Reinforcing gender roles in my own writing
accountability, intrigue, and incel culture
I’ve been thinking about the stated issue on and off for practically my entire writing career, but recently, in the current sociopolitical climate, the thought of gender role reinforcement has come much more to the forefront of my mind.
Specifically in my fiction, I’ve noted how my characters, while multi-faceted in themselves, follow certain narrative arcs in some of their qualities or storylines. For example, my romantic storyline follows a variation on a theme, and without giving too much away, I would state confidently that the dynamic slips into a media-typical male-female affair.
In the same way, however, I use these as an overall plot device to show my female protagonist coming into her own as she grows, with a recognition of her own ignorance and, then, ability for control.
So what does all of this mean?
Society’s cultural pendulum is deeply engrained in all of us. Liberal or not, our surface and even strong opinions do not change the underlying or subconscious biases that we have been bred into. Returning to my writing, both these subconscious thoughts and doctrines, alongside my likes and dislikes, influence what I create. I literally see it throughout the writing process: depending on what I’m reading, good or not, I’ll slightly take on the tone of that author (if I like it, of course). I think this is important; it is natural to be “influenced” and inspired by those around you, and also who have achieved what you ultimately wish to. The difficulty comes in the precise emulation of what they create, for it is then not something of your own. Leaving my tangent behind, this also leaks into the binary nature of characteristics, where emotion is classically associated with women and aggression (which is in its basest sense is emotional) with men. This is a one dimensional appreciation of human beings, and I am sure that many writers would agree when I say that the last thing I want is 1D characters.
50/50 structures are all around us, from gender to class to (ironically) everything in between. But what — in the day to day — are actual differences, and what are we simply perceiving? Using gender as the through topic here, many are now embracing the idea that gender is a continuum rather than bipartite assignment. It is about how one feels compounded with how they are born, a single feature of a multi-layered agent that is not a choice but an imperative. I am delighted to see people all around me living in this fluidity. It is something I have personally been contemplating for a lot longer than I think I realised, and it is true that some days I want to be more “girly” while other days I am more “tom-boyish” [which are highly binary and gendered terms to begin with, classifying young people into subtypes]. Taking gender by the horns requires reading, discussion, self-reckoning, and openness, and I am well-aware that not everyone is so enamoured by this idea. Indeed, by existing in our internet and “real life” microcosms, in which we are drawn to and brought in by groups in which we feel accepted and comfortable, we are fed back our own opinions, perhaps making it seem like everyone thinks this way. A perfect example is party politics: many people, both online and in-person, conversed beside or with me about staying in the EU, and yet there were just as many (and, alas, slightly more) that were of the opposing opinion that I never saw. This brings us on to a secondary argument about discussing topics with people who are not of your leaning, but let’s leave that there for now.
Gender politics is more fervent than ever in contemporary metropolitan culture. The qualities that “make a man a man” or “a woman a woman” are so deeply bound to certain appearances, beliefs, sexualities, and leanings that it is impossible to walk through our everyday life without impressing these onto others [or indeed enforce them onto the characters we create]. This is not to say that all is hopeless. Rather, in the words of Khadija Mbowe, it is not our first thought, the reflex, that we are accountable for, but rather our second — how we react to it. By rejecting our own societally engrained biases with our conscious minds, we are moving, if gradually, towards a better appreciation of gendered dynamics.
I certainly have offered no solutions here, but modern literature and media as a whole has attempted to cycle back on our traditional female archetypes. Instead of being all about love or reliant on the activities of the male, contemporary female characters tend to be headstrong or (very generally) “powerful”. But is this a trapping dichotomy too? In itself, this becomes a stereotype or rigid personhood, reinforcing the idea that one must be one or the other, or even that one is not a true “modern woman” or “feminist” if they do not occupy this “strong female lead” niche. This leads to the rejection of femininity for many teenage girls, and these combatting stereotypes confuse the gender question even further. It is difficult to dismantle something so cemented in our thinking, where even emulating the “opposite” characteristics leads to gender reinforcement or, in the case of trad-wives, rejection of anything outside of typical gender roles.
Is this just as harmful to young people’s concept of personhood?
In the final section of this essay, I have to address the sociopolitical elephant in the room. Long-trunked and staunch, incel culture and “toxic masculinity” have risen in recent times, with young men and boys being led more and more into internet sub-cultures that result in very real world consequences. The disillusionment of boys from society, resulting from worldwide movements but also (and fundamentally) patriarchy, is not a new issue; bell hooks discusses the very ways to tackle this in her book ‘the will to change’, which was published in 2004. Rather, current news has propelled this demographic to the forefront. It is alarming to see the advent of extreme violence in such a frequency as we are witnessing today, from horrific and localised incidents to the world stage.
Social media platforms are accountable for much of this, however not through their creation but through their policing. Sensitivity filters and banning are too broad, letting much harmful content slip through the cracks. Influencers are clever with what they put out there, not quite being inflammatory enough to warrant banning, or only banning when it is too late. This carries over multiple spheres and sub-cultures on the internet, but the “macho” and incel spaces have skyrocketed as more and more boys and men are fed back their biases.
As computational algorithms learn, they fall further and further into patterns and behaviours. Like the development of the human brain, their circuitry is heavily influenced by the information that they are fed. The “younger” these softwares are, the more receptive they are to new ideas, even if these are “false”. By being provided with this “false” information at their most pliable, they are more likely to maintain biases towards these ideas as the truth. Hence, humans, who grow up around certain ideas, societies, and cultures, will find it difficult to open their minds to a different way of thinking, whether this be on a political or a social level. Ideas of gender are provided to us from birth, and the younger boys are when they access the internet, the more vulnerable they become to the warped perceptions of the manhood portrayed there.
Opening our minds to other sides of the argument is essential, and I think it is surprising to many when we find more commonalities between “sides” than we had expected. Certain beliefs may come along with certain other beliefs, but there is something more going on here. If we were all more willing to have conversations, we could get a lot further in the world.
The advent of TV shows such as Adolescence on Netflix get people talking, and this is a true power of the media. By giving these issues a platform outside of the news, more see them in their most intricate light; the effect they have on the everyday person. Fictional accounts of themes start conversations, and I am gladdened to see men talking about how boys are left to navigate the modern world, and what we can do about it. There will always be push back (and indeed there has been), but I choose to be optimistic; one more man talking is one more step forward.
In a patriarchal society, boys will listen to men whom they deem as “typically masculine” role models more than they will to anyone else. It takes these men starting conversations to get through to the men being taken in by this culture.
We can fight nothing in a vacuum.