William James sets out to discuss habits in the first essay of his book. He begins by giving us a definition of habit: “a new pathway of discharge formed in the brain” (9) before going into excruciating detail on the definition of habit, the physiological creation of habits, the value of habits, and so much more. He talks about the inanimate/animate dichotomy of habit. The fact of habits being a physiological pathway that leads to a physical response, and even warns us about what is referred to as ‘stuckness,’ which is getting stuck in a habit that might not be serving a positive purpose. There are many examples of habits -- punching your lunch number or checking your phone as soon as you wake up -- but the one I’ll mainly argue is of our habitual gender norms and the ways in which we can begin to alter our habits, no matter how deeply physiologically rooted.
James goes into great detail in discussing habits, some of which can be a little confusing. He explains the physiological basis as well as the physical basis for acquiring and acting out habits. Essentially, he breaks down a habit into something as simple as a neurological pathway. Habit is something that has been wired within your mind, a reaction to a certain stimulus. For example, in Elementary school, we were given lunch numbers. These were used to identify us in the school’s system to keep track of our spending in the lunchroom, and you’re assigned one that you will use throughout your entire school career -- for most people that is from Pre-K/Kindergarten to graduation. In order to teach a five year old how to remember their number, they send home a paper with a numerical keypad on it along with the lunch number so that the kids can begin to practice punching the numbers in. In doing so, these kids are creating neurological pathways that will stick with them beyond graduation. As James puts it, “A simple habit, like every other nervous event … is mechanically, nothing but a reflex discharge; and its anatomical substratum must be a path in the system.” (11) In this scenario, the mechanical reflex is being able to punch in the numbers without thinking of the numbers being punched, and the anatomical substratum creating the neurological pathway is the action of practicing typing the number in followed by years, a decade, of typing it in one to two times a day. These pathways are then so deeply rooted that any child or young adult who has a Lunch Number or has had one may not be able to tell you what the digits are, but given a keypad, can punch it in with no problem. “I cannot tell the answer yet my hand never makes a mistake.” (13) In addition, James claims that, “Habits simplify our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.” (12) If we had to stand there and painstakingly remember our lunch numbers, digit by digit, we would be standing there for quite some time, if we weren’t able to form habits. Also, I am sure many have this habit as well, but every morning when my alarm goes off on my phone, I immediately, after turning it off, go to social media. The first things I do are silence the alarm, check my notifications, go to Instagram, go to Facebook, go to Tiktok, and then get up. These are things I do unconsciously. I am not waking up, peeling my eyes open and wondering who posted an Instagram story while I was getting my beauty rest, but yet, I still do it. Sometimes, I am coherent enough to realize that my eyes are scanning my screen, my thumb is scrolling, but I am not seeing what I am looking at. I’m like a robot operating purely based on instincts and habit -- and that is kind of scary. This is something else that James discusses in his essay; James is careful to explain that habits are also something that can cause us to get ‘stuck.’ He calls them society’s “most precious conservative agents,” and is essentially saying to be careful of falling into bad, or harmful, habits. This is where I will make my gender norms argument.
Gender norms are things that are taught to us and instilled in us at an incredibly young age. People assign male and female, boy things and girl things, blue toys and pink toys, before a baby is even born. We aren’t conscious of these differentiations, but we do them anyway and then hold tightly to them like they’re a lifeline. We all experience this and even perpetuate it, but why? James says: “If the period between twenty and thirty is the critical one in the formation of intellectual and professional habits, the period below twenty is more important still for the fixing of personal habits.” (16) We can still see this personified in the way we look at and utilize gender norms. I’ll use myself as an example. I was born a female and told all my life that I am a girl because I am a female. I was told, or urged, to do certain things and avoid others based on that ‘fact.’ It became a habit to think of myself in such a way. It also led to more habits similar to it: sitting with my legs crossed over one another, taking up as little space as possible, learning how to cook for a family, moving out of the way of men. Little Adele learned how to do these things far before she turned twenty, and by the time she reached twenty, she had a way of doing them for herself. She created deep physiological pathways on how to go about cooking: always start with preheating the oven, then wash your hands, then prepare the broccoli, then the chicken, then wash your hands, then put it all in the oven and wash the dishes while you wait. I’ve done these things in the same way for so long, I’m not sure I could physically do them another way. Now, inching closer to my gender norms point, Adele has always thought of herself in these stereotypical female roles and not even once in a male role. Never has she considered ‘man-spreading’ or walking straight into someone on the sidewalk who got in her way -- she does now, but she’s actively choosing them and breaking these unconscious habits. Adele has never thought of herself in any other way as girl or female. This isn’t an inherent harmful habit, but it can have harmful implications. Maybe Adele is dogmatic and bigoted*, assuming people can only operate based on the gender binary, which might lead her to vote against rights for people who don’t conform to the gender binary, which also leads to their harm. That is what makes it a harmful habit -- harmful for the collective, not the individual. James offers a bit of wisdom on how we can correct this. He offers the idea to “make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.” (17) For us, this means to alter our current habits so as to break the gender binary. Adele might put her feet up on a desk while she works on a paper rather than sitting cutely with her ankles rested against one another under her chair; Adele might walk across the sidewalk with her head held high, shoulder checking the man who gets in her way. The key is continuity, however. Doing these things once is not enough to override the physiological pathway that has been rooted so deeply at almost twenty-five years of age. I might change my morning routine by getting straight out of bed, not checking my phone at all until I leave the house for class or work, but in order to do that, I have to do it every single day until it is rooted just as deeply as the unconscious eye scanning and thumb scrolling once was. As James says, “every day during which a break-down [of the formation of a new habit or alteration of an existing one] is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all.” (17) Picking up or dropping a habit is not easy, it takes perseverance and a ton of time, which can be discouraging, but, “In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible.” (17) It’s not just wishful thinking that alters habits or creates habits; it is action.
In conclusion, gender norms are nothing more than a habit. They’re essentially just mechanical reflexes based on the continually pushed binary that is reflected to us so much in our impressionable years that it creates perhaps the deepest physiological pathway. But that doesn’t mean we have to wallow in our ‘stuckness’ and stick to only what we are told we should. We can change the way we act, alter our habits, or acquire new ones that benefit not only us individually, but society as a whole. “All these changes are rather slow; the material in question opposes a certain resistance to the modifying cause, which it takes time to overcome…” (10) The changing of a physiological response is not something that can be expected to change overnight. It takes time, and the deeper the pathway, the longer it might take. I might be able to alter my morning habits by reaching for a book instead of my phone in a matter of months, but something as monumental as gender norms can take years or decades, at the least. James says, “By the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.” (16) Which is the academic way of saying you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but I believe repetition and muscle memory are powerful things. I don’t think you can put an exact number on when something will change, especially when we are discussing changing a large group of individuals or the world.