Femininity — A Social Construct?

A professor in one of my graduate departments of philosophy warned me that, if I wanted “to become a philosopher, [I’d] have to destroy [my] femininity!”

On the other hand, Simone de Beauvoir opened her path-breaking, paradigm-shaking book, The Second Sex, with the pronouncement, “One is not born a woman; one becomes one.” Meaning that femininity is the result of a process of socialization and — aside from certain inconveniences — there’s nothing “natural” about it.

If de Beauvoir was right, then my professor’s warning would have gone smoothly down — without causing inward trepidation or stifled protest — as the easiest thing in the world. Down like a honey-coated cough drop. But in fact the dictum didn’t go down easy. It hung over the air of the campus like the densest humidity. You breathed it in and it changed you!

One of my female classmates took vows and entered a Greek Orthodox convent where self-flagellation was practiced. Another took the veil as a Catholic nun, though I’d never noticed a nanosecond of religiosity in her. A third girl, whom I remember as long-legged, supple, and largely silent, married an Ethiopian, moved to his country, and told me, the last time I saw her, that she fitted in there harmoniously. Her only shock came whenever she would pass by a mirror and perceive her own preposterously bleached-out complexion! The last of the women in my class had been prepared to go forward toward the degree, provided the professors would accommodate her schedule as the mother of children in primary school. This they declined to do. If femininity is nothing but a social construct, the construct can still put one in a pretty tight bind.

Would my bind have gotten looser had I made a deliberate effort to “destroy my femininity”? And by the way, was there anything objectively irreducible in femininity that might — at significant cost — be destroyed?

Recently I had a chance to talk by phone with a former colleague with whom I hadn’t connected since the days when we were both young assistant professors at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. To my surprise, he remembered me as “a cop-lover”! I did remember having circulated a petition that called for more lighting and police on campus at night. I now reminded my former colleague that, back then, young women students walking to the library at night were being attacked by a slasher who would knick them on the face with a very sharp knife. That danger was forcing young women to take boyfriends solely for personal protection when they used the library at night. Colleagues at the Philosophy Department — more concerned with maintaining their standing as revolutionary cop-haters than with the safety of their women students — mostly shied away from my petition.

It still seems to be good form to maintain that there is no natural difference between men and women — neither of strength nor of bodily aggressiveness.

Is femininity a mere social construct? Or perhaps a social construct with minor inconveniences like menstruation, pregnancy, and certain deficits in muscle mass and testosterone?

The poorer the woman, the harder it becomes to mask such “inconveniences.” But anticipating and dealing with them, however one does that, is a major concern for every woman I know. It is not a concern for any man I know.

Here’s a datum. Among the women I knew in childhood were three — all European — who embodied . They never tried to be unisex-beings-with-inconveniences. They moved, they were shaped, their voices identified them as female and distinct from men in a full-bodied, inarguable, naturally persuasive way.

Here’s another datum. Some years back, I had occasion to talk long distance to a woman descended from a Lakota chief who is known to the history books. She was the friend of a friend, and had just emerged victorious from a battle for indigenous rights on the campus of her university. I phoned her out of concern about possible threats to her victory that she might yet encounter. As we talked at our ease for a good long while, in some context I quoted my mother, who had considerable womanly realism. In response, the chief’s great, great granddaughter exclaimed, “That’s just what my grandmother would say!”

What inference do I draw? There is a freemasonry of women — a guild, if you like. Its members know about, and exchange, womanly wisdom. It would be very helpful to know … what such women know.