(In this text, I refer to gender as a social and cultural construct that organizes behaviors, appearances, and roles into categories traditionally labeled “masculine” and “feminine.”)

To explore contemporary dynamics between men and women, one must first come to understand the simulated versions of gender. Gender roles, in the traditional binary sense, no longer represent the authentic identities of people; they act as ‘goal posts’, encouraging stylized performance of responsibilities as indoctrinated by religion, tradition, media, and cultural ideals. Therefore, I am drawn to the conclusion that, as they don’t reflect the reality of the human experience, they have become a copy without an original; these expressions of identity have melted into simulacra. 

Simulacra refer to a copy without an original. Credited to Baudrillard in the 1970s, it is when society engages with representations of truth rather than truth itself, becoming a symbol of the truth it once represented. An example of this may be an influencer sharing their ‘authentic’ life, which in reality is a fabrication, a perversion of reality. When simulacra multiply and spread through society, we enter a state of hyperreality, where man cannot distinguish between what is a simulacrum and what is real. In short, simulacra are the false copies of reality, and hyperreality is the state where people can no longer distinguish the simulacra from reality. 

Butler presents a theory of gender as performance. For her, gender identity is the result of repeated gendered performance and not biology. When Butler’s theory meets Baudrillard’s, gender roles can be seen as a hyperreal construct, detached from the original meaning of the masculine and feminine, understood as mere societal ideas of ‘essences’. Meaning that there is no original; what we interpret today as masculine and feminine are simply copies of copies which had no true original, no manifestation apart from thought. 

Media and advertising create the conditions for simulacra to grow by creating idealized, stylized, and extreme versions of masculine and feminine essence. Though people may think of these masculine and feminine symbols as the traditional hypermasculine superhero and the hyperfeminine dame, simulacra always morph to fit their situation. Now, think of the ‘performative male’ archetype, a ‘gym bro’, the ‘pick me’ or ‘girls’ girl. All of these symbols circulate constantly, becoming ever-changing templates of masculinity and femininity. This snake eats its own tail; individuals perform and copy others who have derived from prior simulations. This results in internalized ideals rather than expressing a natural identity, which, without ever having performance, would never be impacted by gender.

And so gender slips into spectacle for a policing gaze: ‘You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur’ (Margaret Atwood). How many times do you hold back from doing something because it conflicts with the gender roles you were arbitrarily assigned? This loss of authenticity is proof of the nature of the simulacrum. How can a ‘man’, inherently masculine (in that he is a man), have any of his actions perceived as feminine, and, to follow the same train, how can a woman, feminine in nature, perform a masculine task? The very possibility of such reversals reveals that masculinity and femininity are not essential qualities but signifiers; flexible symbols detached from any biological truth. In hyperreality, gender is no longer anchored to the physical manifestation of it, but circulates as a performance that references other performances. And therefore simulated gender can challenge norms such as drag performance can reinforce stereotypes of objectified femininity, however it is not to be interpreted that challenging expressions of gender identity to be bad, or that the traditional is good, both exist within hyperreality and therefore are viewed through the eyes of those who have only even known the simulacra of gendered performance, and so viewed through a bias lens. 

In conclusion, femininity and masculinity today act as simulacra; they have no real reference except for a blurred ideal. They have no real origin, but are sustained by repetition and by the fact that they may constantly be susceptible to change. 

The post-modern gender identity performs gender not out of truth but as an image that, in its repetition, both conceals and reveals the emptiness of the gender binary it seeks to imitate. And so to live without gender seems absurd; it feels that to live without gender, you must cut a vital part of your identity out of your lives. Instead of being a simple mutually exclusive descriptor (think about colour, something cannot be red if it is blue and it cannot be blue if red) gender has become a social and cultural construct that organizes behaviors, appearances, and roles into categories traditionally labeled “masculine” and “feminine, something that defines our identity and seems as real as the pair of chromosomes you have. 

Case study 

The figure of Aphrodite is a classical divine abstraction of femininity. She represents the idea of femininity, not the real, lived experience of being female, but the idealized surface of it: beauty without subjectivity, sensuality without depth. In this, she functions as one of the earlier simulacrums of femininity. Her softness, beauty, and sexual allure engage in a performance derived not from nature but from a lineage of images that trace back to myth itself. 

The allegory of the map 

 “If once we were able to view the Borges fable in which the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering the territory exactly (the decline of the Empire witnesses the fraying of this map, little by little, and its fall into ruins, though some shreds are still discernible in the deserts-the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction testifying to a pride equal to the Empire and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, a bit as the double ends by being confused with the real through aging)-as the most beautiful allegory of simulation, this fable has now come full circle for us, and possesses nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacra.” (Baudrillard, 1981). And so what happens when the society, be it present or future, needs a map of their new empire, they will produce a map of the map. When the future inhabitants recall the empire, they will recall the map, the perversion of reality; however, the map has become the reality, more real than the earth beneath it. 

Read more:

Simulacra and Simulation – Baudrillard

Yes, You are Living in a Simulation – Horses

Femininity as a cultural construct – Hurd