Is Gender “Over?” Should It Be? The Debate over Male/Female Roles Rages On

“Gender is Over!” declares drag queen Aja in Corey Camperchioli’s film short comedy, Femme. It isn’t, of course, but the war is heating up, and the battlefield is widening.

This past weekend, as much of the world was caught up in the passing of Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, a pair of videos took social media by storm.

One comes from the Philippines and features a trio called TNT Boys in a singing competition called Your Face Sounds Familiar: Kids. It’s self-explanatory — as are the YouTube responses from around the world.

In the other, conservative vlogger Chad Prather goes to great lengths to point out how men and women are not the same — which is inarguable. “They’re not equal,” he says next, not realizing that he’s just said two things that are in no way identical.

The reason for Prather’s commentary? He’d just seen video of an Argentinian policewoman breastfeeding a “malnourished and neglected” child on the street who was not her own. “Plopped it right out there in the hallway in front of God n’ everybody and fed that young’un,” he says.

“I believe it was an incredible gesture by that woman,” Prather attests, before putting his foot in his mouth. “Watching it kinda made me want to move down to Buenos Aires and get malnourished and neglected. She’ll probably arrest that boy in 20 years and they can reminisce about the good old days.”

Wow. So in order to even talk about the issue of gender inequality or whether we as civilized human beings are moving away from strict binary gender roles, we have to clear out the underbrush of Prather’s racist aside that a child is going to be arrested in 20 years and that the mere sight of an exposed breast makes him giddy with confusion. Is it food? Is it sex? His expression in the video is like watching your pet hear your voice recorded over the phone, but sees that your lips aren’t moving. What manner of witchery is this, anyway?

After a few more inside jokes about how many of his fellow lonely range riders will be Googling breast-feeding police officers in Buenos Aires, he gets to his point: “Celebrating gender differences. inequality.”

“I celebrate…I celebrate your superior ability to carry another human being inside of your body; give birth to that person. Protect, nurture and give that child things no man could ever do (sic).You can feed that child with chest water. I’ve seen you do it, right there in the airport.”

His loopy homage to the breast as sex object and nuitrition source as well as his manifesto on gender roles is posted below. It’s not for the squeamish, especially when he veers from his supposition of chivalry into chauvanism like a clown car on two wheels with disabled brakes.

What escapes Prather and people like him is the simple fact that broadening the spectrum of what’s acceptable won’t rob him of his cowboy hat, or ladies who want to “celebrate” their femininity in the most traditional of ways, whether that means wearing a burka and hijab, a bikini — or the uniform of a Buenos Aires police officer.

Now see what the TNT Boys have to say about gender fluidity: