I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the fact that many conservatives argue that gender differences are innate, even god-given, and that any expression of fluidity is unnatural.

And yet, were this so, why would we need legislation to impose rules about gender? Surely, left alone, we would all cleave to “natural” binaries.

That gender roles are socially and legally constructed is not news to most of you, I know. But I’m fascinated by the double-speak that says ‘they’re natural!’ while insisting there have to be laws to *make* it so.

This reminded me of an episode in Wisconsin history that I came across in my research. During the writing of the first state constitution, in 1848, those drafting the document included a [free] married women’s property clause in the draft.

People went wild, both for an against the clause. Those who were opposed to expanding women’s legal rights argued that such a move would “open the door wide for domestic disquietude.” https://content.wisconsinhistory.org/digital/collection/tp/id/41795/rec/1

“Woman when occupying the position designed for her is seen to the best advantage. There she holds supreme sway—there she is the companion of man, the guardian of infancy, the ministering angel to ‘all the ills that flesh is heir to.’”

“But snatch her from this lofty station, place the ballot in her hand and bid her vote, seat her in legislative halls, give her the control of property separate from her husband, and she will become equally as selfish and equally ambitious as man now is.”

What’s fascinating about this language is the clear-eyed admission that gender roles were socially and legally constructed—that without legislation that prevented women from exercising rights, women could (would?) choose to live like men.

Supporters of the clause, however, felt that gender roles and behaviors were innate, and so giving women rights would not change a thing about them. https://content.wisconsinhistory.org/digital/collection/tp/id/41804

“But it is said (and in some high places) that this provision will lead to dissensions between the husband and wife, that ‘woman is to be transferred from her appropriate domestic sphere, taken away from her children

“and cast out rudely into the strifes and turmoil of the world, there to have her finer sensibilities blunted, the ruling motives of her mind changed, and every trait of loveliness blotted out.’”

“Is this so? I have carefully looked over this article again and again, and, surely, I am totally unable to conceive any such consequences as likely to flow from it.”

Here we have a writer who embraces what we might think of as progressive legislation, expanding a free woman’s legal rights, with a very regressive view of what gender is and could be.

The writer was “unable to conceive” that women would be anything but what they thought of as “women” and so didn’t worry about the married women’s property clause.

Then as now, if people truly believed in innate gender identity, they wouldn’t need laws to impose it upon children and teens and adults.

But their words and actions demonstrate that they don’t believe in it – they believe that gender is socially and legally constructed and they want it to stay socially and legally constructed in a way that benefits their worldview.

Again, not news to most people! But it’s fascinating to see the parallels to gender panic in the middle of the 19th century and the internal inconsistencies in the arguments people make.