On the Term Gender Order: Ignoring Feminist Insights.

A few months ago at a Gender Studies M.A. Program’s state exam, my colleagues and I had an intriguing discussion about the term gender order.  The sociologist within our examining group was adamant that it was a better term than patriarchy as it was more neutral and could describe various gender orders in addition to patriarchal ones.  They also said that it is, more or less, the term now used instead of patriarchy in their discipline and in Gender Studies, as it is considered to be a more accurate description of the gender situation.  Another colleague and I countered that they were incorrect.  Gender order was not a term used throughout all of Gender Studies to replace patriarchy.  We both agreed that in our fields (literary analysis and religious studies), gender order is not used.  At least, I have never encountered it.  

What is gender order you might be asking yourself?  According to Jane Pilcher and Imelda Whelehan in Key Concepts in Gender Studies published in 2017 (note 1), gender order, a term coined by Jill Matthews in 1984, describes how genders are organized and interact in a given society.  It contains, from what I have read, the assumption of a gender binary system but allows for more possible variations as to how the two genders relate to each other than a term like patriarchy does.  For example, within gender orders, hierarchies do not need to exist; societal relations between the genders can be structured in a host of various ways.  Thus, matriarchy is an example of a gender order.  Gender order concentrates on the agency of individuals within the system to interact with it, be acted upon by it, and to alter it.  It seems to me that gender order is believed to be a more neutral term because it can help account for various ways in which societies across the globe organize their binary gender relations and the ways in which these gender relations are always changing, thus historical and contextual.

At face value, there seems to be nothing inherently wrong with gender order as a descriptive tool to understand how various societies organize gender and how individual agency operates within a gendered system.  But, that neutrality is exactly the reason why the term bothers me (note 2).   A descriptive, neutral term like gender order feels like it was coming from a place of privilege, from an academic ivory tower where we look down on all the cute ways humans organize themselves by gender.  This denies the reality of life for most of us within a highly gendered, hierarchical system (for more on this, see here).  Patriarchies are destructive, death-dealing structures that need to be overthrown.  We need feminist theories that offer rally cries, revolts against patriarchal system.

Likewise, the descriptions of gender order I have read operate on the naturalness of a gender binary, and that societies need binary gender relations – whatever those may be – to function.  If they don’t need them, well, at least all societies have them, thus gender order seems to be accepting the naturalness of a gender binary.  This blatantly ignores the insights of feminist theorists who have shown the socially constructed nature of both gender and biological sex, and the ways in which patriarchy reinforces these binaries.  To repeat my previous sentiments, feminists do not want a description of how gender operates in a given society; we want to dismantle the oppressive, sexist, racist, classist, ableist, homophobic, and transphobic elements of societies.  In fact, many feminists envision a future in which specific gender identities do not exist or at the very least are not recognizable as gender identities according to today’s standards.  Gender order would not be applicable in this future.

In addition, gender order seems highly problematic because it ignores key feminist insights into the function of patriarchal logic.   Patriarchy is not a neutral enterprise.  It causes considerable harm.  Its oppressiveness is structural and institutional.  Individuals have very little power to make changes, while gender order seems to suggest the power of individual agency within the system. 

I walked away from that discussion with my colleagues rather frustrated.  The use of the term gender order suggests objectivity.  Yet, the thought that we could ever be truly objective in any scientific inquiry is a product of patriarchy itself.  Feminists know that the words we use matter, that we all speak from a specific place, and that the horrors that patriarchal systems replicate on a daily basis need to end.  To suggest otherwise harms us all.

NOTES: 

1. Pilcher, Jane and Imelda Whelehan.”Gender Order.” Key Concepts in Gender Studies. Second Edition ed 55, City Road: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2017, pp. 60-62. Sage Knowledge. SAGE Key Concepts, doi: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473920224.n18.
2. My exposure to the term is rather limited.  There may exist uses of the term that do exactly what I am asking for here and I have yet to encounter them.