You’re probably familiar with Shakespeare’s famous quote from “As You Like It,"

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.”

In this play, Rosalind flees political persecution when her father’s throne is taken by her uncle. She disguises herself as a man and escapes into the forest with her cousin Celia. The whole situation seems out of Rosalind’s hands: as if she was being strangled and tossed about by the rules of society. She was innocent, yet she was going to be murdered because she was the daughter of a Duke. Her role shifts from lady, aristocrat to scavenger and finally bride.

This got me thinking: what roles am I playing?

Humor me, here. I want you to think back to a time before language — before schools, TV, jobs, and cities. In order to advance, we had to develop certain styles of communication. Where there was biological difference, there was slightly different development in agenda. At first, the way humans operated was primitive. The idea is that without communication, your only objective is simple stimulation: eat, sleep, sex, hunt, eat again. Monarchies and hierarchies were nonstarters — I imagine there were a lot of disputes on how a leadership role functions (as we still do today). However, back then it was more of smashing rocks over peoples heads than drone strikes. Back then, there wasn’t a system in place that regulated how we act and who we act for. Media wasn’t a constant influence on our choices and structuring our lives.

Men, women, and children alike shared a more similar status than we do today. There wasn’t the housewife and businessman we’ve come to know as the American ideal. However, this quickly changed as competition and language emerged, and systems began to form. Wherever there was a system, someone had to decide who and how to lead. Those choices would then become reinforced by time.

Hierarchy became the mode of operation, and the most important thing to know about hierarchies is that they aren’t fair. Different groups of people are separated and labeled with connotations. It’s this interaction between groups of people that form laws and statuses. Once the roots of the ideas started to grow, it would become increasingly harder to disentangle them.

Historically, we have found societies favor the status of a male for his physical strength. The logic goes, ‘the bigger the better.’ For women, many of us feel society telling us ‘the smaller the better.’ Although men tend to be biologically bigger, this wasn’t always used to justify the patriarchy. Think about Amazon women; their ability to fight is notwithstanding. As history developed, women were also barred from the military, workforce, and office, furthering their isolation. This encouraged more domestic roles to be played.

Today, with the power of language and expansion, we have been able to divide and conquer as much as we’d like to unite. As society developed, humanity found itself being sorted into categories, each one labeled with a different meaning. Orphan, Jew, slut, priest. By utilizing labels, people were now able to make assumptions based on appearance and past knowledge to analyze new knowledge. Quite frankly, this is amazing! However, it was inevitable unintended consequences would arise. This idea is known as social construction.

Social constructionism theory suggests that reality isn’t really real. Well, it is real when enough people with enough influence ascribe consequences to a behavior. When enough people believe something to be true, it usually becomes true.

For example, we know not to steal abroad because we’ve heard about those who lose their hands. Those who engage in sex work must constantly be on guard because it is known to them and to their clients how dangerous of a profession it can be. An excellent student stops raising her hand because the children around her always laugh when she does. Act, react. It’s a cycle. Every action you perform can be broken down into how you process the boundaries which you’ve grown to know. When you do that action, it is sent out into the world to either be accepted, rejected or ignored.

To deconstruct the ideas of gender we have today, we have to separate biological truths from the connotations use to apply meaning to them. Usually, from many different converging brains and scholars comes a set of paradigms or idea that enough people gravitate toward that it becomes truth and reality to those people. The outgroup, or those who didn't contribute to this new idea, have a couple options: accept their truth and conform, reject their truth and rebel, or accept their truth and allow it to coexist peacefully. However, when an outgroup refuses a truth, the ingroup then can apply pressure. This is how the justice system is formed, to persecute those who break mutually agreed upon ways of living. Socially, economically, emotionally and physically.

But what if we didn’t agree to live this way?

We currently live in a patriarchal world. This means that men on a whole have taken leadership roles in society. For a very long time, men have been considered the half of the species capable of managing leadership, status, and wealth. It is a mistake to assume that just because it has always been this way, this is the best or only way. The assumption that men are better than women, or women better than men, is a mistake. To force someone to assume a gender role is a mistake.

When I was 17, my AP English teacher asked the class to gather in the center of the room. To the right was a sign that said: I agree. To the left: I disagree. She made the statement: “Men make better leaders than women.” All of the boys in the room moved to the right, while most of the girls moved to the left and some stayed in the middle. When asked why the boys chose to agree with that statement, they answered this: “Well, there haven’t been many woman leaders, has there? Thus, men are better at leading.”

This is a perfect example of the Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy of logic. According to Perdue,

“This is a conclusion that assumes that if 'A' occurred after 'B' then 'B' must have caused 'A.' “I drank bottled water and now I am sick, so the water must have made me sick.”

Replace the subjects and you’ll see how we’ve ended up where we are. ‘Men have power, so it must be the power that belongs to men.’

Women weren’t always barred from voting, although many still are today. In America, 1919 wasn’t the first insurgence against gender norms, and it wouldn’t be the last. The thing about social pressure is that when there is enough, backlash is inevitable.

Gender roles have been influenced and changed over the years by many individuals and groups. For example, Aristotle, a famous influential philosopher described the semen as being the active agent in procreation, and women are simply a vessel for a baby, preferably a male in some cultures, to grow.

“The male stands for the effective and active, and the female for the passive, it follows that what the female would contribute to the semen of the male would not be semen, but rather material for the semen to work upon. The female is, as it were, a mutilated male, and the catamenia are semen, only not pure; for there is only one thing they have not in them, the principle of soul." "it is the male that has the power of making the sensitive soul.”

Given how much we still revere figures like Aristotle, it is no wonder that words like his would have severe social ramifications. This ideology suggests that it is okay to dominate women, because it is seemingly a social norm. Think, though, about what he says about men exclusively having sensitive, active souls. This is different than what we perceive as masculine today. An important indication of social constructionism is its ability to change over time.

Another example comes from Christianity, as many religions inform national and cultural behaviors from conception. America has shaped itself around Christian ideals, and one of those ideals suggests that women are subservient to men. God being considered a man by most historians also reinforces the culture of disrespect toward women. Given Christian context, the actions of Eve in the Garden of Eden breeds contempt and distrust of a woman for no fault of her own.

Stereotypes restrict our choices and inform our subconscious growth. Society encourages you to take the role given to you and stick to it. If you don't, you risk what seems like everything. It’s time we decide what everything is for ourselves. If you want to have more agency over your identity, it is time you understand how it is an identity is built: not just from within, but from those all around you.

You have a choice, but only if you know there is a choice to be made.