Personal gender is often described through the concept of gender roles. A social gender role is the sum of norms and expectations that a given society has concerning men and women. This determines what kind of behaviours are rewarded, and what kind are punished. In today’s social sciences, the concept of gender role is more or less outdated, and has been replaced and theoretically refined by, for instance, the perspective of discursive positionings. The advantage of this perspective is that it grasps better the fact that much of ‘the power’ belongs to the discourses we all think and act within. Thus, it is not only ‘others’ who tell us what we should do, we do it by ourselves in order to be comprehensible to others – and to ourselves. This also means that people actively contribute to maintaining discourses that, at the same time, oppress them. While feminists of the 1970s tended to see women as victims of men’s power, the
perspective today has changed to seeing them as both victims and as maintainers of gendered discourses.
One problem that the concept of gender roles and the concept of positioning share, however different they may be, is that they offer a limited explanation as to why people conform (or not) to roles or discourses. Confirmation of the self – either by obtaining the approval of others, or
47 Toril Moi (1999), Simone de Beauvoir (1949).
48 In fact, the only one who - in this whole study - mentions that girls are actually more powerful than boys at this age is an 11-year-old Portuguese girl whom we will meet later.
by making oneself understood within available discursive formations, are the answers suggested. These are important aspects, but they do not include an understanding of the emotional attachment we may have to certain roles and discourses (and not to others), nor do they explain why such attachments do not always concur with what is expected of us or perceived as particularly meaningful (cf. for instance, the example of a Norwegian woman who chooses to become a housewife).
Concepts of identity formation and subjectivity address these emotional levels. They aim to explain how cultural patterns gradually turn into personal psychology in specific ways during the course of our lives. A feeling of ‘me’ as a specific person with a specific life. As subjectivities are never fixed, concluded or entirely coherent, one may also prefer to use the plural here: the feeling of ‘me’ can be made up of several emotional realities. Some situations make me blossom, others make me feel that I am worthless. Was I really the same person in these two situations? Yes, and no. Identities involve the whole person, but the whole person can harbour different feelings of self, according to the situation.
Identities or subjectivities49 concern psychological traits such as how I relate to others, the way I experience things, the kind of emotions different situations arouse in me, what threatens or confirms my self-esteem. Such identities are informed by gender - not as a distinct and fixed ‘gender identity’, but as identities constructed through ‘gendered’ experiences we have had in life. In this way gender may become part and parcel of who we feel we are, and not something we necessarily identify with explicitly. It is very likely that Camilla has a pink soapbox because she truly loves the colour (as many girls her age do) – not because she wants to express femininity in any conscious way. When it is suddenly ‘reduced’ to femininity, it may be felt as an offence to the unique person Camilla experiences she is. Perhaps she would feel that changing to blue would not really be ‘her’? Seen this way, the problem is not so much that she as ‘a girl’ does not meet Henrik’s standards of Scouting, but that she does not fit in as the person she feels she is. Taking Henrik’s point of view, the sheer sight of the pink soapbox may activate his own fears of not being tough enough as a Scout, and thus playing the role of the one who sets the standards may be felt as reassuring. Or perhaps it is simply a clumsy way of attracting her attention? What we may ask, however, is whether there is less room for Camilla’s particular gendered identities in the Scout camp than Henrik’s particular gendered identities.
Although the choice of pink in Camilla’s own experience may have more to do with her
personality than with her gender, it is very likely that her colour preferences do not come out of the blue (literally!). Even so, it can be experienced as a personal choice, not as something that has to do with conventional gender norms. We may be stretching the pink soapbox a little far now, but if we apply it to other aspects of our felt identities such as how we relate to others, or the things we enjoy or hate doing, the point may become more sensible. This is what will be done in the empirical chapters.
Similarly to the question we raised above in relation to gendered bodies, we may also ask here whether the gendered identities of girls tend to display certain characteristics and gendered identities of boys display others? Can there be common patterns in the realm of personal gendered identities? And do they relate to age? I would expect that anyone who frequently associates with girls and boys would consent to such a view, as did the Scout leaders and the young people themselves when asked about differences between girls and boys. Some of the differences they described were remarkably similar across the countries, while others were not. I will return to the differences and similarities experienced in Chapter 8, but here I would just like to repeat once more what was said in the introduction to this chapter: what we perceive as gender comes both from our heads and from the world. Perhaps we tend to exaggerate how similar and how different they really are, because we also see them through our dichotomous gender lenses?
49 Here I use identities and subjectivities interchangeably. They are different, however, as identity is something one can ‘have’, while one ‘is’ a subject. Thus the concept of ‘identity’ may be associated only with clearly defined, conscious, or chosen images of oneself, while subjectivity better conveys the idea of the psychological totality of the person. Identities are not made up of different departments, e.g. one for gender, one for race, one for being a Scout, etc. Identities are constructed through our experiences in life - and gender, race, and Scouting may influence what these are. Thus, it is more precise to talk about gendered identities or gendered subjectivities than ‘gender identity’. Gender identity literally means only the fact that a person knows her or his gender, something that normally is achieved when the child is 1 1/2 years-old, it does not refer to any specific formation. What is psychologically connected to gender for each of us will be a product of our personal life story.