The Predictable, and Late, Blog about Gender

“Pray God defend me! A little thing 

would make me tell them how much I lack of a 

Man.”

I know starting my blog with a penis joke is stereotypical, especially for me. Trust me, there is a point. Although veiled as a comedy, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night raises significant questions about the nature of gender. In the above quotation, Viola believes she will lose her bout with Sir Andrew simply because of her lack of a phallic member. Viola Assumes confidence, strength, and bravery are solely for the male sex. Yet in the context of a comedy, Shakespeare seems to be making the opposite assertion. Maybe gender is a bit more complicated than male or female, and maybe categorically placing unique individuals into these two very distinct boxes simplifies the issue. 

The issue of gender is often simplified to the point male or female. Shakespeare seems to disagree with this notion by giving power to the eunuch, Cesario, who is actually Viola, who would’ve been played by a man in the play’s original adaptation. Wow. That’s a lot to unpack so let me take it a bit slower: Shakespeare had female roles played by men in his various plays of the 17th century. This is explained by the role of the female in those times, yet is oddly counterintuitive when considering the complex oppression of women. Women couldn’t perform on stage until the restoration in 1660, so Shakespeare was forced to have men play the roles of women. Men masquerading as women on stage actually allowed for Shakespeare to add more social commentary into his plays, such as Twelfth Night.

In Twelfth Night, Viola disguises herself as a eunuch, Cesario, in order to secure a position within the Duke’s court. After settling into her position, and finding herself in love with the Duke, this male role hinders her ability to establish a sexual relationship with the Duke. Alright, now that the boring plot summary is out of the way, I can make my main point: this simply isn’t true. If a good reader reads between the lines, specifically the conversations between Cesario and the Duke, homoeroticism jumps off the page. Shakespeare adds this underlying homoerototicism to begin the construction of his claim that gender is not simply male or female. The Duke continuously compliments the feminine voice and features of the other man on stage, Cesario. This probably made the more traditional audience members a little uncomfortable back in the 1600s…just like it does now in 2019. Anyway, the Duke seems fascinated by Cesario because of his feminine features and voice despite his “male” gender-themed name tag. This is interesting because it provides a concrete example to the male/female labelers of four centuries ago…and those of 2019. How does one put a eunuch, with objectively “female” features, into the male or female box? 

The answer you should be coming to is “you can’t.” Yes, purely based on biology, there are males and females based on their individual genitalia. But who bases any of their ideas on a borderline fake science like biology? Males and females refer to sex anyway, not gender. So what is gender? A societal construct? An attempt to categorize for convenience? A way to establish general likes and dislikes between opposite sexes? The answer, as always, is a resounding “yes.”