Page 100 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

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THE QUESTION OF
CULTURAL GENDER

Mirja Liikkanen

At each moment in time throughout our lives we are all gendered bodies. Yet,
despite the massive, penetrating presence of gender, there is no original pure
body, no original pure gender. The processes by which gender is produced and
reproduced are never-ending. Even when gender is not a conscious identity, it
is constantly being constructed in relation to messages and meaning structures
in our environment – in the media, the workplace, the home. Gender is socially
constructed as it is built into our very selves. And, because our very selves are all
historically and geographically located in real places, gender is necessarily
experienced through the complex matrices of culture. This omnipresence of
gender makes it a very diffuse object of study.
We all face situations in which we become acutely aware of our gender.
Sitting in a theater in Helsinki, Finland, for example, I may remember that
‘culture’ (of the ‘high culture’ variety) in my country, Finland, is supposed to
appeal mainly to middle-aged women like me. Sometimes when I am shopping
or traveling on my own I am reminded of my gender because of threatening or
derogatory gestures or words directed my way. I seldom go down dark streets. I
go into the wooded area near my home in the daytime only when I know
other people are around. Indeed, like all women, I must deal with fear of the
cruelest of all forms of gendered violence: rape. The scars that culture imprints
on the gendered body affect women in ways that are quite different from the
ways men experience their gendered bodies. That’s the main reason women
seem to worry about gender more than men do.
I often find myself, with my female body, in the wrong place. Sometimes my
body is of the wrong type, sometimes of the wrong age. That’s when I remem-
ber so clearly how culture has gendered me, enveloped my body, and entered
my head. We produce and reproduce gender through our conscious and
unconscious behavior, across the whole genealogy that in fluences how gender
is defined and etched in our minds, in our emotions, on our bodies. We create
our gender, but it also grows upon us.
Gender is constructed in and through every societal space, including the

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