Policing Masculinities and Femininities

Western culture organizes gender through a binary framing, which posits masculinity and femininity as mutually exclusive categories. As culturally defined, the categories of masculinity[Page 860] and femininity correspond with anatomical sex. Masculinity, for instance, is the set of understandings, behaviors, bodily practices, and characteristics we associate with a biological state of maleness and femininity with femaleness. This definition frames masculinity and femininity as naturally extending from these biological states of maleness or femaleness; however, the meanings constituting each are actually culturally bound and change with time and culture. Because they are, in fact, not a natural set of behaviors or characteristics, masculinity and femininity require a great deal of cultural work for their maintenance. Much of this cultural work takes the form of “gender policing.” ...