If writing on a wall is artistic expression, then desecrating a sign is protest. Take the two bathroom signs next to the Free Speech Movement Cafe: The woman’s head has been replaced by the symbol for anarchy and the man’s head is blued-out completely. Or take the men’s restroom sign on the ground floor of Evans. With only the peeling corners of a triangle left behind, someone begged the question in black Sharpie: “Men?”
These block figures — the square-shouldered man and the triangle dress-wearing woman — have been present in our minds since the earliest days of childhood. We were taught somewhere along the line that there exists a binary in the world and that it is used to separate people when using the restroom.
Fortunately, at UC Berkeley, male and female demarcations are constantly met with opposition. Others have written in the past about the need for greater gender-neutral and gender non-conforming spaces on campus, so it is a topic that will not be tackled here. At this point, such a need is not even an argument. The only question that remains is “when?”
What is equally important, I think, is casting away the notion that gender should be the main aspect of identity. Like the anarchist woman bathroom sign, your identity is so much more than your sex or gender. You might relate to the stereotypes of tomboy, effeminate guy, girly girl or butch male, but those designations signify nothing about who you are as a person. These labels mean less and less as time passes. Further, the sex a person is born with or without no longer impacts potential careers or positions in society to the same degree as it once did, at least in this country. All of this is good news.
But as gender loses its fundamental role in how we identify and how others see us, what do we have left to understand ourselves?
Simply put, our identity should be regarded as the sum of our actions. You aren’t the set of traits that you were born with. You are not a list of potentials or probabilities. You are whatever you choose to become — a notion that extends far past gender into the realms of ethnicity and class too. I’m not trying to take on the world with this idea. Heck, I’m sure millions before me have thought it. But regardless of its originality, the concept that we should consider ourselves born with a tabula rasa is key to progressive thinking. Identity that is nurtured, not inherent to our nature, is the identity of the future.
Some have trouble accepting this, usually in minor ways. This past weekend, during an apartment viewing that my two roommates and I attended, we had asked the landlord if parking were available. “Why do you have cars?” he asked, “It’s the boys who need the cars. Girls don’t drive cars.” He then went on to say that we must come from very spoiled families. I kid you not — this actually happened.
Such comments can easily be dismissed because he was an older man and maybe only half-serious. Annoying as it was, small battles are not the ones to be fought at a time like this. While this country might see him as being behind the times, the problems other nations face in terms of societal gender roles are much more pressing.
These days, at least in Berkeley, no one wears triangle dresses like the one worn by every women-designated bathroom sign. A shift in identifying ourselves by our actions and accomplishments — not the qualities we’re born with — is something to be celebrated where it exists and encouraged where it is nascent.
Contact Kimberly Veklerov at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter: @kveklerov.