“ What deserves our attention in all this gender havoc is how the language fails to provide space for its speakers to develop sensitivity towards other intricacies of gender as a social construct by limiting it to just physiology. ”
It is obvious that the main concern that the Armenian Church has regarding the unprecedented level of male births (female fetuses are aborted at an alarming rate) is that mothers are not born. This defines girls and women only in terms of reproduction. The irony here is that the aborted female fetus is ascribed reproductive value, responsible for the procreation of a whole nation. More than half of the current and future population thereby is reduced to a biological function – childbearing.
Focusing on biological procreative function reinforces the generalization of womanhood, equating it to motherhood and negating women’s equality as individuals. Female fetuses are called to be saved so that they fulfill a biological function that men cannot, yet the fact that unborn female fetuses could be potential doctors, lawyers, scientists, or that there could be potential geniuses among the aborted females is not part of the equation.
One might think that being native in such a grammatically genderless language, speakers of Armenian would be predisposed to see gender beyond a binary categorization and accepting of gender as a spectrum. However, speakers of Armenian turn out to perceive gender the way that patriarchal culture has constructed it for them at a semantic level: binary physiological sex linked with a body of non-linguistic knowledge that ascribes roles to either of the sexes. Deciphering this principle of role distribution does not beg for a toilsome effort: solely biological conceptualization of gender should revolve around the core difference between women and men – pregnancy. Pregnancy as a physiological characteristic dualizes gender into them and us – those who can be pregnant and those who can impregnate. In this agrarian framework – planting a seed in soil and waiting for its sprouting – women are thought to be the receptors of the seed, the soil in which the seed grows. Reception passivizes women and implies a hierarchy in which one sex acts, is the agent, and the other is acted upon, is the passive, the receptor. Little did our agrarian ancestors know about the travail of procreation! For them, the actual labor was the sowing, acting upon the earth so that it yields harvest. Women’s job was to mother – everything else could be done by men. That is why the current mindset believes that the female fetus cannot be anyone but a mother.
“ While manhood and masculinity are characterized by high agency and ability, femaleness, on the contrary, is marked by inability and lack of agency. ”
What deserves our attention in all this gender havoc is how the language fails to provide space for its speakers to develop sensitivity towards other intricacies of gender as a social construct by limiting it to just physiology. We as native speakers of Armenian are left to rely on a vast body of non-linguistic knowledge encrypted in the language and passed from one generation to another. Cultural understanding of gender — or more precisely the lack of it — couldn’t have persisted this long without this courier — language that formulaically solidifies this knowledge and makes it possible for the transfer. We are brought into a gender stalemate because our technically gender-neutral language has fossilized the formula of an agent/male and an object/female at a microscopic level – one which allows us to compliment a woman by calling her a man [տղամարդ կին (a man(ly) woman)]. This highly common colloquialism is used about a woman who’s honest, strong, pragmatic, and successful, which means that being just a woman excludes the aforementioned qualities. Women and men are defined as opposites; being a man is a title that can be awarded to a woman if she proves to deserve it in exceptional cases. For example, a female interviewee, who preferred to remain anonymous, recalled a relative’s wedding. Amidst the extravagant celebration, the toastmaster, a distinguished member of the extended family, raised his glass and in toasting to her referred to her as tghamard kin (man(ly) woman). This reflected that, although single, she is a successful entrepreneur, financially self-sufficient, and economically supports others in her extended family. This term is explained by the fact that while manhood and masculinity are characterized by high agency and ability, femaleness, on the contrary, is marked by inability and lack of agency. Yet, when a woman does find a way to be active, stand for herself, persevere by working hard and without culturally and conventionally questionable “moral” behavior, she is seen as partially a man.
There is Gender in Armenian and Armenia – We Just Don’t Have the Word for It!
“‘Tghamard kin’ is an admission of gender,” says human rights theorist and writer Vahan Bournazian. “As it [tghamard kin] cannot refer to unique physiological sex, it is an admission that gender is constructed in our culture and language […]”[4] Indeed, a cynic might want to ask the toastmaster to advise the Church that gender is not a “foreign landmine.” The meaning of gender as a social construct exists in the Armenian culture but it is yet to be named. We as native speakers of Armenian cannot access that meaning unless we name it. Nothing is foreign about gender, but an evolved understanding of it represented by a term – one that would free us from inherited fetters of masculinity and male chauvinism; one that would help us recognize gender beyond the culturally stagnant formula of “agent” men and “patient” women perpetuated by language.
“Presenting “gender” as a foreign concept means that the Armenian “value system” cannot accept the truth that beyond biological sex there is the social construct of gender, and that apart from the physiological differences of childbearing and breastfeeding all other distinctions are social conventions and cultural constructs that should evolve.”
The list kicked off with the word անհատ [anhat] (individual, person) and 20.25 % of the 647 respondents associated this word with maleness; only 4.48 % thought it was female while the majority associated it with both sexes (72.80%) and 2.47% were unsure. It should be noted that while many words could receive the female forming postfix, the word anhat does not undergo this change and supposedly stands for both male and female. And yet, a disturbing percentage of respondents associated the most gender-neutral word with a male. Still, as it turns out, most words that have to do with public service and especially leading positions, do not welcome the female postfix –ուհի [uhi] and are purportedly gender-neutral. Such is the word պատգամավոր [patgamavor] (MP, parliamentarian) in Armenian, which, as stated by the majority of respondents, is perceived to be male (Male: 62.29%; Female: 1.70%; Both: 34.47%; Unsure: 1.55%).