Killing a Culture

Human beings are born with male or female physical characteristics; they become masculine or feminine in manner and outlook only after being exposed to the conventions of society. To many Women's Liberationists, masculinity and femininity are outmoded sexist concepts, and the current blurring of sex roles is a welcome development. To Charles Winick, professor of anthropology and sociology at the City University of New York, the rise of "unisex" in the U.S. has ominous connotations for the future of the nation. In a survey of 2,000 different cultures, Winick found that some 55 were characterized by sexual ambiguity. Not one of those cultures has survived.

In ancient Athens it was widely believed that there were no significant emotional differences between the sexes. Winick points out that Alcibiades, one of the leaders responsible for the city's defeat by Sparta, was condemned by Plutarch for his "effeminacy in dress--he would trail long purple robes through the Agora." On the Acropolis, it was hard to distinguish the statues by sex. Says Winick: "Hermes and Aphrodite have the same boyishly slender body, girlishly fine arms, and sexually undifferentiated expression."

A similar trend marked Rome long before its fall. Juvenal decried the ubiquity of foppish, feminine, perfumed males. Elagabalus appeared publicly in women's clothes. Caesar was likened to "every man's wife and every woman's husband"; Antony had a harem of men and women; and Nero is thought to have married a castrated male.

The Barely There Face. In our own culture, Winick sees intersex everywhere. Clothes and hair are the least of it. Sales of jewelry and fragrances for men have risen massively in the past three years. Since World War II, there has been a 66% increase in the number of women tennis players, a 1,000% rise in women golfers. Every third gun-owner is a woman, and so is every fifth skydiver.

In addition to sexual crisscrossing, unisex is characterized by blandness and the avoidance of extremes. Says Winick: "Light from her cigar may provide the only brightness" on modern woman's "barely there" face. Houses are becoming sexless: they contain few leather club chairs or boudoir chairs--or even boudoirs. In interior decoration, the most popular hue is a noncolor, beige. Names too are sexually equivocal; one child out of five has a name like Robin or Leslie or Dana.

Stout is out, and so are other masculine drinks like ale and porter. Even beer "has a much thinner taste," according to Winick. The tastelessness of convenience foods like instant coffee "helps reinforce our acceptance of the neuter" in the rest of our culture. In ballet, adults adore the unisexuality of Nureyev; in books, children prefer easy-to-read real-life adventures to fairy tales with their "idealized, romantic rolemodels of the masculine and feminine."

Why does it all matter? Because, Winick explains, until people have acquired what psychiatrists call sexual identity, and until they recognize the reality of their sex, they cannot accept or cope with other realities. Says Winick: "America's survival potential may be substantially undercut if unisex continues because it will impair our ability to adapt to new situations."

Not that Winick would go back to 19th century notions of what men and women should be like; it matters little how masculinity and femininity are defined, he suggests, as long as they are defined. "Just about every combination of male and female role-relationship can be effective--except one in which roles are blurred." The sexes are equal, not equivalent. There need be no hurt feelings, he says, because "difference" does not mean "deficiency."

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