Cannabis and Gender: Data and News

What do you think about cannabis and gender? And to which gender you feel like you belong?

Do you think these are silly questions? Let me share with you a couple of thoughts on why I believe these are extremely important questions. You may want to smoke some good pot while we do this, it would help open our minds. Here is a website where you can find some amazing strain: Greenhouseseeds.nl.

Anyway, here is what I have to say. Gender, as feminists and queer theorists, but also sociologists and anthropologists, would suggest, is a cultural product defined by a certain set of meanings and expectations. It is a box filled with tools that too often define what you can or cannot do, what is appropriate and inappropriate. If you are a man (not a male, but a man), you are expected to play a certain kind of characters. People expect you to wear a certain kind of clothes, say a certain kind of things, work a certain kind of jobs, etc. And the same thing is true if you are a woman (not a female, but a woman).

So: is cannabis something man should smoke? Or is it a girly thing to do? It is extremely important to see how cannabis gets gendered in our culture, because through the gendering process you define also how, why and when you should smoke.

I also want to share with you some data, which should help us have a better understanding of this entire issue. A recent report titled National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) has indicated twice as many men smoke pot as women. There have been attempts to explain the numbers shown on the report. Maybe it’s because pot smokers are seen as lazy and stinky, and women can’t be lazy and they certainly can’t be stinky… at least according to the patriarchal discourses we are all forced to listen and swallow on a daily basis. Or maybe, women decide not to smoke because they feel ashamed: women must always be in control (again, another crazy stereotype), right?

This is 2015: isn’t it time for women to finally be free to be lazy and out of control, if that’s the kind of idea of pot smokers we accept as truth? Or isn’t it time for both cannabis and pot smokers to have the right to be seen as something more sophisticated than your average “stinky, jobless, loser”?

The recent legalization trends could soon change all this. Still… think about it.