His n' hers; the changing relationship between the sexes in the Western World

His n' Hers

We have known for a long time that the organization of any particular society is influenced by the definition of the sexes and the distinction drawn between them. But we have realized only recently that the identity of each sex is not so easy to pin down, and that definitions evolve in accordance with the different types of culture known to us, scientific discoveries and ideological revolutions. Our nature is not considered immutable, either socially or biologically. As we approach the end of the century, the substantial progress made in biology and genetics is radically challenging the roles, responsibilities and specific characteristics attributed to each sex; and yet, scarcely twenty years ago, these were thought to be "beyond dispute".

We can safely say, with a few minor exceptions, that the definition of the sexes and their respective functions remained unchanged in the West from the beginning of the nineteenth century of the 1960s. The role distinction, raised in some cases to the status of uncompromising dualism on a strongly hierarchical model, lasted throughout this period, appealing for its justification to nature, religion and customs alleged to have existed since the dawn of time. The woman bore children and took care of the home. The man set out to conquer the world and was responsible for the survival of his family, by satisfying their needs in peacetime and by going to war when necessary.

The entire world order rested on the divergence of the sexes. Any overlapping or confusion between the roles was seen as a threat to the time-honoured order of things. It was felt to be against nature, a deviation from the norm.

Sex roles were determined according to the "place" appropriate to each. Woman's place was, first and foremost, in the home. The outside world, i.e. workshops, factories and business firms, belonged to men. This sex-based division of he world (private and public) gave rise to a strict dichotomy between the attitudes which conferred on each its special identity. The woman, sequestered at home, "cared, nurtured and conserved". To do this, she had no need to be daring, ambitious, tough or competitive. The man, on the other hand, competing with his fellow men, was caught up every day in the struggle for survial, and hence developed those characteristics which were thought natural in a man.

Today, many women go out to work, and their reasons for doing so have changed considerably. Besides the traditional financial incentives, we find ambition and personal fulfilment motivating those in the most favourable circumstances, and the wish to have a social life and to get out of their domestic isolation influencing others. But, for all women, work is connected with the desire for independence. Above all, they do not wich to be forced to live with a man whom they can no longer tolerate; they want to reclaim their freedom without unduly harming their standard of living.

Whether we like it or not, these shared experiences profoundly alter the relationship between the sexes and the specific definition of each. The change assuredly makes for greater equality, but also, perhaps, for a degree of fraternal similarity. By dint of experiencing the same situations as the other, one learns to react as he does, and although he may thereby lose some of his mystery, he gains in being better understood.

Furthermore, contraception has made it possible to keep motherhood at bay. Now that it is neither a physiological necessity nor a moral obligation, child-bearing is no longer endured but chosen. It thus becomes something contingent and voluntary; it is no longer left to "chance" in the form of nature.

Late twentieth-century woman is no longer automatically to be regarded as a mother. For the first time in our history, women are allowed to find fulfilment in spheres other than procreation. One reason for this development is probably women's increased life expectancy. Active moterhhood no longer takes up more than an average of fifteen years in a woman's life, and is one stage among others in female existence.

This change of attitude towards child-bearing has gone hand in hand with a modification of the stereotypes of female identity; moreover, there has been a change in those which, not so long ago, still defined male identity. Passivity, patience, devotion and altruism are no longer the salient characteristics of the female sex. For one thing, women no longer recognize themselves in this summary description, which conceals other, equally real characteristics, once thought to belong exclusively to the male: ambition, activity, selfishness and independence. For another, because for the past ten or fifteen years women have tirelessly urged their companions to share in the joys and duties of "mothering", men in turn are displaying virtues which used to be considered feminine: gentleness, devotion and attentiveness to small children. It is undeniable that young fathers who take care of their newborn offspring quickly acquire a body language and set of attitudes, concerns and feelings which in the past were alleged to "come naturally" to women.

In reality, and within a very short time, the specific characteristics of fatherhood and motherhood have begun to converge. It is no longer the mother alone who shows affection, and the father is no longer the exclusive embodiment of authority, law and the outside world. All these roles are shared between the sexes, and attitudes vary more according to personal temperament than in alignment with sexual differences.

If women no longer define themselves as mothers first and foremost, nor do they recognize themselves any longer as wives. Their lives are an alternation between celibacy and togetherness, with the result that autonomy is taking precedence over complementarity, and women, like men, are coming to define themselves as beings in their own right and no longer, as formerly, in terms of another person. The bi-polar relationship is still sought after by both men and women, but is nevertheless losing ground, in actuality, to periods of solitude.

This new lifestyle is conducive to the emergence of new psychological and social characteristics in both sexes. Men and women are tending to express that "other half" of themselves which their upbringing in the past would have taught them they must repress. Archetypal androgyny has returned, sweeping before it the inequality of the sexes and their strict complementarity.

Another new development is eroding the age-old stereotype of the male warrior, an image that we find confronting us as far back as we are able to trace it in history. Today, the threat of nuclear war on a world scale renders meaningless to us the warrior virtues attributed to men when we try to imagine the future. We see ourselves, men and women, rightly or wrongly, as the immediate victims of such a war, with neither the time nor the ability to defend ourselves individually. The spectre of the atomic bomb emphasizes still more the idea of fate, passivity and the indistinguishability of the sexes. On the one hand, men would be as passive as women. On the other, the person to "press the button" might equally well be female or male.

Apart from this apocalyptic image of war, other forms of modern warfare have brought us pictures of women, and even children, carrying weapons. This image is no longer startling: it shows that war is no longer the prerogative of men and that action or passivity are likewise no longer the property of one sex rather than the other.

Oddly enough, male identity has not so far given rise to as much discussion and controversy as that of females. And yet we venture to predict the male identity will be a major issue in the next half-century.

Women seem to have interiorized male otherness without thereby abandoning their traditional female identity. Twentieth-century Western woman is truly an androgynous creature. She is both virile and feminine, and she slips out of one role and into another according to the time of day or at different times in her life. She is unwilling to forgo anything, and walks a tightrope--by no means always easy to do--between her female and male desires. By turns passive and active, devoted mothers and ambitious egoists, gentle and aggressive, patient and commanding, modern women have shuffled the identity cards that they were dealt.

In this period of upheaval brought about by women, men's resistance, not to say uneasiness, is immediately apparent. The changes occurring in their partners and the latter's new demands are forcing them to call their traditional model in question. The fact that women can do everything men can do, and that they have claimed men's time-honoured characteristics for themselves, is often felt by men as an experience of dispossession and loss with which they are unable to come to terms.

Trapped between an outdated model which women no longer want and a new model which men seem to fear, many men are reacting by fleeing from women and from family responsibilities.

Their difficulty in fully assimilating female otherness and in expressing it outwardly without any inhibitions stems from the threat that they feel to their virility. This dilemma does not seem to affect women in the same way. The most convincing explanation for this male conflict is given by the American psychoanalyst Robert J. Stoller. Disagreeing with Freud, he claims that "male" identity is not the stronger or the more natural of the two. Throughout the first few months of life, the male newborn baby identifies strongly with his mother, with whom he lives in a state of symbiosis.

Sexual differentiation, therefore, is achieved only as the culmination of an intense and painful struggle to break away from this symbiosis. The male child must thus "de-identify himself with his mother" in order to jettison his female nature and develop his subsequent gender identity: maleness. But, observes Stoller, maleness is always under latent threat from the experience of bliss with the mother. Hence men's much greater fear of androgyny, which is experienced as a danger of homosexuality, i.e. a loss of virility.

The dawn of the third millennium is coinciding with an extraordinary reversal in the power structure.

Not only will the patriarchal system be dead and buried in most of the industrialized West, but we shall see the birth of a new imbalance in the relations between the sexes, this time exclusively to women's advantage.

Women may at last be sharing control of the outside world with their male companions as they create and produce on an equal footing with them. But the fact is that they also have absolute control over procreation. They can, at any time, refuse to have children. Tomorrow, thanks to sperm banks, they will be able to produce children without men's active assistance. But the contrary is not true. A man still needs a woman's body in order to procreate. The complementary relationship between the sexes that seemed incontrovertible where procreation was concerned is now being challenged. And when we consider that biologists and geneticists predict that before long it will be possible to fertilize a female nucleus without any need for a spermatazoon, we can see how close we have come to achieving the powerful age-old fantasy of parthenogenesis: in this case feminine.

Even if women in the third millennium refrain from using this inordinate power, it is probable that men will be painfully aware of their possible eviction from the process of fertilization and of the new imbalance in their disfavour. There are probably hard times ahead for men. Perhaps they will experience an even greater feeling of loss of identity, uniqueness and necessity. So it is by no means absurd to suppose that they will do all they can to win back some of their power. Already, biologists are predicting the incredible possibility that men will be able to "carry" a child, within less than half a century. The hypothesis no longer belongs to the realm of science fiction. It will soon call for some entirely new thinking about the relationship between the sexes, their identity and their equality.

To be continued in the third millennium.

COPYRIGHT 1986 UNESCO
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group