Liberation Beyond Gender

Our perceptions about male-female differences rely heavily on current popular beliefs about the mind, body, and evolution. Hastings Donan rightly remarks that, “Although sex is a biological urge, it is rarely experienced in the same ways by people everywhere: it is differently practiced and felt depending on the social and cultural settings in which it occurs.” This justifies that it is indeed our cultural schemata that has overinflated claims of human sexual differences. Let us carefully look at each of the common assumptions that have been ingrained into us and refute them to challenge the myth about patterns of human sexual differences.

Myth 1: Males and Females are biologically very different from one another

Male and female bodies have many differences, but they overlap extensively in structure and function. One can easily focus on the hairstyles, on the clothing, the cultural behavior, and the modern-day ideas about gender and being masculine or feminine, but very few of these elements match the actual biological patterns in our species. When we look at the size dimorphism in males and females, we look at the average differences in size and conclude that males are 10 to 15 percent larger than female. However, we ignore the large range of variations in Individual figures that overlap many times. The manner of walking in females, which involves swinging of hips, is due the outward flare of the female pelvic bone, accentuated by many as a hyper feminine behavior. Surprisingly men and women are made up of the same genital stuff, the tissues that make up the reproductive tract are the same in males and females-it is the same stuff that undergoes development but with different endpoints. There are no consistent and r...

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...d gender contexts that make the sexual activity differences appear and often women’s sexuality is constrained by cultural values and social institutions. As David Schmit sums it up, Women never precisely match the sociosexual psychology of men, but women’s overall level of sociosexuality comes closer to men when given the chance.

We need a broader understanding of sexual relationship, love, companionship, and communion. In fact the very act of cooperative behavior between a male and a female human is the key to our successful existence. Differences and exploitation arises when there is a desire to dominate and denote power. As long as there is a search for power, and dominance humanity cannot progress further. Being human, doses not mean looking for differences in each one of us it means accepting individuality and uniqueness and aiming towards liberation.