Post #3- Masculinities & femininities

Link to article: Gay and Green presidential contender battles to break the mould in Finland

Gay and Green presidential contender battles to break the mould in Finland
By: Charlotta Hedman and Héctor Montes

For this blog post I have chosen to discuss an issue that I have been following for a few weeks now. This issue is the recent elections in Finland. Or, more suitably I should say, the current re-elections in Finland. I am both a citizen of Canada as well as Finland so I try to keep in touch. I am one of 230,000 Finn's who live abroad. The article I choose to discuss "Gay and Green presidential contender battles to break the mould in Finland" reveals my main point regarding gender, sexuality, masculinity and femininity.

Currently, Finland has a female president. (Not to mention it’s the first female president!) Tarja Halonen is part of the Social Democratic Party and was elected as president in 2000, and re-elected in 2006. I know not everyone is probably familiar with her but fans of Conan O'Brien’s late night show may recognize her since she`s been called his look-alike! (Not to mention they are friends!)  Over the past couple weeks Finland has been looking for a new president. However, as elections closed last week, no one was officially elected because there was not enough of a majority vote for the candidates.

My issue with this article is that I feel I was hearing about traits that seemed unimportant in politics. One of the two remaining candidates, Pekka Haavisto`s sexuality was labelled more prominently in the article rather than his political standpoint.

Brenda Allen describes gender and sex as terms used interchangeably, yet are still related to our identity.  For the past 30 years Finland has elected the social democratic party, and this candidate is a member of the green party. I am left wondering if this interchange of revealing his sexuality so outwardly is a tactic of theirs to cover his political stance, or to gain more media coverage. “Understanding how sex and gender differ is important for thinking about the social construction of identity and its consequences” (p. 40).

We are born with our sex, and our society assigns our gender. According to Allen’s source “gender classifications are based on a web of socially constructed meanings that differentiate humans on the basis of perceived physical, social, and psychological characteristics “(p. 40). Allen also mentioned that within the North American society, there are both male dominated jobs as well as female dominated jobs. What sex do you picture as a nurse? How about an engineer? Our society, like gender, has constructed these meanings. When we unknowingly contribute to them by picturing certain individuals in these roles we are only further perpetuating these locked in categories. Finland seems to have managed to break through their cycle with a female president. To me, Haavisto’s sexuality shouldn’t matter just as Halonen’s sex didn’t hold her back. Although males still have similar workplace dominance to that of North America’s, our society can look to countries like Finland and look to be more open.

Allen continues to express that gender is something we do instead of have. Haavisto is an openly gay politician living in a partnership with a man from Ecuador, Antonio Flores, a hairdresser in Finland`s capital. What I found really interesting in this article was the comment made that “Antonio would be an excellent first lady.” This again, perpetuates the rigid stereotype that hairdressers are a feminine job.

I love Finland, as you can probably tell.
I wanted to close with an interesting quote I read in this article from another citizen. “If you can’t say ‘my president can be gay’ it means the time is right for it” (Hedman and Montes, 2012).

References

Allen, B. J, (2004) Difference matters: communicating social identity. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.

Hedman, C., Montes, H. (2012, February 3). Gay and Green presidential contender battles to break the mould in Finland. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/03/finnish-election-pekka-haavisto?newsfeed=true