The word “gender” is not just a fancy word for your personality
Another visit to Rebecca Reilly-Cooper’s post on “Gender is not a binary, it’s a spectrum” because there are so many lines I long to quote I can’t leave it at just one.
If you identify as pangender, is the claim that you represent every possible point on that spectrum? All at the same time? How might that be possible, since the extremes represent opposites of one another? Pure femininity is passivity, weakness and submission, while pure masculinity is aggression, strength and dominance. It is simply impossible to be all of these things at the same time. (If you don’t agree with me – if you’re angry right now about my “femmephobia”, because I’ve defined femininity as weakness and submission – feel free to give me alternative definitions of masculinity and femininity. Whatever you come up with, they’re going to represent opposites of one another.)
It’s true. You could define femininity as empathy, interpersonal understanding, intuition – but then if that’s femininity, you have to say that masculinity is callousness and mind-blindness. If you define any X as part of femininity, you’ve committed yourself to defining not-X as part of masculinity. Otherwise the X wouldn’t be part of femininity, it would just be something some people have more of and other people have less of.
If we do go with the idea that “gender is a spectrum” then how many possible genders are there?
The only consistent answer to this is: 7 billion, give or take. There are as many possible gender identities as there are humans on the planet. Your gender can be frost or the Sun or music or the sea or Jupiter or pure darkness. Your gender can be pizza.
But if this is so, it’s not clear how it makes sense, or adds anything to our understanding, to call any of this stuff “gender”, as opposed to just “human personality” or “stuff I like”. The word “gender” is not just a fancy word for your personality or your tastes and preferences, and it is not just a label to adopt so that you now have a way to convey just how large and multitudinous and interesting and misunderstood you are.
It’s not, or it shouldn’t be, but by god it certainly is being used that way, to terrible and nauseating effect. All those boring yet privileged cis people who are convinced there are only two dull genders, when the clever exciting breakthrough Young People are all special rainbows. They are the first people in history to be gender nonconforming; please give them all MacArthur grants immediately.
I want to quote the whole of the next bit too, but I won’t. Go read it if you haven’t already.
Fortunately, what is a spectrum is human personality, in all its variety and complexity. (Actually that’s not a spectrum either, because it is not simply one continuum between two extremes. It’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, humany-wumany stuff.) Gender is the value system that says there are two types of personality, determined by the reproductive organs you were born with. The first step to liberating people from the cage that is gender is to challenge established gender norms, and to play with and explore your gender expression and presentation.
So go for it; by all means. Define yourself however you want to. Have a blast.
A problem only emerges when you start making political claims on the basis of that label – when you start demanding that others call themselves cis, because you require there to be a bunch of boring binary cis people for you to define yourself in reference to; and when you insist that these cis women have structural advantage and political privilege over you, because they are socially read as the women they know themselves to be, while nobody really understands just how complex and interesting your gender identity is.
And there’s more, as good as that, and then there’s the knockout final paragraph. Go read it if you haven’t already. At More Radical With Age.
Mythology might be revealing to understand gender ambivalence and stereotyping.
In Greek mythology after Tiresias was blinded he ‘became’ a woman and gained insight. Don’t some aboriginal mythologies accommodate gender variance?
Also from Rebecca’s post:
“Similarly, some special people apparently get to opt out of the spectrum altogether by declaring themselves “agender”, saying that they feel neither masculine nor feminine, and don’t have any internal experience of gender. When I wrote this post, I got a few responses telling me that it sounds like I am agender. But this is a solution I reject, for the following reasons: it assumes that gender is an essential internal property, rather than an externally imposed hierarchy…”
I could, I suppose, call myself agender or genderqueer — my experience of similar to those who do — but I agree with her; it does feel a lot like opting out.
That was a great read, it was like reading my own thoughts stated back at me with better wording.
KP, what’s wrong with opting out? If I were young and single I’d experiment with that and see if it suited me better than being female. As it is, what I identify as no longer matters. But I am curious regarding the possible social impacts if many young people decided to refuse to be part of their respective assigned genders.
Well, opting out can involve throwing the women who don’t opt out under the bus.
It doesn’t have to. But it so often does. Even before people started defining themselves by gender words, there were always women who were “one of the guys”, “honorary men, “not like other girls”… and until they develop a strong sense of feminist solidarity, it’s common for them to react to a society that devalues the feminine by thinking of herself as special and better than girly girls, and believe a certain amount of misogyny.
So I think we need to see how opting out really works before we assume it’s helping break down sexism.
I think the part I’m still missing in this conversation is that I can choose to call my gender pizza all I want, but I will still be ignored in meetings, expected to clean up after men and organise social activities in the office, fondled on the subway, expected to step aside when walking down the street, blah blah blah. So what does ‘what I identify as’ with respect to gender really get me, anyway? I guess to me ‘gender’ is a social class, and there are only two of them, in the same way that in most social situations in American culture there are only two social classes when it comes to race, ‘white’ and ‘not white’.
exactly and thank you.
‘Even before people started defining themselves by gender words, there were always women who were “one of the guys”, “honorary men, “not like other girls”… and until they develop a strong sense of feminist solidarity, it’s common for them to react to a society that devalues the feminine by thinking of herself as special and better than girly girls, and believe a certain amount of misogyny.’
Been there and done that! And continue to be grateful for other people’s words to help me realise what I was doing.
When I was a child I used to wish that I was a Jedi. The world would be so much better if I were a Jedi. I wouldn’t even need a working lightsaber to feel like a proper Jedi, you know… just the power to force push bullies, or force jump over buildings. Man, that would be awesome. Sometimes the strength of my imagination coupled with the magical thinking that comes with church attendance made me feel like maybe if I believed it hard enough it would become true. I identified strongly as a Jedi, even though I didn’t have the words to express it at the time.
Now I am all grown up. I don’t identify with the Jedi as much. I took up DnD a few years ago, and once a week I identify as a chaotic/neutral Elan Psion (Telepath going on Thrallherd). I have a great time at DnD. much better than my regular everyday life. From now on, this is my gender and I expect everyone to refer to me by my full honorific “Mind-render, Kraken-slayer, Immortal Custodian of Crystalpeak Mountain”.
Way better than “Pizza”.
… And it doesn’t even require magical thinking to make it real! Thanks new gender theory!
#4 Anat,
But you aren’t opting out of what you are at all, calling yourself genderqueer or agender or arithmigender or (increasingly ridiculous constructions) does not change anything about you that is meaningful. Call your gender ‘pizza’ right now, and see what happens. Answer: nothing. Declaring your gender to be ____ changes nothing about you, nor how you are percieved; only your behavior and presentation do that*, and neither of those are contingent upon your declaration of gender X, Y or Z.
This only goes to show that the concept of gender has become abstract beyond any function. The way in which a person can meaningfully opt out of gender is to refuse to go along with the gender essentialist stereotypes. There will always be male bodied people and female bodied people, and there is nothing wrong with calling them male or female based on your perception of them (so long as you can take a correction with good grace), the trick is not to make assumptions about the person based on anatomy beyond the purely physiological consequences of having certain anatomy and chromosomes. Which, unless you are their doctor, is not your business anyway.
With no assumptions made on the basis of male/female bodies, there will be no (or greatly diminished) societally expected gender roles; and hence no roles to which one may conform or not conform. Just people, with bodies that look like _____, expressing themselves in whatever manner they find comfortable.
But this is not the same as saying ‘everyone is agender’ nor is it ‘there are sevenish billion genders.’ As the author notes, such answers only highlight the uselessness of the current perception of gender. Rather, it amounts to saying ‘this current trendy perception of gender is fucking stupid.’ Better to do away with it altogether by dismantling the underlying essentialism, that certain anatomies imply anything at all about anyone’s personality.
* And as noted by ‘guest’ at #6, not much will change – if percieved to be a women, you will be treated as such. So, combat the unfair treatment remains a priority, and if/when it is achieved, the need to declare oneself _____ evaporates.
Ah, less clear and more rambling than it sounded in my head. I should stress that the sentence “The way in which a person can meaningfully opt out of gender is to refuse to go along with the gender essentialist stereotypes” was meant to mean a refusal to make assumptions of others based on said stereotypes. A person can be themselves however they wish, even if their preferred hobbies and presentation happen to match the stereotyped man or woman. There is nothing wrong with being a man that enjoys carpentry, automotive care and sports; there is nothing wrong with being a woman that enjoys needlework, romantic comedies, and childcare.
The point being that a person can match or not match the sterotype… which does away with the entire concept of the stereotyped behavior.
Also, the typo in the footnote makes me cringe.
Dammit, triple post for more errata: “which does away with the entire concept of the stereotyped behavior” the second ‘the’ should not exist.
Don’t worry, Holms. You’re making big time sense. Thank you.
And, of course, they can match part of the stereotype and not match other parts, which is probably where most of us live, anyway. For instance, I don’t like sports, and I do prefer sweet wines. BUT I am a scientist who would rather read a non-fiction physics book than a romance, and would rather stomp around in a wetland than go to the mall. And lots of other places, someplaces where I may even be halfway between the stereotypes, or somewhere else totally out in the ozone doing my own thing. These are things people can’t tell by looking at me, and I could call my gender wetland, and it still wouldn’t have anything to do with what people see, how people treat me, and the fact that my male students act like, as college freshmen, they are more qualified to make an assessment in a field they have no knowledge of than I do (an experienced professional with a PhD in said field) simply because I have enlarged mammary glands.
“what’s wrong with opting out? If I were young and single I’d experiment with that and see if it suited me better than being female. As it is, what I identify as no longer matters. But I am curious regarding the possible social impacts if many young people decided to refuse to be part of their respective assigned genders.”
Opting out is fine. Technically I’ve “opted out” of femininity for over thirty years. But creating more boxes in which to slot oneself isn’t freedom, and it’s reducing what “woman” is to a handful or narrowly defined stereotypes. Also, claiming a gender outside the male-female binary is a privilege itself. I’m not ensconced in a liberal bubble. Most of the people I come in contact without outside the few I know online don’t see beyond the male-female binary; therefore claiming an identity outside that would be futile. I’d still experience sexism.
To those saying opting for a non-binary gender has no impact on how one is perceived – I don’t think this will always be the case. As we speak some colleges are offering non-binary pronouns on their paperwork. Once non-binary terms make it into state IDs there will be entire classes of civil servants and service providers who will have to accept non-binary identities while in their professional capacities (no matter what their personal opinions are – though they can express these opinions outside of their professional capacity). And once people are used to dealing with non-binary identities they will be all over the place. By then more people will learn that you can’t tell a person’s gender by looking at them.
Anat, you are aware, I assume, that the linked article, the one we’re all talking about, made a convincing case that “identifying as non-binary” is incoherent and faintly ridiculous?
Cressida: And in the previous discussion I already objected to said case. While I agree with most of the author’s goals, I totally reject the reasoning, as it contradicts my experience and the way empirical classification systems work.
Anat, you give zero impression of agreeing with the author’s goals. You’re accepting gender wholesale and she wants to abolish it.
And yes, you are accepting gender wholesale. A non-binary identity can’t exist unless there’s a binary to oppose.
Are you actually giving this any thought at all?
Yes, you’ve reduced gender to pronouns and nothing more than that. You’ve also failed to define just what gender actually is beyond ‘what I identify as when asked what my gender is’, which amounts to ‘gender is shaped like itself’ for all the information it gives.
Cressida @20: Currently we are stuck with gender due to the history of languages. (Even languages that don’t have gendered pronouns have gendered nouns and other backdoor gender systems.) I think acceptance of multiple genders, if widespread enough, will eventually lead to less gendered language usage. Once people realize they have no idea what the gender of the person they speak of or to is gender-inclusive language will become more common.
Do you live on Earth? Gender comes from the “history” of “men exploiting women’s reproductive labor.” It exists regardless of gendered nouns and whatnot. A bunch of entitled snowflakes wandering around calling themselves demibois will do fuck-all to change that.
Samantha @5 and Guest @8, I live with someone who has largely lived their life in opt-out mode. It creates all sorts of cognitive dissonance for her which has led to us having some ‘interesting’ discussions. She tends to be down on both girly girls (silly frivolous airheads) and feminists (whiners who should get over it and just live) while benefiting from the good aspects of both available choices and being in deep denial as to the negative impacts of sexism on her own life. Changing decades of that embedded mind set is like turning an oil tanker using a dingy oar.
Anat’s comments at 17 and 22 remind somewhat f a comment from Caine over at PZ’s blog. To paraphrase she was making the argument that using gender neutral language such as ‘people’ rather than referring to women was important as this accomplished two things. It put everybody on the same level (hard to disagree with that) and by dropping the term women, it stopped people (presumably women-people) clinging to the victim hood of being an oppressed class. I can see her point, but disagree.
I’m something of a political pragmatist. Not that I don’t have ideals, but I recognise that unpalatable as it is you have to recognise certain facts on the ground. One of those facts is that gender based discrimination is deeply entrenched world wide in almost all cultures (all I’m aware of at least) and a few progressives using carefully nuanced language is frankly like farting into a hurricane. Still worth doing and makes you feel better, but doesn’t actually change the way the wind blows. In my personal life I use ‘people’ and variants there off to describe both men and women as much as practical, except when making a cultural or political point (is there actually a difference).
One of those points is that women and consistently and systematically discriminated against almost continuously In every aspect of society, to the apparent benefit of men. Refusing to acknowledge this by using language passively does not advance the cause. Neither does it educate or win over potential supporters. At best ‘people’ is a polite neutral term. It can also serve to obfuscate the argument about the reality of sexism (or indeed other forms of discrimination) by preventing the highlighting of the specific targeted group. At worst it can play into the hands of those I/we(?) oppose. Imagine a discussion about abortion rights seen through the eyes of a pro-lifer when everything is phrased as ‘this is about people’s choice’. You and I know the intent is to protect the choice of the pregnant person. The neutral language is easily co-opted to include the potential father and even wider society, whether we agree with that argument or not and the battle line is now diffuse and harder for the swing voter to discern.
I don’t see the fight for truely equal rights for women as having been won. I don’t think it is even a sure thing it will be won. I think a beachhead was established post WW2 peaking in the 70’s. While lines have been consolidated and advanced in some areas, there has definitely been losses in some areas. It is not victimhood to recognise this and to fight using language as the weapon of choice.
As a PS, in discussions over the last few months much has been made of separating sex from gender. Other than academic and progressive circles is there any real evidence that the wider global population understands, cares and respects this distinction? I’ve had the opportunity to study some not very socially evolved groups of people in their natural habitat. In their world there are men, women, fags/dykes and weirdos. The latter category being anyone who cannot be easily and unequivocally placed into the former categories. Even casual observation shows that classification is made first on the basis of primary and secondary sexual characteristics (man/woman), then sexual orientation (straight/gay). Whatever is left over is weird, with minor allowance made for Intersex, since that is a medical/genetic thing there is no ‘fault’ attached, although the weird label is still applied. It’s not pretty to observe and there is absolutely zero room for nuance and these are people who look very pleasant and middle class beside the right wing fringe we’ve seen in action in the USA in recent years.
Tp read Anat, it almost seems as if the act of abolishing gendered pronouns and encouraging everyone to claim any cockamamie gender will be enough to end sexism by itself. “I was going to grope this cute bird on the train last night, but I just got this nutrois vibe from her, so yeah that was the end of that. I only grope women, cos I’m not a queer.”
Cressida’s incredulity @23 has it right: do you live on Earth?