Life
Although it has (rightfully) been maligned as the Worst Year Ever, 2016 was also an interesting year for our understanding of gender archetypes and how they affect our society. In some senses, 2016 was a boundary-breaking year, with huge steps forward for transgender awareness and new openings in the definitions of masculine and feminine "spheres" and what people of certain genders can and cannot do. In other ways, though, it was a year that shifted the conversation in more negative ways, a trend exemplified by the results of the presidential election. We won't look at gender in the same way after 2016, but not all of the new elements are necessarily great improvements.
What do we talk about when we talk about gender? The year 2016 revealed just how expansive that conversation has to be, from the behavioral expectations placed on girls and boys from birth to understandings of gendered roles in society, and how personal conceptions of gender can differ radically from physical ones.
For many of those aspects, 2016 has been a seminal year, where we'll carry forward the progress (and the hurt) from these landmark moments for years to come.
Trans Rights Awareness Hit A New High
Beyond the visibility of individuals, the transgender experience became a more prominent part of culture in 2016 more generally. The release of Against Me!: Shape Shift With Me, the film documenting the transition of punk rocker Laura Jane Grace as she fronted the band Against Me!, raised hugely important conversations, while in sadder news, Chelsea Manning's continued incarceration in a men's prison was appealed loudly by the National Center for Transgender Equality.
And everybody everywhere had an opinion about the "bathroom bill" of North Carolina, which blocks people from using bathrooms that don't correspond to their gender assigned at birth. It was one of the highest-profile issues of the year, with everybody from Bruce Springsteen to Demi Lovato and the National Collegiate Athletics Association protesting the state. Although an attempted repeal of the bill has just failed, the sheer weight of outcries against it indicates that transgender rights are accelerating as a part of the American consciousness, and that a tipping point is coming.
The 2016 Election Revealed The Glass Ceiling Remains Shockingly Thick
The year 2016 represented one of the biggest steps forward and most colossal steps backward, at the same time. Hillary Clinton's nomination as the first female major party candidate for president of the United States was the culmination of centuries of fighting for the political representation and empowerment of women.
Ultimately, however, the sexism ran thick and fast; it was far from the only problematic issue with the Trump-Clinton contest, but the fact that a man who talked over his female opponent constantly, was revealed to have talked about p*ssy-grabbing, and was sexist by any definition possible won over a competent-if-flawed woman made evident the presence of gender inequality in the American psyche.
The year 2016 will give us many scars, but that's probably the deepest: gender still gets in the way of the highest office in the land, and misogyny remains unpunished and acceptable if you're rich, powerful, white, cis, straight, and male. It's a hard lesson to learn again and again, but hopefully in 2017 we might start unlearning it.