“When you see a deer you see Bambi and I see antlers up on the wall. When you see a lake you think picnics and I see a large mouth up under that log … Scrub me down, dress me up, oh but no matter what, remember I’m still a guy.” (I’m Still a Guy, Brad Paisley)

So, what is “a guy” or “a man?” For that matter, what is “a gal,” or “a woman?” These questions are actually more complicated and nuanced than they may appear.

What is usually the first question friends and family ask a parent on the birth of a child? Perhaps, “How much does the baby weigh?” No, that question usually comes further down the line. What about, “Is the baby healthy?” Sometimes, but typically this is not the initial question. Usually people ask, “Is it a boy or a girl?”

On the surface, this is a seemingly innocuous question. In reality, however, it is rife with underlying social and ethical consequences. Even before the infant’s sex is inscribed on the birth certificate, assumptions and behavioral imperatives have been made regarding the infant’s life course, assumptions based on highly entrenched and complex networks of gender-based expectations.

Many people often consider the terms “sex” and “gender” as synonymous when referring to the categories of biological sex. In fact, the terms are very different. A simple way to consider the differences is to view our biological “sex” as what is between our legs, while our “gender” is what is between our ears. Or more appropriately, we can read our biological “sex” as a noun. Gender, however, is not a noun, but rather an activity, a repeated action, and therefore it is a verb.

“Sex” describes our biology, our “packaging,” including our internal and external genitalia, our chromosomes (genetic karyotype), and our hormones. “Gender,” though, comprises the set of socially– and culturally-defined roles and behaviors assigned to our biology. This can vary from culture to culture. Our society recognizes basically two distinct gender roles: “masculine” — having the qualities or characteristics attributed to men – and “feminine” — having the qualities or characteristics attributed to women. A third gender role, rarely condoned in our society, is “androgyny” combining assumed male (andro) and female (gyne) qualities.

I highlight these definitions as a backdrop to a trend I have witnessed increasingly in the media: the demise of the so-called “metrosexual” and the rise (no pun intended) of the so-called “real man,” termed “the retrosexual,” coined by Dave Besley in his 2008 book, “The Retrosexual Manual: How To Be a Real Man.” Besley unabashedly advises men how to return to those mythically uncomplicated times when men concerned themselves not with appearances, but when men took charge, when their lives and their minds were uncluttered with the complexities of modern life, when men made their own decisions and never complained and when men knew how to “treat a lady.”

“Yeah, with all of these men linin’ up to get neutered, it’s hip now to be feminized. I don’t highlight my hair, I’ve still got a pair. Yeah, honey. I’m still a guy.” (Brad Paisley)

I even found a website on the “Retrosexual Code,” which I would hope is a satirical guide for the “real man.”

Among its commandments, the site lists: “A Retrosexual, no matter that the woman insists, pays for the date,” “A Retrosexual deals with it — be it a flat tire, break-in into your home or a natural disaster, you deal with it,” “A Retrosexual not only eats red meat, he often kills it himself,” and so on.

Preeminent scholar and social theorist Judith Butler addresses what she refers to as the “performativety of gender,” that gender is basically an involuntary reiteration or reenactment of established norms of expression, an act that one performs as an actor performs a script that was created before the actor took the stage. The continued transmission of gender requires actors to play their roles so that they become actualized and reproduced in the guise of reality, and in the guise of the “natural” and the “normal.”

What connects many of the various forms of oppression are the socially constructed and socially enforced binary systems that divide people along strictly demarcated boundaries and borders into either/or categories related to societal norms. In the United States, the socially constructed notions of man/woman, gender conforming/gender non-conforming, heterosexual/homosexual and bisexual, white people/people of color, my religion/all other religions and others are organized and maintained upon oppositional binary frames with their attendant meanings, social roles, values, stereotypes and behavioral and attitudinal imperatives, expressions and expectations for the purpose of maintaining power and domination: male versus and over female and intersexuals, heterosexual versus and over homosexual and bisexual, gender normative (cisgender) versus and over people who transgress social gender norms and imperatives of gender self expression, white people versus and over people of color, native born verses and over non-native born, Christians versus and over other faith and non-faith communities and so on.

The borders establish a polarity of exclusion in various degrees on one side and inclusion on the other. This structure is established and enforced on the societal, institutional and individual/interpersonal levels. The most extreme and overt forms of oppression are directed against those who most challenge, confound or contest these binary frames established within societal norms in their presentation of self and in their attempts to obliterate the very boundaries from which hierarchies of domination and subordination stem.

So what is Brad Paisley really telling us about the “guy:” “Oh my eyebrows ain’t plucked, there’s a gun in my truck. Oh thank god, I’m still a guy.”

What is perfectly clear is that the notion of “gender” is a taught and learned response, and sustained in the service of maintaining positions of domination and subordination. The categorical man/woman and gender conforming/gender non-conforming binary frames leave no space for intersex people – the estimated one in 2000 people born with either indeterminate or combined male and female sexed bodies – and transgender, including transsexual, people.

In the case of gender, the binary imperatives actually lock all people into rigid gender-based roles that inhibit creativity and self-expression and therefore, we all have a vested interest in challenging and eventually obliterating the binaries.

Warren Blumenfeld is an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction.