Give In...to Gender Transcendence

If I could be Queen of the World one of my wishes would be for everyone to have the freedom of Gender Role Transcendence meaning that we would each do and like what we are good at and what interests us and not worry if people of our gender or sex are "supposed to" do or like those things in our culture.   One fellow who seems to have achieved this is featured in this week's meme:

This meme is a play on a quotation from "Star Wars:  Return of the Jedi" in which Darth Vader's BFF, The Emperor Palpatine, goads Luke Skywalker by saying, "Give in to your anger."  The humor comes from portraying the Dark Side's most famous General in a stereotypically feminine way:  we associate being emotional (but not being angry); knitting; the color pink; sitting in a closed position; crafting; and the word "pretty" with the feminine gender role.  Since Darth Vader does not seem to care if he is breaking gender stereotypes or not, he is just doing something that he enjoys, we can say that he is showing Gender Role Transcendence.

How would an average man, not a Sith Lord, develop Gender Role Transcendence?  Gender Role Journey Theory proposes that adults move from buying into our culture's gender roles, to having mixed feelings about them, this ambivalence gives way to anger about these roles which can spur actions to fights those roles, and finally transcendence, meaning that they can be whatever mix of those gender roles that suits who they really are (O'Neil & Carroll, 1988).

A recent article by McDermott and Schwartz (2013) used a measure based on this theory to categorize young adult men (ages 18-36) into four groups that represent four stages toward Gender Role Transcendence:  Not Questioning/Accepting of Traditional Gender Roles; Questioning With Strong Ambivalence (confusion and fear); Questioning With Weak Ambivalence (confusion and fear); and Pro-Feminist Activities.  The authors did not find evidence that any of their participants had moved into the final stage of transcendence, but they did discover that the men who were the closest to it - the participants in the Pro-Feminist Activities category - tended to be older.  This suggests that few men in their 20s or 30s are likely to be in Gender Role Transcendence - instead in this sample 70% of the men were Questioning With either Strong or Weak Ambivalence.  However with increasing age we would guess that more of those men would reach Gender Role Transcendence.  True to our meme, the wisdom of the Internet estimates Darth Vader's age at death to be 45; as a midlife man he would be more likely to have reached that state of mind.

The men in the Pro-Feminist subgroup were also more likely to be married or engaged (to women).  This is a classic example of a positive correlation because we do not know what is causing these two traits to hang together.  It could be, as McDermott and Schwartz suggest, that these men, "...may have learned to be flexible in their gender role ideology as part of navigating intimate relationships [with women]" (p. 208).  On the other hand, it may be that viewing women as equals (Pro-Feminist ideology) makes you an appealing partner to women for committed relationships.  It could also be a third variable: most heterosexual adults get married in their late 20s or 30s, so increased age might separately encourage men to view women as equals AND encourage them to get engaged/married.  So we cannot be sure if Darth Vader's marriage to Padmé Amidala was a cause of, a result of, or just a coincidence with his Gender Role Transcendence.

If you - male, female, or anyone in between - are looking to transcend the roles that our culture has assigned to your sex or gender you don't need to have mastered The Force.  My best advice is to just be yourself - which, by the way, does get easier as you get older.  If you need further encouragement, here are a young Michael Jackson and Roberta Flack singing on the 1970s children's television special, "Free to Be You and Me."

Further Reading:

You can access the McDermott and Schwartz (2013) article at your local college library.

A Master's Thesis in Cultural Psychology by John Pianka (2013):  "The Power of the Force: Race, Gender, and Colonialism in the Star Wars Universe."  Darth Vader may have transcended gender in our meme, but gender stereotypes are plentiful in the series.

The Huffington Post ran an article on men and knitting: "Bros and Rows."  This was also published in 2013!