do gender elab orately. You may relish formal events like quinceañeras, bar and bat mitzvahs, high school proms, and weddings. These events all call for strongly gendered displays: suits or tuxedos for men, dresses or gowns for women. It can be fun to pamper yourself at the salon, bring flowers to your date, and open doors or have them opened for you. It feels great to know that you look especially beau tiful in your dress or unusually dashing in your tux. Success is intrinsically rewarding, and that is no less true when the success comes from performing gender in ways that other people admire.

Some of the pleasure of doing gender can come from doing gender in defiant ways. Evan Urquhart, for example, a selfidentified “butch lesbian woman,” ini tially started wearing men’s clothes because she wanted to attract women who liked women; in the queer circles in which she lived, wearing men’s clothes— breaking mainstream gender rules, that is, but following subcultural ones—was one way for her to communicate a lesbian identity.27 She was surprised to dis cover, though, that wearing men’s clothes wasn’t just effective at attracting the attention of the kind of women she liked; it also felt good:

I realized almost immediately that I was feeling far more comfortable and con- fident and that I liked the way I looked in the mirror for the first time in my life. Other people who knew me said I looked more natural, more like my clothing fit my personality. It felt a bit like I’d been wearing an uncomfortable, ill-fitting costume all my life.

Doing masculinity was pleasurable for Evan, and so she adopted the style. Since she was part of a subculture with a set of alternative gender rules that enabled her presentation, she was able to do gender in that way and enjoy it.

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Observation

Sometimes we follow the rules simply because we’re being observed. Consider the act of farting, a great example of a behavior that is sensitive to context. In a study of 172 college students, over half of heterosexual women, but only a quarter of the heterosexual men, reported being anxious about the possibility that someone might overhear their flatulence.28 For men, a good fart can be a source of pride. “Because if it’s strong,” said one, “it’s more manly.” Almost a quarter of heterosexual men said they sometimes farted in front of people on purpose; only 7 percent of heterosexual women said the same. Nonheterosexual men, interestingly, were the least comfortable with others’ awareness of their flatulence, and nonheterosexual women sat squarely between heterosexual men and women.

Of course, the nature of the audience matters, too. If observation changes what we do, then who is doing the observing is part of why. A study of women’s

there’s nothing new about drag: even in 1915, people found it fun. this group of women is enjoying a night on the town donning suits, drinking beer, smoking cigars, and playing pool.

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public eating—dining in restaurants with a companion—found that women din ing with male companions took smaller bites and ate more slowly than women dining with other women.29 They were also more likely to sit still, maintain good posture, and use their napkins more delicately. The author of the study, sociol ogy major Kate Handley, explained:

When their companion was a man, women used their napkins more precisely and frequently than when their companion was another woman. In some cases, the woman would fold her napkin into fourths before using it so that she could press the straight edge of the napkin to the corners of her mouth. Other times, the woman would wrap the napkin around her finger to create a point, then dab it across her mouth or use the point to press into the corners of her mouth. Women who used their napkins precisely also tended to use them quite frequently.

In contrast, women dining with a female companion generally used their nap- kins more loosely and sparingly. These women did not carefully designate a specific area of the napkin to use, and instead bunched up a portion of it in one hand and rubbed the napkin across their mouths indiscriminately.

Both the farting and the eating examples reveal that gender isn’t necessarily a part of who we are but rather something we perform when others are listening or watching. Sometimes those others, moreover, aren’t simply passive observers but people who actively encourage or punish us.

Policing

Sometimes we follow the rules because breaking them can attract negative atten tion. Let’s revisit the story of Jeremy and his barrette. Jeremy’s indignant school mate felt confident that he was entitled to enforce the unwritten rule that boys don’t wear barrettes. Despite Jeremy’s protestations, his schoolmate remained insistent, pushing Jeremy to defend his decision to wear one. Sociologists use the term gender policing to describe responses to the violation of gender rules aimed at promoting conformity.

When we are policed, we are being taught that negative consequences will follow if we fail to learn the rules and follow them, at least when someone is watching. Gender policing happens every day. It comes from our friends, our love interests, our parents, bosses, and mentors. It’s part of our daily lives. Some of it can be brutal and painful (especially for people who don’t fit in binary boxes), but much of it is friendly and humorous or takes the form of teasing. Consider these stories from our students:

As James came in from a Saturday night with friends, his father warned, “Get to bed. We’re going to the woods tomorrow.” “Nah, Dad,” the son

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replied. “I can’t.” His dad began to tease him, saying: “What? You too good to go hunting with your dad now?”

Chandra goes to her economics class wearing sweats, a ponytail, and no makeup. A guy with whom she’s been flirting all semester says to her, humorously, “Aw! What’s with the sweats?! I thought you liked me!”

Sun, waiting in line to use a singlestall bathroom, sees that the men’s bathroom is open and starts toward it. As she walks in, her friend says, “You’re not going to use the men’s bathroom, are you!?”

In each of these stories, a person breaks a gender rule and is then subjected to a demand for them to give an account, an explanation for why the person broke the rule that works to excuse his or her behavior. In the first example, James’s disinterest in going to the woods with his dad broke a common rule in rural workingclass communities: Men should want to hunt. When Chandra’s guy friend used her appearance to suggest she wasn’t interested in him, he affirmed the rule: Women should dress up for men they want to impress. Sun’s friend expressed surprise that Sun would dare to use a restroom labeled “Men.” The rule is clear: Use the appropriate gender-designated bathroom.

A raised eyebrow, a derisive laugh, or a comment like “Are you sure you want to do that?” are what sociologists think of as accountability, an obligation to explain why we don’t follow social rules that other people think we should know and obey. We are reminded of our accountability to gender rules when people raise an eyebrow at our behavior, quiz us on our decisionmaking, or offer mild disapproval. Being held to account is a gentle way to induce conformity. It is easier to avoid awkward questions and others’ approval is rewarding. Over time, accountability can make big differences in our lives. Asking women to account for their ambition, for example, may undermine their willingness to develop or indulge it, while calling men to account for being insufficiently ambitious will steer them toward seizing challenges and showing off their successes.

Mildly negative reactions to gender nonconformity, though, and the threat of being unpopular, are reasonably tolerable prices to pay for the freedom to be ourselves. What is less easily tolerated are demands for an account that are intended to shame us and push us back in line. This more aggressive response to breaking gender rules is captured in the term policing, a response to the vio lation of gender rules that is aimed at exacting conformity. When women are called “dyke,” “bitch,” or “cunt,” they are often being policed for being strong or assertive, characteristics that a binary lens sees as masculine and unacceptable for women. Conversely, when men are called “pussy” or “girl,” they are often being accused of not being strong or assertive, and in the logic of the gender binary, that means not masculine. The accusation that a woman is being “bossy” or the putdown phrase “nice guys finish last” applied to a man who isn’t suffi ciently aggressive are ways that both women and men do gender policing.

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Because of policing, the risks of nonconformity go beyond just being judged, though that can be bad enough. We can lose our friends, lovers, or the support of our parents. We may be fired or passed over for jobs or promotions because our gender display doesn’t please clients or coworkers. Gender policing can also be emotionally and physically brutal. The FBI reported 1,363 victims of hate crimes against sexual minorities, trans, and gendernonconforming people in 2016.30 Sexual minorities break the rule that men should have sex with women and women should have sex with men. Trans and gendernonconforming people break the rule that people’s gender identity and performance should match their apparent biological sex. Sometimes the consequences for breaking these gen der rules is living with other people’s discomfort; sometimes it’s violence.

Because the rules themselves vary situationally, so does the nature of our accountability and our risk of being policed. It is certainly dangerous to be queer in some contexts, but it can be quite fun at Halloween or at gayfriendly bars. Middle school boys who study hard may be teased for being “fags,” but if they adopt a toughguy performance to avoid taunting, they may be policed by their teachers and parents for trying to look and act “hard,” especially if they are not white. Female athletes may be told by their coach to be more aggressive on the field but policed by their parents or peers if they don’t show a more “ladylike” gender performance off it. We, like Jeremy, are policed into multiple and even contradictory gender displays by people with various, often clashing agendas.

Some of us may also be more heavily or lightly policed than others. In con texts where there is a high tolerance for both gender nonconformity and sex ual minorities, identifying as nonheterosexual can be a blanket excuse, getting people out of following lots of rules, even those that have nothing to do with signaling sexual attraction. In contexts where there is low tolerance, though, sexual minorities may feel that their safety depends on hyperconforming. Cisgendered men and women, especially if their bodies naturally fit into gen dered expectations (like short, thin women and tall, strong men) may face fewer demands for accountability than people who identify as trans or whose bodies don’t give as strong cues about being female or male. A less obviously male or female person may threaten others’ sense of right and wrong, making them feel entitled to push that person to “prove” who they are by adorning themselves in the signs of masculinity or femininity, like gendered jewelry, clothes, shoes, and hairstyles.31

Both policing and the milder calls for gender accountability are more influ ential if they come from someone we care for (like your girlfriend or boyfriend) or who has power over us (such as your boss). We also hold ourselves account able, kindly and cruelly. We watch TV and read fashion blogs or lifestyle mag azines to learn how, and how not, to dress. We read the sports section to make sure we can talk about who won the big game last night and how. We stand in front of the mirror and inspect our faces, scrutinize our bodies for too much or

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not enough hair, and hope for bumps and bulges in genderappropriate places. We anticipate not just questions, but consequences, if we fail to meet gender standards.

We inspect our behavior no less than our bodies: Were we too loud or forward? Too meek or agreeable? Sometimes we call ourselves ugly names or feel shame or disgust. We punish our bodies with overexercise or starvation. We police our words and our tone of voice, watching to ensure that we don’t sound too opinion ated (if we’re women) or too emotional (if we’re men). We may force ourselves to major in engineering when we really prefer English literature because we know we’ll later be judged by the size of our paycheck; or we may choose to stay single because our friends will never let us hear the end of it if we let them know we’re gay; or we may not tell a guy that we like him because we fear being seen as “desperate.”

We even recruit others to help keep us accountable. We ask each other to evaluate our bodies, our clothes, and our interactions with others. When women get ready for a party together, they frequently ask one another to assess their outfits, looking for a second opinion as to whether they are wearing just the right clothes. Many women try to follow this tricky rule: Women should dress sexy but not slutty. “You can wear a short skirt or a lowcut top,” we hear, “but not both.” There may be nothing malicious in this; it is simply women trying to help their friends follow the rules that they know apply to them.

We also use media, often unconsciously, to advertise and test gender rules with our friends and family. When we get together to watch the Oscars and snark at the outfits or take pleasure in laughing at a man’s failure on some real ity TV show, we are telling each other what makes a person likable, look good, or deserve respect. Often, our evaluations are gendered. Through these routines, we learn what our friends think is ugly, slutty, sloppy, gay, bitchy, weak, and gross and, accordingly, how we should and shouldn’t dress and act around them. Collective reactions to celebrity fashions and personalities, then, can serve to clarify and affirm rules, giving us resources to avoid being policed.

And, of course, we participate in policing others directly. We create conse quences for those who break the rules. We kindly ask for accounts when we want to warn our friends and family members that they are at risk of being policed by someone less benevolent than we are. If we are deeply disconcerted by seeing a rule we care about broken, we may give in to the temptation to be meanspirited or cruel in policing even those we call friends. We may even feel a sense of injus tice or unfairness if the rules we follow—sometimes at a sacrifice—are broken by others who can do so without apparent consequences.

Between accountability, the social demand for an explanation, and policing, we collectively ensure that our choices about whether and how to follow gen der rules have real social consequences. Some are mild and some are severe, but they all shape the distribution of rewards and punishments. Facing this, we

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have three choices: follow the rules, break the rules and face the consequences, or figure out how to persuade others to let us break the rules.

HOW TO BREAK THE RULES

Breaking gender rules is routine. Sometimes we break the rules because it is impossible to follow them, no matter how badly we would like to. The mother undergoing chemotherapy, for example, may not be able to care for her husband and children the way she feels she should. The aging man may not be able to perform sexually the way men are told they must. Likewise, the guy who is five foot two simply can’t be taller than most women.

Other times, rules are downright contradictory, like the one that says that men should be able to drink a lot of alcohol but also remain in control. Or maybe we’re part of a subculture that requires breaking gender rules endorsed by the mainstream, like the female rancher whose daily life involves getting poop on her shoes. Sometimes we don’t have the resources to follow a rule, like the man who can’t afford to treat women on dates. At times we break a particular rule because we have concluded that following it is personally undesirable or socially wrong, like people who identify as nonbinary and mix and match forms of gender expression.

Although policing is about using social pressure to make noncompliance costly, not every deviation from a gender rule results in negative consequences for the rule breaker. Remember the three stories discussed earlier in this chap ter? In each case, it turns out, the rule breaker got away with breaking the rule. Each avoided any penalty by offering an acceptable account.

Let’s revisit the stories, this time following them through to the end:

As James came in from a Saturday night with friends, his father warned, “Get to bed. We’re going to the woods tomorrow.” “Nah, Dad,” the son replied. “I can’t.” His dad began to tease him, saying: “What? You too good to go hunting with your dad now?” James just said, “No, football tryouts are next week and I was gonna run drills with Mike in the morn ing.” “Go get ’em, son,” said his father.

Chandra goes to her economics class wearing sweats, a ponytail, and no makeup. A guy with whom she has been flirting all semester says to her, humorously, “Aw! What’s with the sweats?! I thought you liked me!” And she smiles and replies, “Hey! I just came from the gym.” He reassures her, “I figured. I was just kidding.”

Sun, waiting in line to use a singlestall bathroom, sees that the men’s bathroom is open and starts toward it. As she walks in, her friend says,

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I told my guy friends I couldn’t hang out with them because I was going to a movie with my girlfriend. They asked me what movie and I said, sheepishly, because I knew they were going to laugh at me: Sweet Home Alabama. They laughed hyster- ically because I was going to see a “chick flick.”

Jeff broke a rule: Guys don’t watch chick flicks. And his friends policed him by laughing. So Jeff offered an account, but it didn’t work:

Even though I really did want to see the movie, I said: “Because [my girlfriend] wants to see it, and if she’s not happy, then I’m not happy.” This just made them laugh at me more. “You’re totally whipped!” they cried.

Jeff’s account failed to excuse his rule breaking (seeing a chick flick) because it broke another gender rule about heterosexual relationships: Men don’t submit to their girlfriends’ desires. While Jeff’s account might have worked in an allgirl or mixedgender group, his account wasn’t accepted by this particular group of young, single men, who responded to his accounts with shaming and sanction ing. Despite his best efforts, his gender performance was policed.

We make strategic decisions as to when and how often to test the limits of our rule breaking. We may tend to overconform when we are in an unfamiliar setting but break lots of rules in a familiar setting, and we may even provide accounts on behalf of others when we know them or the setting well. “Janice is taking up the trumpet just like her big brother,” we might comment. “I sup pose the family can’t afford another instrument.” Or “John is being so quiet and selfeffacing; he must be really nervous with his father in the room.”

Higher social status usually provides greater immunity from others’ polic ing. Those of us who think more quickly on our feet, are opinion leaders among our peers, or are exceptionally well liked or charismatic can get away with an amazing amount of rule breaking. You probably know someone who gets a pass on rules. And some people like to test the rules more than others, trying to see how much they can get away with. We all probably know someone like this, too, just as we know people who are extremely risk averse. All of us, though, break the rules at least a little bit. We sometimes make strategic gambles, breaking the rules in situations where we suspect we will have our accounts accepted or the stakes are low if they are not.

Like following the rules, breaking the rules can be fun, empowering, and rewarding. The risks of breaking a rule may be outweighed by the value of doing something you want or nudging the world toward a future society you’d like to see. When a woman wears sweats and a baggy Tshirt to class, she sends the message that she doesn’t care what anyone else thinks, and that can be empow ering. Wearing sweats and a baggy Tshirt, however, is only defiant in the con text of a rule against doing so. So breaking rules doesn’t mean you’re “free” from

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Jeff broke a rule: Guys don’t watch chick flicks. And his friends policed him by laughing. So Jeff offered an account, but it didn’t work:

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them. It is as much a reaction to the rules as following them. Even the shape of rebellion, then, is determined by the gender binary and its dictates.

In sum, because we can’t or don’t want to follow gender rules, we break them quite frequently. We can do this fairly easily most of the time, so long as we offer a “good” excuse, one that affirms the rule that is being broken. All of this affir mation makes the rules seem legitimate and true. That is, we manage simulta neously to break and affirm the rules, making it seem like everyone buys into them, while still accommodating a wide range of both male and female behavior.

THE NO. 1 GENDER RULE

Gender rules vary across cultures, subcultures, and history; intersect with other identities; and vary in strength. But one rule transcends all identi ties and is true across cultures and subcultures and throughout recent his tory. That rule is do gender.32 No matter how you do gender, if you want to be

thanks to her lovable personality, comedienne and talk show host ellen degeneres gets a pass on strict gender rules. her talk show continues to attract record numbers of audience members, even as she dons menswear, keeps her hair short, and appears with her wife.

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treated like an integrated member of society—a person whom others want to know, work with, play with, and love—doing gender in some recog nizable way is compulsory. In the West, this gen erally means that you must identify as a man or a woman, not both, and not something else. And you must perform a culturally recognizable form of masculinity or femininity, especially if you could conceivably pass as the other sex and/or natu rally look a little androgynous. Usually this per formance is expected to match one’s genitals. Even in places that are welcoming of trans men or women, people who identify as trans are usually expected to do a recognizable version of masculin ity or femininity. And cultures with more than two genders also expect the members of third, fourth, and fifth gender cat egories to be recog nizable as such.

If you do not do gender, you become culturally unintelligible. You will be so outside the sym bolic meaning system that people will not know how to interact with you. This is the experience of one sociologist, Betsy Lucal, an androgynous looking woman who doesn’t do femininity. She writes:

Using my credit cards sometimes is a challenge. Some clerks subtly indicate their disbelief, looking from the card to me and back at the card and checking my signa- ture carefully. Others challenge my use of the card, asking whose it is or demand- ing identification. One cashier asked to see my driver’s license and then asked me whether I was the son of the card holder. Another clerk told me that my signature on the receipt “had better match” the one on the card.33

What Lucal understands all too well is that if you really don’t or can’t do gender, it is a serious communicative crisis for everyone interacting with you. Conse quently, most of us do gender at least a little—and usually more than a little. Doing gender preserves our membership in our cultural community and ensures that those around us treat us with a modicum of benevolence.

This need to be culturally intelligible is why we see gendered social patterns. We see them because everyone is doing gender. We may not do it all the time, we may not do it enthusiastically, and we may not do it in the same way. We may not even do it in accordance with our genitals, but we do it. And while we don’t

trans women like Caitlin Jenner can avoid some policing by following the gen- der rules that newly apply to them.

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hesitate to provide accounts in order to break the weaker rules, the strong rules are followed by almost everyone, lest one face truly harmful and dangerous levels of policing. The strongest rule of all—the rule to do gender—has nearly 100 percent compliance.

Thus, while the contents of the gender binary are constantly shifting as we move across time and space, the binary itself persists. It persists in our minds ( because we fashion our perception of the world to match it); it persists in our bodies ( because we adorn and manipulate them to reflect it); and it persists in our society ( because we perform it in interaction with others).

R ev isiti ng t he Q uestion

I f m e n a n d w o m e n a r e n ’ t n a t u r a l l y o p p o s i t e , t h e n w h y d o t h e y a c t s o d i f f e r e n t l y s o m u c h o f t h e t i m e ?

We see gendered patterns in society because we learn rules for gendered per formances through lifelong processes of socialization. The gender rules them selves are incredibly complex, varying across time, cultures, subcultures, and even contexts. We adjust our gendered performances, often seamlessly and unconsciously, as we encounter different situations and audiences.

Sometimes we follow these rules because it is enjoyable to do gender well. Much of the time, however, we follow them out of habit. At other times, we quite consciously follow rules. We may do so because we feel accountable to ourselves and others. Or we may expect and want to avoid policing.

Being policed by others pushes us to comply with gender norms in order to avoid feeling humiliated, stupid, or excluded—or to avoid physical harm. And we police others, too, because it can give us the inverse feeling of satisfaction, superiority, and entitlement. Accounts are a way of deflecting the negative con sequences of rule breaking. They are part of the ordinary give and take of social life, in which making ourselves understandable to others is how we participate in creating shared meanings.

Even rule breaking, though, has a way of affirming the binary and its rules. If we know the rules, we can offer a good excuse, one that assures the questioner that we are committed to the rules, just like he or she is, in all cases but this one. As long as most people, most of the time, can offer satisfactory accounts for rule breaking, such violations will not undermine our collective enforcement of the rules and the gender binary they uphold.

Accountability, accounting, and policing all function to produce and protect the gender binary in the face of bodies, personalities, interests, and inclinations that are diverse, regardless of the gender label we hang on ourselves. If we were naturally feminine or masculine in this binary way, there would be no need to police gender performances. Because the rules are complex, and even contra

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dictory, we learn to do gender and account for rule breaking in many different ways. The fact that we can know, follow, and justify different sets of rules for different contexts is another indication that our gender is not simply a part of our biology over which we have no control.

Somewhere between reaching out to learn the rules, learning how to follow them flexibly, accounting for the many instances in which we break them, and seeking subcultures that share our sense of what rules were “made to be bro ken,” we manage to develop a way of doing gender that more or less works for us, given our opportunities and constraints. We grow up into culturally adept, gendered adults and leave some of the rigidities of childhood behind.

Ne x t . . .

Our strategy for managing gendered expectations, of course, is also shaped by other personal characteristics, such as our social class and residential location, race and ethnicity, immigration status, sexual orientation, age and attractive ness, and our physical abilities and disabilities. It is to this fact that we turn next, asking:

I f g e n d e r i s j u s t o n e p a r t o f w h o w e a r e , w h y i s n ’ t i t c r o w d e d o u t b y a l l t h e o t h e r t h i n g s a b o u t u s t h a t a r e m e a n i n g f u l a n d c o n s e q u e n t i a l?

The answer will add many more layers of complexity to our theory of gender.

F O R F U R T H E R R E A D I N G

Bridges, Tristan. “Doing Gender with Wallets and Purses,” Inequality by (Inte- rior) Design ( blog), April 2, 2013, www.inequalitybyinteriordesign.wordpress .com/2013/04/02/doinggenderwithwalletsandpurses/.

Jacques, Juliet. “What Sort of Woman Do I Want to Be?” Guardian, February 9, 2011. Kane, Emily W. The Gender Trap: Parenting and the Pitfalls of Raising Boys and

Girls. New York: New York University Press, 2012. Lucal, Betsy. “What It Means to Be Gendered Me: Life on the Boundaries of a Dichot

omous Gender System,” Gender & Society 13, no. 6 (1999): 781–97. Ridgeway, Cecilia L. Framed by Gender: How Gender Inequality Persists in the Mod-

ern World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. West, Candace, and Don Zimmerman. “Doing Gender.” Gender & Society 1, no. 2

(1987): 125–51.

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“You’re not going to use the men’s bathroom, are you!?” Sun says, “I wouldn’t, but I really have to go!” Her friend nods sympathetically.

As these stories illustrate, we can get away with breaking rules if we have a good excuse. When the characters above say, “Football tryouts are next week,” “I just came from the gym,” or “I really have to go,” they are offering an account to justify why they are breaking the rule.

These accounts may or may not be true, but they offer a sufficient explana tion to others that makes gender nonconformity incidental rather than inten- tional. That is, the rule breaking isn’t interpreted as an attack on the rule itself but an unfortunate and unavoidable deviation. In this way, accounting does more than excuse one’s behavior. By explaining why an exception should be made in their case, the speakers are affirming the rule itself. So James really is saying: “[Of course I would go hunting], it’s just that football tryouts are next week.” Chandra is saying: “I [would have dressed up for you, but I] just came from the gym.” And Sun is saying, “I wouldn’t [use the men’s bathroom nor mally], but I really have to go!”

Importantly, these speakers didn’t respond, “Actually I don’t like hunting” or “Who says I have to dress up for you?” or “It’s stupid that I can’t use the men’s bathroom!” Such responses reject the rule altogether. This is actually quite rare; people don’t usually defy gender rules outright because confronting them headon can cause conflict. Instead, if the rule breaker affirms the legitimacy of the rule, the one asking for an account is usually satisfied, and conflict is avoided.

Interestingly, such verbal affirmations of the rule often work just as well as a change in behavior; infractions are punished only when they aren’t excused. That’s why trans men are more likely to be victims of hate crimes than guys dressed up like women at Halloween. Halloween is an account. It is a way for men to say, “[I would never dress like a woman normally, but] it’s Halloween!” A trans person has no such excuse. The Halloween reveler is an exception that proves the rule; being trans is an attack on the rule itself.

In addition to learning the rules in all their variety, then, part of gender socialization is learning what exceptions and accounts are acceptable in differ ent social circles. Accounting is therefore a skill. Jeremy had not yet mastered the art of accounting. He wasn’t sophisticated enough to negotiate his gender with his schoolmate and resorted instead to dropping his pants, a rather primi tive way of proving he was a boy. Explicit conflict over gender rule breaking is typical of younger kids who have just begun to learn the rules and haven’t yet mastered the act of explaining away violations. In contrast, adults tend to be quite good at offering accounts, though some of us are better at it than others.

But there is always the risk that our accounts will fail. Our student Jeff spoke of his failed account:

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world, men do not have long hair or wear lipstick, how long is too long and does lip balm count?). You can also likely brainstorm rules that straightforwardly contradict one another, because the rules vary among cultures, change over time, and shift across contexts. We tend to become most aware of the rules when we are trying to master new ones; for example, we selfconsciously “try on” adult gender attitudes and behaviors as we enter adolescence or when we choose a “look” and set of friends upon entering a new school.7 At such transition times, our selfconsciousness about gender conformity rises because we are aware that social acceptance can be at stake.

Cross-Cultural Variation in Gender Rules

Most gender rules are simple cultural agreements. For instance, grown men in the United States are supposed to physically touch each other only in very ritu alized ways (like the back slap in the “man hug” or the butt slap in football for a job well done). In France and Argentina, however, men kiss on the cheek when they greet one another. In some Middle Eastern societies, men even hold hands.

Likewise, whereas skirts are strongly feminized in the United States, men wear kilts in Scotland and, in Arab countries, men wear a white robe called a

president george W. bush welcomes saudi Crown prince a bdullah to his texas ranch. holding hands is not an accepted way for two adult men to touch in the united states but is a common practice in some Middle eastern cultures.

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then automatically perform as adults. Instead, the process of acquiring a gen- dered sense of self is an active and ongoing one.

None of us, however, simply follows gendered expectations thoughtlessly. We become crafty manipulators. We make exceptions (for ourselves and oth- ers), and we apply very di!erent standards depending on the situation and the person. In response, we each develop a way of managing gendered expecta- tions that works for us as unique individuals—sometimes, even, as gender- nonconforming ones.

Sometimes it’s easy to follow the rules and sometimes it’s incredibly hard. Following rules creates cultural boundaries that are often painful for the peo- ple who are on the wrong side of them, by choice or circumstance. Sociologist Michael Kimmel says it beautifully:

For some of us, becoming adult men and women in our society is a smooth and almost e!ortless drifting into behaviors and attitudes that feel as familiar to us as our skin. And for others of us, becoming masculine or feminine is an interminable torture, a nightmare in which we must brutally suppress some parts of ourselves to please others—or, simply, to survive. For most of us, though, the experience falls somewhere in between.4

HOW TO DO GENDER Sociologists use the phrase doing gender to describe the ways in which we actively obey and break gender rules. Gender rules are instructions for how to appear and behave as a man or a woman. They are, essentially, the social construct of gender restated in the form of an instruction. Such a rule was at the

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then automatically perform as adults. Instead, the process of acquiring a gen dered sense of self is an active and ongoing one.

HOW TO DO GENDER

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then automatically perform as adults. Instead, the process of acquiring a gen- dered sense of self is an active and ongoing one.