I was watching today's TED talk about the responsibility of adults to guide the culture in which young people are raised to combat gender bullshit, particularly violence, when I thought back to the advice of a dog trainer.
If you want a dog to stop doing something, give it something else to do instead. Dogs aren't great at understanding negations. The best you can do is shift the dog's attention. Don't chew on a paw, but chew on a toy. Don't bark at a squirrel, but look at my face. Don't eat rabbit shit, but eat a dog treat. Providing an alternative is far more productive than trying to communicate "stop it".
Everything in this talk I was watching, and more generally every good message I hear about gender, is a negation. Violence must stop. Inequalities in respect and pay and opportunity and must stop. Differing expectations about innate cognitive abilities is wrong. The way we will tear out these diseases is by reshaping culture, by convincing our adults to train our dogs - I mean, to teach our children - to stop it.
I have to ask, then, if you want the people to abandon their destructive gender beliefs, what beliefs about gender do you want to instill in their place? An idle dog's mind is active, perpetually sniffing for direction. You can give it something, or you can let it pick something disgusting. As long as there is a social construct of gender, people will be thinking about it, and hold beliefs about it. What's the point of gender if the genders are all the same?
So my challenge is this. Say you have the ball in your hand, and you can throw it anywhere you want. What culture do you build? What positive assertions shall you decree that will distinguish the expectations and roles of genderqueers and girls and boys? If you have answers to this question, step up and shout, and let a better gendered culture overtake the negativity that pervades today.
Personally, I have nothing. I cannot name a thing, not one idea, that I could provide as a productive substitute for the current plagues of this gender institution. That's why I say: Tear it the fuck down.
Drag the dog into another room. There is nothing in here for it to chew on.
There is nothing here worth saving.