In London’s punk scene in the late 1970’s, several women formed bands to express the same rage the men did, but in their own way. I was listening to a podcast on KEXP radio this morning, Sound and Vision, and the topic followed up on a prior show celebrating The Clash. This episode focused on those women-led bands, including The Splits, The Raincoats, and X-Ray Spex. Emily Fox talked about X-Ray Spex’ first hit, “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!”
Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard
But I think "oh bondage, up yours!"
One-two-three-four!Bind me, tie me, chain me to the wall
I wanna be a slave to you allOh bondage, up yours
Oh bondage, no more
Oh bondage, up yours
Oh bondage, no moreChain-store chainsmoke, I consume you all
Chain-gang chainmail, I don't think at all
The song had little to do with sex kinks, but was based on Marian Elliott’s experience growing up as a Christian, with the theme that escaping from sin is escaping from bondage (as in the Jews’ Exodus from Egypt.) Elliott said she tried to examine everything she did as to whether it was due to expectation, and those expectations are a form of bondage. (This is my interpretation of her statement, no what she actually said.) She did not buy the bondage pants and clothes of Vivian West popular with punks in the late 70’s, but instead bought her clothes at thrift stores. She was just trying to break those retail chains, along with all the things that hold us back from expressing ourselves.
A major form of bondage, especially for women but also for men, is gender. It’s a social structure that has evolved due to the dimorphic nature of a mammal species that is divided into male and female. Bimodal distributions of secondary male traits show that we tend to have greater strength, height, weight and other traits that enable us to more easily be the dominant sex, socially. Women tend to have lesser physical strength, tend to be shorter, and lighter. This and other vulnerabilities have led them to be the dominated sex.
I don’t know how much I need to argue this point, because it is obvious on its face, but if you do find it necessary to provide any contradictory evidence I do have a comment section below and you are welcome to join in.
These differences are the sources of gender’s role in binding us to expectations and opportunities to express our desires and goals of who we want to be. Men’s dominance is the reason we refer to our form of gender as being patriarchal. Men rule, men decide. And even though there are family units with dominant women, this is still within a larger society that is male-dominant.
46 presidential terms in the United States since 1790, and not one has featured a female . The closest a woman has come to holding the office was in 2016. That’s not the only indicator. This is just related to one country and one office, but we all observe when we’re honest the role that gender plays in maintaining the dominance of men in power all over the world. It’s the case in government, in business, and in our daily lives as kids are taught from early ages that their choices are limited to those defined within gender to their sex. They learn by the toys, clothes, games, and even the names that are chosen for them how to tell what is expected of girls and what is expected of boys.
So, what is gender identity? It is defined to mean an internal sense of self, related to the expressions of gender that an individual finds to reflect their own relationship to sex roles in the society in which they live. Are there better, more precise definitions? It’s the best I can do. Is it testable? I don’t think so, since it’s very subjective and finding a distinct and discreet anchor for gender identity relies on experiential data that is impossible to gather reliably. What we believe about ourselves and what we believe about the other sex is based on subjective observations and not objective fact, and it is filtered through our own socialization as males or females. Here’s a definition that is generally accepted, but in my mind it’s not very helpful: 1
What is meant by gender identity?
Gender identity is each person's internal and individual experience of gender. It is a person's sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither, or anywhere along the gender spectrum. A person's gender identity may be the same as or different from their birth-assigned sex.
There’s an interesting comment on this at Butterflies and Wheels, by the pseudonymous “Your Name’s Not Bruce?” and this paragraph from the guest post version is particularly illustrative:
How can anyone feel that they “are” or “must be” something they’re not, and can’t ever be? I can understand that people feel terrible discomfort, but I don’t believe that they have any grounds to say “The discomfort I feel is because I’m really supposed to be, I really am the other sex.” How could they have any standard of comparison to make that claim? It’s like voting for the best restaurant in town when you’ve only ever been to one. Without eating at others, you can’t know there aren’t better. Well, when it comes to our selves we’re stuck in our one and only restaurant for life. The doors are locked, there’s no way out. I can only know what it’s like to be me. I will never have experiences as anyone but me. It’s like the old saying: “Wherever you go, there you are.” You can’t get outside of yourself. No taste tests, no test drives. You can use imagination and empathy to inform yourself, to imagine and empathize, but you can’t be someone else . Not really. Not ever. However distressed or agonized I might be, I can not believably claim that I feel this way because I’m not actually the only person I’ve ever been (and the only one I will ever be) able to experience. Certainly you can agree that my discomfort and distress are real without accepting my claims about their origin.
If we think that our gender identity is true to the other sex, then we are engaging in stereotyping our own sex, and the other sex. It’s an exercise in believing that the grass on the other side of the fence will taste better.
But we’ll never know. And this story is the impetus that led me to write this post, from testimony over a bill on gender in Indiana by Corinna Cohn.
I'd like to tell you that I've lived as a woman for the last thirty years, but that would be a lie. I sought to change my sex, and it took me more than a decade to arrive at the understanding that I was trying to do the impossible. I did not live as a woman, but as a man doing my best to blend in to the world as a woman. My heart breaks for the young people who are being lied to by well-meaning enablers, as they will need to learn the same painful lesson that I learned.
Accepting that gender identity is a factual, innate aspect of ourselves that carries with it the desires that are ascribed by social direction to a specific sex is a form of bondage. Declaring yourself, or believing yourself, to be a person opposite to your sex does not break any of the bondage of gender. Moving yourself from one gender cage to the other is just as restrictive as if it would be staying in your original gender cage, but even more so, because it is fake. It’s not real. It’s an extraordinary claim.
If you really want to be free, be free. But do not accept that gender identity is the reason you are free. No one should be telling you that. If they do, push back and say
“Oh, Bondage! Up Yours!”
It’s vague, but this is from the Ontario (CA) Human Rights Commission and is used as a basis for human rights determination.