For Goodness Sex (14 page)

“Did we get it right?”

If I tell them now that there are no right or wrong answers and the activity only reveals their assumptions about gender, they’ll lose interest, so I string them along in that tried-and-true teacher fashion.

“Before I tell you that, I want to hear some rationale for your choices. I want to make sure you really knew the right answers and didn’t just guess.”

Challenge accepted. They have a million different reasons why they labeled a character as male or female. They talk about which characters were hard to figure out and which were easy. Coach Martin almost always gets labeled as a guy. Chris and Lee are usually assigned as a heterosexual couple: Chris is male and Lee is female. Sam is a toss-up, depending on the motivation for following Chris and Lee upstairs—a boy might do it to cheer on his “bro”; a girl might do it to check up on her girlfriend. Terry’s gender generates the most discussion. Some think she’s a girl, because she asks someone to get the booze for her and because of what the students see as a lenient punishment given by her parents. Others argue that Terry must be a boy sometimes for the very same reasons. Dr. Green is always a hard character to decide because she or he does what any doctor should do, whether male or female. As we near the end of the class, the students return insistently to their earlier question. “Did we get it right?” they beg.

They, of course, cry foul when I tell them there are no right or wrong answers. I point out that there are no biological gender markers for any character in the story. The only thing the students had to use in assigning gender were the characters’ personality traits, attitudes, and actions, and in truth the students were really relying on their
own
gender identities and assumptions about the characters’ behavior. It’s an activity that is much more about them than about the fictional characters in the story.

“You got us again, Mr. V,” says a boy who high-fives me as he walks out of class.

Popular culture tells teenage boys that they’re supposed to think about sex all of the time, which many of them do, while girls get messages that they’re supposed to have less interest in sexual matters. You don’t have to look far in movies or TV shows to see female characters fending off the attentions of men. These are societal ideas about what it means for men and women to be sexual, but these attitudes have very little to do with the way most teens regard their own sexuality, no matter their gender.

Gender roles, or gender
scripts
, as I call them, are culturally constructed codes of behavior for a man or woman in a given society. Such scripts can be particularly attractive to teens because they are so insecure about everything and everybody. Sometimes holding on to a prescribed gender role makes your son or daughter feel safe in his or her changing body and world. One way to help them understand the impact that gender is having on their lives is to remind them that gender roles don’t take into account individuality and uniqueness; their purpose is to delineate one gender from another. There are benefits to be gained from having clear-cut social expectations of behavior, but the problem with gender roles comes when we forget that they are societal constructions and start to believe they are somehow immutable, and when they become so rigid that they stifle individuality. When J.Crew art director Jenna Lyons appeared on the cover of a 2011 J.Crew catalogue painting her son’s nails pink, she made headlines. Along with the photo, the caption read: “Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink. Toenail painting is way more fun in neon.” The photograph was playful and fun, but some found it outrageous. One conservative critic called it “blatant propaganda celebrating transgender children.” Others accused the mother of trying to “turn” her son gay. In painting her son’s nails, her critics saw Lyons’s actions as somehow crossing the line between girl and boy, committing what I call a
gender foul
.

Gender scripts influence everything from what your teens wear to how they talk, what kinds of jobs they apply for, whom they socialize with, and the daily chores they do. When someone does something that violates our ideas about gender, it can make us uncomfortable. While I’m not suggesting that all boys should paint their nails pink, I do think it’s important to use opportunities like this to talk about the ways in which we prescribe what’s OK and what’s not when it comes to gender, especially when it conflicts with what one feels is authentic for oneself. If
gender expression
is a continuum, with the most macho man at one end and the girliest of girls on the other, how far into the middle are you comfortable with your teen going? Can your son read
Cosmo
and retain his manhood in your eyes? If your daughter puts pressure on her boyfriend to have sex, is she still acting like a girl? What if she openly burps and farts? When is crying acceptable for a young man? When is it a foul? The point here isn’t to create some arbitrary line in the sand, but rather to expand the possibilities enough so that kids can find and feel good about their own places on the spectrum. We all experience our own gender differently. If we can encourage our children to be their
own
kinds of young men and young women, we’ll go a long way toward helping them grow into confident adults.

As a parent, you have an important part to play in helping your kids think about gender scripts, but you’re not the only one sending them messages about them. What’s acceptable on the gender front is determined not only by the macrosociety in which we all live, but also by our microcommunities: where we go to school, our ethnic heritage, and the group of people we’re with at the moment. For example, what’s allowable for a guy at dinner with his sweetheart may be different from what his teammates let slide on the soccer team. A frequent discussion in my class is whether girls or boys have more leeway on the continuum. Is it easier for girls to cross into boy territory or vice versa? My female students readily admit that they can wear much more masculine clothing and participate in traditionally “male” activities (chess team, science clubs, math team) without losing their girliness. Heterosexual boys will tell me that they live by stricter gender scripts than heterosexual girls do, especially because they’re terrified of being perceived as weak or, even worse to them, gay. For boys, certain colors are off limits when it comes to clothing. Some cars are too feminine to drive, some drinks or foods too girly to consume. And as contemporary teen movies have shown, when a boy becomes a cheerleader, he has more or less committed social suicide.

The popularity of bromance movies, like
Knocked Up
and
I Love You, Man
, has helped show what kinds of physical interactions are OK for two boys in terms of relating to each other emotionally, and which are not. Boys can joke about a relationship between two boys being sexual, but only when there’s a very clear understanding that it’s not. Two heterosexual boys are allowed to hug, as long as they pound each other on the back afterward. They’re allowed to do complicated, touchy handshakes, as long as they finish up with a chest bump. Male characters in these types of movies will share a lot of stories; they share a lot of intimacy, but it’s rare for them to talk about their emotions directly, and often they’re drunk or in crisis when those topics emerge.

In American films, girls are portrayed much differently. They’re freer with their emotions. Can you imagine a breakup scene in a movie where the girl
didn’t
cry? They snuggle in the same bed during sleepover parties, and they often hug and talk about how important they are to one another. They don’t obviously cross gender lines unless they chop off their hair and take on a stereotypical “butch” lesbian persona—or at least that’s how it seems from the outside. But my students will tell me that’s not true. Gender fouls are called on girls frequently, but they’re most often about violating the girl code of being a “good girl,” a “nice girl,” and a “pretty girl.” Because being perceived as sexually promiscuous is often seen as a gender foul for girls, they cry foul if a girl dates her good friend’s ex-boyfriend. If a girl cheats on her boyfriend or even goes too far “too soon” with her current guy, she’ll be deemed a slut.

I want my students to understand that calling gender foul is often a case of sexism and heterosexism. It’s a power play designed to keep men, and more specifically straight men, in charge. I encourage students to think about who really benefits from policing gender. As I said earlier, a general sense of boundaries can benefit all of us, but the rigid enforcement of limited gender roles for men and women squashes individuality and can inhibit the expression of our authentic selves. I’m sure we’ve all experienced a time when we checked our own behaviors or reactions because they didn’t seem correct for our gender. There are other times when we’ve blown past any delineated lines. Even when acknowledging this, it can be scary for my kids and your kids to question any of the assumptions society makes about their gender.

When a coach calls the boys on his team “ladies” as a way to make them work harder, it takes a lot of courage to call him on it. When a girl is called a “whore” because she’s sexually active in ways that go against what’s seen as appropriate for her age or gender, who sticks up for her? It’s vitally important that my students understand that they, and only they, are the arbiters of what their gender means to them. They are the ones who can decide how much to conform to the gender scripts that are handed to them at every turn—and those decisions are best when they honor their authentic selves. There’s nothing wrong with a guy liking sports and a girl liking fashion as long as that’s who they really are and not who they think they’re supposed to be in order to gain acceptance with their peers or parents.

When kids are given the tools to understand the way that gender assumptions play into their decisions, they may begin to follow their own inner compass instead of doing what they think they should do.

Girls Don’t Like Sex and Boys Will Be Boys: Gender Assumptions About Sexual Activity

I
had a female student a few years ago who openly admitted she enjoyed sex for its own sake. “The way guys do,” she told me. In that one line, she turned a few gender stereotypes on their head. It’s assumed that boys like (and want) sex but don’t always need emotional intimacy to enjoy it. It’s also assumed that girls require more emotional intimacy with sex. This is true for some people, but not all. It’s just another example of rigid gender roles. Why are girls thought to “lose” something when having sex? Instead of “losing their virginity,” couldn’t they be gaining sexual pleasure and fulfillment? What do boys lose when they have sex, other than the stigma of being a guy who hasn’t “gotten any”? I do think it’s important for kids to see that sexual activity and relationships are filled with gender expectations that decrease the chance it will be equitable and physically fulfilling for them.

Oral sex is a great example to use when discussing the impact that gender scripts have on sexual activity. Just so we’re clear, a generation ago, oral sex was considered more intimate than sexual intercourse, but today, kids often experience it before they even consider having intercourse. Moreover, according to today’s gender scripts for oral sex, girls are expected to offer it without any thought of reciprocation. When I suggest that I find this situation completely inequitable, the boys in my class get mad at me; they accuse me of violating some kind of “bro-code.” “It’s totally fair,” the guys will argue. “Girls like doing it, and even if they don’t, they do get something out of it—status.” The girls often have a huge Aha! moment here, and the brave ones will speak up and bust the myth that all girls like doing it.

See, the thing about gender scripts is that they can become so insidious that we stop seeing them. Straight girls think it’s a very normal part of the teenage years to give a boyfriend a blow job, but they don’t expect straight boys to perform oral sex on them or expect that they will receive any kind of sexual pleasure back. This is not to say that girls necessarily want boys to perform oral sex on them, and those who would may be incredibly embarrassed to ask—again, all because of what gender scripts tell us about what sexual activity
should
be. The important thing to note is that this really isn’t about sex. It’s about power. I tell my students just to picture the position of people’s bodies during oral sex, especially the way they have it. Usually the person receiving oral sex is dominant and the person performing it is submissive. Boys get pleasure, girls give pleasure. But isn’t one of the purposes of sexual activity shared pleasure? One of my refrains to the class whenever we talk about sexual activity is, “If you’re not as concerned about the other person’s pleasure as you are about your own, are you really having sex or are you just using the other person as a glorified masturbation tool?”

Gender scripts exert a powerful pull on our ideas about sexual activity, and we buy into them unless we can recognize that they are created constructs, not biological destiny. This is one of the most powerful conversations we can have with young people. It’s not about encouraging or discouraging sexual activity; it’s about encouraging equity and authenticity. It’s about taking charge of what kind of person you want to be.

What Students See When They Look at Gender

A
t the end of the gender unit comes one of the major assignments of the year. It’s called simply the Gender Project. Students choose some aspect of their lives and design a way to study it specifically through the lens of gender. They can look at just about anything. The only restriction is that they are not allowed to examine their own or others’ sexual activity. They can work alone or in groups as they design a research question, collect data, analyze it, and prepare a presentation to share their findings with the class. After spending many weeks talking about gender as both a biological and sociological construct, they are primed for this task and they jump into it with gusto. Over the years, students have created amazingly diverse and interesting projects. Their results show how much gender affects every aspect of our lives, and how savvy they have become at seeing it. I thought it might be fun to end this chapter with a Top 10 list of favorite Gender Projects over the years. Any of these would be great fodder for a conversation with young people about gender, or you might be inspired to create your own gender project with your kids.