Gender 101: contesting gender norms as political intervention

 Throughout the last years there have been a tremendous amount of philosophical work on gender and the issue of why queer have invoked such resistance. I would in particularly recommend Jason Stanleys how fascism works on this issue, as well as the writings of Judith Butler on "who's afraid of gender". Whilst this entry is an attempt to discuss gender as political intervention, the work previously mentioned is as also well worth a read and takes a different point of departure than my own.

Let's start with something obvious: gender-relations are clearly intertwined with those of power. The perhaps most interesting such example is the writings of Connell who launched the theory of masculine hegemonies. In the writing of Connell it becomes clear that bodily politics have created a norm of masculinity which few men live up to but still have an interested in maintaining, since the position of the ideal man is never obtainable by women. Thereby, by making society in the words of Ahmed, oriented towards the male body men will always have a significant advantage compared to women. 

What queer-theory have done is to show how this orientation is socially constructed and therefore possible to change. During the last ten years we have also seen a transformation of knowledge, where queer theory have gone from being a academic theory to be utilized by activists as well as ordinary people who do not think that the current gender regime matches their experiences of the body. Thereby, it has been possible to contend societies binary view of gender as a) something biological and b) something that never will be the subject of change for the individual. 

In contemporary social theory there exists a wide amount of knowledge on contention. Amongst the most well known is the works of Charles Tilly et al, who points out that a situation is confrontation if a) some group challenges the current conditions in society and b) if this challenge would change the power relations in society. In the case of gender we can clearly see that this is going on in the open. We can see how not only the male hegemonies of society is being called into question, but also the very binaries and ways of thinking that is behind it. And all of the sudden, this is actually the subject of parliamentary debate. The question is yet, why this have occurred in this particular historical situation?

This is not a question that can be answered by one simple answer and the answer would depend on your theoretical point of departure. Thinking along the line of philosophers such as della Porta, one would say that this is in part due to the transformation of capitalist society. In the last fifty years or so, we have seen how material conditions have been less and less the concern of political struggle, since the middle-class have arised as a key political actor. Therefore, political struggle have transformed from a marxist based notion of the struggle between classes into a struggle for Identity and social justice which eventually have reached gender. 

This theoretical explanation have alot of bearing but I would like to highlight yet another one: the combination of knowledge and performative citizenship. Following the line of Foucault, it is possible to claim that as queer-theory was launched a new knowledge on the body became accessible. By this new knowledge on the body, we came to focus not on the biological dimensions, but rather the social norms which shapes the bodies into subjects. Therefore, queer-theory opens up for a questioning of how socially ascribes meaning to bodies, rather than focusing on what biological conditions that are key in determinating this subjectivity. 

Apart from the knowledge on the body the modern western world is also shaped by the idea of human rights, which was codified into law during the late 1950-s. In this regard a key part of the human rights was the notion that governments does not have the right to ascribe identity on people, but rather that your identity is entirely based on your self-image and experiences. In combination with the changed medicalization of both sexuality and gender identity, this have giving legitimacy for groups to challenge the current gender regime. And this is done by performative citizenship.

Performative citizenship means that citizenship and rights within in a state is not given by those in power, but rather depends on how groups act. When I group puts forward the notion of having civic rights, they challenge the regimes conception of who have civic rights and what those rights are. And perhaps this is exactly what led to gender becoming possible to contest, where knowledge about bodies and rights have undergone a change. This can be summarized into the following historical situation:

1. From the past decades research into gender we have showed that gender is not a stable category, but rather based on what those in power ascribe to our bodies.

2. In the current knowledge we also accept that bodies should not be ascribed meaning by those in power but rather by the individuals themselves (human rights) 

3. Protesting have undergone a transformation from the challenging how resources are shared into a politics of social justice and identity. 

Thereby, the current historical situation have led to making it possible for individuals who claim that they have rights. In doing so, they challenge how society is currently organized and that it eventually will have to acknowledge these rights. Thereby politics of gender have become visible in the current socio-political situation. This does not mean that queer or trans-people have not existed before, but rather that their demands at this particular historical situation have to acknowledged. And since their demands challenges the very hegemonics which society for a long time been based on, their demands will involve contestation.

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