Gender - Short bites. Episode #3: Take-aways on Gender Identities

Okay, and so I'd like to end this discussion with the way that it began, with a tour de table. And I think you're gonna, you're gonna be great for that. One of the premises of this podcast is that there's too much talking and not enough doing. So let's pass the mic and tell us what you've heard today that either will inspire you to do something differently than the way you did it prior to this conversation, or Or if there's not a particular action, tell us something that you would like others to do or things that you do in your personal life, like Jennifer was sharing already a lot of things that will help others and maybe potentially is helping you to improve this conversation and make the gender equality more a reality. And I'm gonna start so you can, collect your thoughts. And as soon as I'm done, Marc, you can go ahead. So my two takeaways— I actually have two takeaways from this discussion, and I really want to thank everyone because that was really interesting, and I could spend hours and hours, and I had so many questions that I wanted to ask, but I knew that the time was limited. The first one is I actually want, right after this conversation, I want to ask myself questions around doing marketing as a marketer, doing advertising that's not gender-focused. I think Leah, you brought a very good point where when I create marketing campaigns, I always have this persona in my head about— and it includes their gender. And I want to challenge myself and see what would happen if I did remove this criteria of the gender? What kind of content would I create? What kind of process would I create? So that's one thing. And then on a more personal level, one of the things that I'm taking away is that meaning is crumbling. Being a woman had a lot of meaning for myself, being raised in the '70s and being a mother and a sister, etc. And I want to reconsider the meanings that that I've taken for granted. And those meanings have created this box that I'm in, and that's the behavior, the way that I react to things, or based on those meanings that I thought as truth. And I do want to take the time to almost take a piece of paper and write a list of what does it mean to be a woman.

Good.

That's it. That's my takeaways. So thank you. Mark, would you like to share your last thoughts?

Well, as I said, I'm an emeritus professor. I mostly write. That's my thing. I've written a lot for Psychology Today. And what I've taken away from this is something I'm aware of, but it's hard, is the realization that I see the world a certain way. Part of it's generational. Part of it's gender. But other people see it differently. I think the generational differences are very, very important. And so I will continue as best I can to be open-minded. It is difficult. I really think I'm a person who has been involved with different groups who are really on different sides of things, and that's tough. That's really tough. It's much easier to be, this is how it is, period. And I may sound that way, but, but I do really listen, and I really look at my, my ideas, and I will still continue to, I guess, advocate for boys and men, because I do think in today's world, they are, you know, their concerns, their needs are not necessarily addressed. And I think, again, you know, some of us are mostly heterosexual male, and that's who we are, and they're human too. And I think we are all different, and that's another part which I will continue to try to stress. That each of us, you know, there's this great Tom Petty song has a line, "You don't know how it feels to be me," and that's a great— he's a great songwriter, and that's a great line, and that's just something I think we all should be aware of.

Thank you very much, Mark. Leah?

I think one of my greatest takeaways from this podcast session has been what Michael and Jennifer have said about the diversity within cis men and like Jennifer was saying, the recognizing that allowing someone to introduce themselves to you without any biases for the first time. And I think that's definitely important going forward, just because the way that this conversation about gender is framed, especially in popular media, is that there is a bad guy when there shouldn't be, because we're all subjected to the same system. I think that was it for me.

Thank you very much.

Thanks.

Jennifer.

That was great. Thank you, Leah. I would say, so revisiting that gender neutrality is really important, like we've talked about. I would— the counterpart to that is seeing all genders proactively. So at the same time as we want to perhaps be inclusive by erasing the differences, there are so many differences that haven't been seen and acknowledged. And so there needs to be in our approach, I think, a balance, because it's a bit similar to saying, well, I don't see color. You know, in the old days, that sounded like equality. That was what we were taught to say to indicate that, oh, I'm not racist. But when I say I don't see color, it is experienced as erasure of difference, which is very real and very present for people of color. So similarly, to erase gender differences, I think, can have an unintended consequence. Of not actually seeing the differences that want and need to be seen and to be talked about and to be named. Because to be named is the most holy experience that an individual can have. And so when we refer— when somebody tells us their pronouns are they/them and we say they/them, they're— is like, well, that's grammatically incorrect. You know, I can't get— I just can't get used to calling you that. I'm so sorry. You know, we have all these conditions on our inclusion of others and how they want to be referred to and seen and heard. So I would say be careful about making everything the same, because there is still so much work to do in terms of being seen for our difference and referred to in the way and acknowledged in advertising. You know, I was just speaking to somebody at Banana Republic and Gap, and they're working on being size inclusive, and they're working on including people at the table making decisions about clothing design for size 14 and up and making sure that that's in the inventory and not in a separate section in the store. But so it's the— it's this balance of inclusion and weaving ourselves together in this fabric, but it's also making sure that we're paying special attention and we are including all voices and all experiences and all sizes and all identities and actually saying, you are welcome here. I am going We're going to name this because if we don't name it, the assumption is we're not included. And that's the problem. And so naming is very, very important. And this is why every company we counsel has a diversity statement that includes, we are, you know, our creed, our belief system, our values. It names sexual orientation and it didn't in the past. It didn't say anything about it. And people assumed everything was inclusive because, oh, I'm a good person. Of course, we're a good company. Everybody feels good here. No, it actually has to be stated, and that actually allows a lot of us to say, "I matter because I'm important enough to be talked about." And so that's a really important nuance I would leave everybody with.

Thank you very much. Michael?

Yeah, look, for me, this has made me think more about what it is that I want and what it is that we want. That is, what is the future that we work towards? And I'm particularly interested in I think, developing accessible, palatable, inspiring visions of the kinds of world to do with gender that we want. And so, the phrase that comes to mind is really gender multiculturalism. I don't know if multiculturalism is a phrase that means much in the North American context, but it's been an important phrase in Australia for a kind of respectful inclusion of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. But thinking in gender terms, gender multiculturalism is the kind of respectful inclusivity towards a range of different ways of enacting, performing, being gendered. So I think gender multiculturalism— I'm sort of thinking about our vision. So gender multiculturalism is one thing. I also think, in fact, we want gender to matter less. We want our sexed bodies and the meaning attached to having male or female bodies to matter much less in terms of how we organize work, how we organize who cares for children, how we sell things to people. So, I think part of our work is also to degender society, to actually make gender matter less. Perhaps not quite as little as the shape of your elbows, but to matter less in our social world. And third, obviously, I think, I come back to questions of ethics and justice and so on, it has to be gender justice. It can't be the case anymore that we have a world where being born female means that you are systematically disadvantaged in ways that aren't the case if you're born male. And just to give a nod to Mark, there are important ways in which men too are disadvantaged. And I think often they are shaped in fact by the messages about being a man that we give to boys and men. So gender multiculturalism, degendering, and gender justice seems to me part of what it is we might strive for.

Very nice, thank you. Jason.

That last point that you made, Michael, 100%. When we think about toxic masculinity, I also hate that term, We often tend to forget that it harms men first and foremost, and then that causes behaviors that extend outward. But, and Jennifer, I'd love to see big and tall stores across the country be done away with. So thank you for the work that you're doing with Banana Republic. And Mark, I gotta commend you because of your courage to be able to sit and admit that, you know, you have been receptive and it's hard, but you're still pushing through. I gotta give you those kudos. For me, the takeaway is for all of us to, really take the time to examine our privilege and where we are on the privilege continuum, and then acting from there, right? And so if we are doing the work of gender equity, racial equity, masculinity, redefining what that means, I think oftentimes that's going to require us to actually physically give up space on a panel, in a meeting, and examine what it is that— what is the level of sacrifice that we're willing to make in order to actually demonstrate that allyship, as opposed to kind of just talking about the importance of allyship. And oftentimes that is physical space. So for me, I'd like for us to think about what that looks like and then really get honest with ourselves and see where we're acting in that spirit in our personal and professional lives.

Very nice. Those are a lot of great insight. Thank you so much. Martina, you have the last 4 minutes all by yourself.

Okay, okay, excellent.

For the last words.

I have 3 points, and actually a lot of the things that I want to react to came up in this last session of takeaways. What Jason said right now is really, really important. I was just asked to speak at a diversity in communication conference next year, and one of the things that I immediately was thinking about is this ongoing Cindy Gallup argument that diversity really, and being like bringing more visibility to diversity in business really isn't about talking about diversity. It is about diverse speakers talking. So the fact that you are able to represent people who are naturally diverse and then they speak about their authentic experience is actually much more diverse than the same people talking about why diversity is important. So that's first thing. And that sort of comes back to what Jennifer was talking about earlier about sort of naming things correctly and being seen in the world for who you are for the first time. And I think this is really important for businesses, especially, and for the strategies that they create. Because we sort of have— what I see in business is that we have almost like a representation problem. And the representation problem really isn't just about physical diversity in terms of equity and representation, you know, of different people, but also about sort of symbolic representation. So what do we actually think about different people? What do these things mean? And how to sort of think about new concepts. So there's always this— there are two levels to diversity. One is the physical and one is the cognitive. And the cognitive is actually much more important to sort of expand our minds and start seeing things in a different way because we cannot really move forward unless we know where we're going to. So if we are not able to sort of visualize and understand what things mean, we cannot really create new identities because without that space existing, we cannot sort of become what we don't see. And the third point being this sort of nature versus nurture argument. I sort of see it as the nature is the inner essence of your being that you're born with. And the nurture is sort of the filter from the outside that then sort of informs the essence and how that sort of takes shape in the world around you. So obviously, both are important. And what I think is really important for the diversity debate is that to understand that culture is completely malleable. And it doesn't really come from the top down. It doesn't come from the outside in. It's up to us as individuals to sort of populate more space and really be seen for who we are and have more courage and authenticity to express ourselves as individuals and without the fear to be subjected to public shaming. But we have to take the stand, like each and every one of us. So that we can show the society what is possible, and then the society will change as a sort of byproduct of that. You know, you cannot really change things by pushing against them, because with every push, as Leah said, with every push there's a pull, and it's a constant struggle, because the more you progress, the more you regress. It's an ecosystem after all. So, you know, each and every one of us sort of needs to needs to work on becoming our own authentic being.

Exactly, and I think 2020 is gonna be a very interesting year where people finally understand that this is about becoming a conscious, self-authoring individual, and you're free to redesign the various meanings that we're giving to you. It's gonna be interesting. Thank you so much, everyone, for spending an hour with me and the rest of us. I think it was insightful. So thank you.

Thank you, Virginie. Thank you, everyone.

Thanks to everyone.