Breaking the Backbone of Gender Bias

Gender is something that most people would consider a purely physical distinction.  It is "normal" to base whether someone is either male or female purely on their body.  While this has been made to work in the past, as society continues to move with a liberal trend, this can no longer be used as the only distinction.

Judith Butler holds that conception does not determine whether a person is male or female, but instead the act of learning how to act in either role that determines it.  The roles that are attributed to each gender are not ones that naturally fall to them, but rather what society has decided through years of repetition, and has now become as ingrained in society just as much as the physical sex of an individual has.  From a young age every person comes to learn the differences between genders and thus how they should act to fill their role, and in this way "one is not born, but, rather, becomes a [man or] woman" (Butler).

Brokeback Mountain is a 2005 film, directed by Ang Lee, that focuses on a homosexual relationship between two cowboys, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist.  Soon after they meet on a job up in the mountains that requires them spend months at a time camping to watch a herd a sheep, the two of them realize that they are gay, and start having intimate relations.  However, their client discovers that the two are doing so, and so they get fired.  After this, they are both thrown back into their lives- and marriages, only able to be their true selves whenever they go on "fishing trips" together back in the mountains.  This film is a good example of what Butler is arguing, because the society Ennis and Jack are in does not tolerate gays, and so they are forced to hide their relationship or else face brutal deaths at the hands of their peers.  Despite their sexual identities, both men take wives for themselves since their sexual identity requires them to do so, and even have sexual relations with them because of the pressures.  In their society, playing the role of a "man" or a "woman" is so important that it is necessary to survive.  Should any individual stray from what their gender "should do," it is accepted by the society that they effectively give up their human rights and deserve to be killed.

Though not everywhere is so severe with their dealings with those who has strayed from the societal gender path, the heavy influence of peers on sexual identity can be seen all around the world.  Even children will discriminate on other children if they are seen to be outside of the norms, in cases like a group of young boys bullying another for wearing pink or liking flowers.  Fortunately, this bias is weakening, as society has begun to accept previously unheard of things such as gay marriage or women working "men's jobs."  Because the original factors that led to a heterosexual bias are no longer an issue in modern society, namely reproduction and kinship, as asserted by Butler and others, we can hope to see society continue to move in a more accepting direction and eventually open the restrictions placed on gender completely.