Gender Boxes
The Ideal Man & Woman
The picture above, shows a composite of the perfect UK man and woman according to software normally used for catching criminals!
The specifics (fullness of lips, shape of jaw, etc) were the results of a survey led by Chris Solomon, world expert in facial mapping, and a cutting-edge e-fit algorithm.
They fit perfectly into their respective ‘Gender Box’.
The IDEAL MAN and IDEAL WOMAN.
We were introduced to the idea of Gender Boxes by a wonderful woman (and dear friend): KD McCaffery.
KD is a Primary Rape Prevention specialist, who runs workshops in the US in schools, military institutions, companies, prisons and Universities.
This isn’t self-defence, or safety tips.
Primary Rape prevention starts in a far more fundamental place, and much earlier than you would think.
It starts with the messages we can internalise from the world around us:
- the ideals we hold,
- how we should act,
- what we should wear,
- where we should go ,
- what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour.
Whether it’s a military training, year 11 students, Women’s Insitute meetings or social media.
In all of those settings, the same questions are asked.
Reliably similar answers are given.
We get reliably similar answers.
Which are the same answers as KD hets on the other side of the Atlantic.
We always do.
They are, as she correctly predicted when she taught us about this – Universal.
The first question is;
What words would you use to describe the IDEAL MAN?
You might like to ask that question in your office or with friends or family.
Ideas:
- Would he be tall or short?
- What kind of voice would he have?
- How would he speak?
- What would he look like?
- What kind of body?
- What kind of job would he do?
- What hobbies would he enjoy?
- How would he socialise?
- What kind of personality?
- What about his income?
- His friendship group?
- What kind of manners would he have?
What else?
How would you describe the IDEAL MAN ^
And the same question goes for the IDEAL WOMAN.
Try to think of all the attributes an ideal woman would have.
What would she look like, be like, do, say… be?
Try to get as much detail as you can.
Note:
If you’re thinking ‘where is the trans/non-binary representation’?
It’s a good question – and we’re getting to that.
But as you can probably guess, even in 2024, and as outdated and wrong as it is – trans/non-binary people don’t yet fit into that ‘ideal’ composite in the surveys.
It’s getting better, but we are far from there yet…
Question 1:
So how would you describe a typical IDEAL MAN and IDEAL WOMAN?
What kinds of words do you think most people would use – which words to do you use?
We’d love to see if your list matches the ones we’ve had before, or if we get some new ones.
Could we get a list going below?