Guilty of having, in the past, used gendered language without full awareness, language that may have hurt others.
Guilty of having long neglected to share household chores equally with my partner.
Proud to have shared with her the educational tasks, the cleaning, and the care we provided for our children.
Guilty of still paying more attention to a male speaker than to a female one.
Guilty and ashamed of letting my gaze too often linger on women’s chests.
Proud to have always ensured that my female employees were paid the same as my male employees.
Guilty of not having been respectful toward a girl my age when I was only about ten years old.
Happy to clean the floors and toilets of my studio myself.
Not guilty of being male, but deeply angry that our world is so cruel and unfair to those assigned female at birth.
Glad to have let go of the preconceived idea that I could never be attracted to a man.
Do I have a feminine side?
I refuse to answer that question. Trying to answer it only fuels a socially constructed differentiation, a binary that limits our relationships with others.
I have been nothing but guilty. Can I repay my debts?
Awareness is necessary, but it is not enough. It is a constant effort: deconstructing prejudices, questioning habits, breaking down the barriers that prevent us from thinking freely and accessing truly free thought.
An intellectual labor, a daily meditation, an effort that often feels Herculean, so deeply ingrained are these reflexes.
This inward gaze, this step to the side, this introspection is both painful and exhilarating.
Painful, because too often I catch myself falling back into immature thought patterns.
Painful, too, because it reveals the image of an ultra-powerful conditioning, a social machinery that shapes our behaviors without our full awareness.
Exhilarating, however, because it carries the hope of intellectual and spiritual emancipation, the hope of making peace with a part of myself.
By nature, we are male or female. By social construction, we become men or women. And it is an undeniable fact that this construction has too often disadvantaged those assigned female at birth.
Gender equality is a highly respectable idea, but it remains somewhat reductive when we seek to build rich, authentic interpersonal relationships free from preconceptions and ambiguities.
Rather than speaking of gender equality, let us speak of equal treatment of people.
Let us think of “Abolishing Gender”!
Will there ever be a world where we can address others simply by saying “Hello,” without adding “Sir” or “Madam”?
If we truly wish to actively reduce the distinctions between genders, it is essential to deconstruct the cognitive biases that lead us to see a man or a woman before seeing a person.
What would a world without distinctions between men and women look like?
To imagine it, try this experiment: close your eyes, use your inner voice, and address an imaginary person. Say once “Hello, Sir,” once “Hello, Madam,” and once simply “Hello” followed by a first name.
What sensory and emotional differences do you feel?
