Structural forces are the meta-monsters of societies. These seemingly inanimate networks of social and political laws, moral values, and institutionalized practices (such as chivalry) are the jaws of an all-consuming beast that stifles the actions and opinions of all individuals bred into its clutches. Children in Kindergarten, Sunday school, Girl or Boy Scout camp, Sports practices, Dance practices, are going to be constantly exposed to the norms and acceptable behaviors to practice in order to “fit in”, or avoid punitive consequences. These are institutional milieu’s that are vehicles for social conditioning. We teach little boys to act this way and little girls to behave another way. The verb choice illustrates a distinction between allowing boys to act out or be active, where as good little girls behave by the rules and behave our manners, generally, we just behave ourselves. It is as though females are made to suppress the rowdy feelings of aggression and excitement at the sight of an open playground or neighborhood baseball field, while boys are taught to misbehave, so as not to end up a ‘sissy boy’. In the baseball film, Sandlot, one of turning points of the film is when Scott Smalls (who goes by ‘Smalls’) is told by his mother to “Run around, scrape your knees, get dirty, climb trees, hop fences. Get into trouble for crying out loud”. This is one of the many examples of how gender roles are enforced though a familial institution; but even more so, this message is mass-produced for the world to consume and imitate.
Regardless of whether one agrees with this claim or not, we must acknowledge the power in using the educational, extracurricular, and familial institutions as tools for indoctrinating new ideas and values in all future generations. When Pluto was struck from history books around the world as a planet in our Solar System, it didn’t take long for children to begin correcting adults, ensuring them that Pluto is no longer a planet—“read it in my textbook”, one might say. Textbooks. Also a dominant form of institutionalized education, spread to the masses of our young impressionable minds and bodies that make up our national and global communities. Textbooks contain all the formally indoctrinated knowledge regarding the sex/gender system that was written by a specific group of people, with a limited and distinct content of “facts”, and are the sources of a vast majority of our fundamental and tacit knowledge. But as we all know, just because the system works a certain way, does not mean it has to work that way. Assuming this is a legitimate statement, can we not recognize the system for what it is and actively work against its reifying forces?
Judith Butler suggests that, “Gender is what is put on, invariably, under constraint, daily and incessantly, with anxiety and pleasure, but if this continuous act is mistaken for a natural or linguistic given, power is relinquished to expand the cultural field bodily through subversive performances of various kinds” (2008:107). I interpret this to be the most accurate description of what goes on play-by-play to produce gender as a ‘natural’ phenomenon. During our daily activities, from birth, we are exposed to emotional and physical stimulants that make us cry, laugh, smile, cower, scream, and get angry. These same environmental factors primarily exist within the previously described educational and extracurricular institutions, as well as the familial institution. Through interpersonal interactions, individuals are conditioned by incessant praise or punishment that shapes masses of individuals each day. This phenomenological experience is mistaken for a ‘natural’ phenomenon, rather than one that is, both biological and socially shaped. But by accepting our behaviors as purely natural, and by reproducing our discourse that reifies this belief, then as Butler exclaims, we are all contributing to a self-propelling system that constrains our horizons of expressions and possibilities. We mustn’t be compliant with the repetition of our “subversive performances” anymore. Shan’t we broaden our choices, our language, our conceptualizations of ‘what gender is’ and ‘how is it constituted’, in our everyday conscious and self-reflected decisions?
I love that you quoted "The Sandlot", it is one of my favorite childhood movies. The scene that gives you the title of this blog entry exhibits yet another way that the gender system in ingrained in our minds. The ultimate insult that silences all the little boys on the field is, "You play ball like a GIRL!!". Rambunctious activities and the sport of baseball are only reserved for boys, and when girls try to play they do a terrible job. I think it is worth noting that the movie is set in the 1960's, a time when gender norms were more strictly defined. In my opinon, a part of what makes this line so funny is that it is so obviously misogynistic. The silly little boys back then didnt think girls could play sports at all. It is interesting how we can look back and find humor in such strict definitions of gender. That fact that it is funny reinforces the fact that many gender norms are constituted.
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