Gendered adjectives Part 2

By Mae Wright

In Part 1 of this article, I explored why the adjectives we use to talk about gender and gender roles make it such a difficult topic to write about. The adjectives masculine and feminine are 'normative' - words that carry the concept of 'what is considered normal' and how a person should be'.

This means using them always implies the meaning of 'normal' or 'not normal'. Using them about a person of the opposite sex implies they are not a 'real' man or woman. The words can be threatening to a person's sense of being okay as a man or a woman.

Many people simply cannot have a discussion about gender and gender roles without feeling threatened or criticised. 

I want to find other adjectives to conceptualise and describe human traits, behaviour and roles. Words that leaves gender where it is (it's not going away) but focus instead on the considerably more important concept of being human.

What other adjectives could we use?

I have no intention of saying we should just change the meanings of our gender adjectives: masculine and feminine - I'm no linguistic prescriptivist. The normative 'should be' aspect of the adjectives we use for gender is inescapable. 'Norms' are part of being a member of society - gender is only one area in which society 'shapes' us to fit in. I also have no illusions I could overcome the gender police or the gender reactionaries. And possibly we want those words sometimes…

But can we give them a little less air space?

Let's shift the way we talk about human traits; shift it away from a gender reference.

An answer lies in finding and prioritising words that refer to human traits and behaviours based on how they relate to meeting human needs and their function for the individual and for society, rather than which sex/gender they have been assigned to 'traditionally'.

I have found an old but useful theory of human psychological needs that looks promising for this task: Self-Determination Theory or SDT. According to SDT, human beings have three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Autonomy means having a sense of volition, endorsement, will and personal choice and expression; competence means a sense of mastering one’s environment through action and tools; and relatedness means a sense of connection to others and something bigger than the 'self'. These three needs exist across all our daily activities and interactions in all tasks, work, family and social contexts.

Meeting these psychological needs is crucial to personal well-being and a sense of having a meaningful life. They correspond fairly closely to the well-known ideas of Martin Seligman that a sense of meaning comes from belonging to and serving something beyond yourself, and from developing something within you.

SDT is well researched across cultures. Its proponents say that while cultures may appear different when you observe how people act, these underlying psychological needs exist in all people. (I'll work with that for now, but I'm not staking this discussion on it.)

If autonomy, competence and relatedness sound a bit familiar, yes, you saw an adaptation of them in Mike Lundy's last post The settings are all wrong. We had a great email discussion about SDT a few weeks back. Mike went with a story. I prefer a Venn.

In this Venn diagram, I have mapped the three psychological needs identified by SDT. Then I have added what I think are the high level personal needs met through the areas of overlap of these three - the well-known human needs for role and sense of purpose, belonging and a sense of place, and identity and sense of agency.

Of course, there is more to wellbeing than meeting one's psychological needs - the physical environment, whether you live in safe area or a war zone, your health, your social and work opportunities, etc. are all very important. But the human need for autonomy, competence and relatedness is always there.

In this next Venn diagram, I have added the types of traits that each human requires in order to meet these psychological needs. I've called these expressive, instrumental and connective traits, borrowing from various frameworks on personality and traits. Below the Venn, I've listed examples of each of these types of traits.

This approach allows us to think about ourselves as human first and gendered second. We each have human needs, for which we require a wide range of traits, and these may be expressed in gendered ways. Or not.

Unlike Mike's character Edo, I don't imagine the 'settings' across expressive, instrumental and connective traits should always be equal, like the Venn might suggest. Different stages of our lives, different contexts and different physical or other realities will necessitate the expression of more or fewer of the different traits across the three areas. Maybe at one stage of our lives a person might prioritise competence over relatedness, etc.

However, if we are ALWAYS prevented from meeting our autonomy, competence and relatedness needs, and always prevented from exhibiting specific expressive, instrumental and connective traits and behaviours, it's hard to see how a person can achieve well-being and a robust sense of meaning and happiness.

For many, the traits and behaviours that are off limits for 'traditional' masculinity and femininity is preventing just this.

The 'traditional' ideas of how we 'should be' masculine or feminine are potentially harmful because they limit opportunity for men and women to meet fundamental psychological needs. For men, opportunities for relatedness are often pitted up against opportunities for competence. Expectations about 'real men' being workers and providers (competence) feed into expectations about long working hours which require a partner to assume all the responsibility for children and extended family (relatedness), which they can only manage around work outside the home which is undemanding or part time, thus low in meeting needs for competence. As well as the lack of genuine control over decisions (autonomy) in many alienating workplaces, acceptable self-expression (autonomy) in men can be limited to a tiny range of behaviours that are often risky or self-destructive, e.g. excessive drinking. Similarly, for women, opportunities for meaningful autonomy and competence are pitted up against opportunities for relatedness. The caring role above is one example. In addition, the women who exhibit instrumental traits like goal orientation or analytical thinking (competence) are often socially punished with descriptions like 'aggressive bitch' or 'cold and calculating.'

(As an aside, my Venn applies broadly to thinking about our human psychological needs. So it applies outside of gender. It's also how I understand mindless over-consumption: Western culture limits options for genuine individual autonomy and connection, so these needs are met with buying things. It's also useful to understand the despair of elderly people in aged-care facilities: the need for competence and autonomy don't disappear with age, but opportunities to meet those needs very often do.)

The classification of traits as gendered, either masculine and feminine, and therefore 'not normal' for a person with the opposite gender, means individuals may not have opportunities to meet their fundamental needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness that allow a fulfilling and meaningful life.

The role of gender in our social identity is so strong that men can't adopt what are considered 'feminine traits' without social consequences. Ditto for many women. The result is that most men and women learn to restrict themselves to fit into their gender role, but this can come at a cost of our wellbeing and our sense of meaning. For some it can be extremely painful, for some deadly, but for all of us it is at least a restriction.

I'm suggesting instead that we start with the assumption that all humans have basic autonomy, competence and relatedness needs, which they meet with a range of various expressive, instrumental and connective traits and behaviours that are a result of their unique personal and experiential history.

From this starting point, men and women could perhaps talk more comfortably about how to express and combine instrumental and connective traits to allow a sense of purpose. Both men and women could discuss their unmet need for autonomy and how to develop their expressive traits. We could also talk more productively about how some traits within each category are limiting for the individual and not socially desirable (e.g. aggression), whether expressed by men or women.

Instead of endless and fruitless debates about gender and gender roles, we could talk about the central value of human needs and fostering a sense of wellbeing and meaning.

Most importantly, this approach provides a rationale for a person to consider change, e.g. moving out of a restrictive role, that is not based on criticising the way they currently are.

What would happen if we had some non-gendered adjectives for human traits?

With alternative words to describe human traits and behaviours, we could talk more productively about people, stereotypes, society, and about gender and gender roles. We could discuss human traits and behaviours without undermining a person's sense of themselves as okay. Instead, we could talk about the value of men developing and valuing positive connective traits, or women balancing both autonomy with connection needs. Reframing one of the opening examples, we could say, 'People in business need both instrumental and connective traits.' Not because we want to break down gender as a concept, but because all human beings need a sense of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Not because one sex is better than the other at certain things, but because a sense of well-being and meaning is a fundamental drive in each human being.

If we adopted these adjectives to describe human traits, we could stop talking about gender itself as a bad thing. We could keep masculine, feminine and androgynous if we want. There are still aspects of each sex (plus that tiny percentage of people who are intersex) that require gendered adjectives, especially when we want to talk about sexual attraction.

It's not a solution to restrictive gender roles themselves, but it would provide a helpful and non-threatening way to talk about them. Something that is missing now.

We could also leave behind the words gender-fluid, gender-queer, non-binary, etc. Because gender is not invoked and not at stake, neither is the person's social identity. Instead, the various traits are to meet a person's human needs, not an issue of conforming or conflicting with their gender role. Likewise, we would have less need for words like cis- and transgender. Instead, we could talk about prioritising human needs over gender role.

With non-gendered adjectives to describe human traits, a person's way of being a man or woman is not questioned or threatened merely by a discussion. Gender becomes less important to a person's identity and human development. Not unimportant or irrelevant, mind you, just not the first and only arbiter of a person's behaviour, decisions and choices.

It is your human wholeness - your full and balanced development as a person - that is of foremost importance in your well-being and sense of meaning.