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gender binary

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gender binary , system that classifies sex and gender into a pair of opposites, often imposed by culture , religion , or other societal pressures. Within the gender binary system, all of the human population fits into one of two genders: man or woman. Proponents of the system consider the gender binary to be a useful and accurate system of classification; however, critics often view it as a system that discriminates against individuals who identify as transgender or gender nonconforming (by definition, the model does not include gender identities that exist outside the binary system). Some critics also consider the gender binary system to be harmful toward cisgender individuals (those who identify with the sex and gender assigned to them at birth ), because of its perceived tendency to reinforce gender roles and stereotypes .

Increasingly, gender and sex are treated as separate concepts. In discussions about gender identity and the gender binary system, sex is often used to refer to genetic and biological characteristics , such as sexual anatomy and chromosomes . This contrasts with gender , which may be understood as referring to the social consequences of these biological characteristics, an amalgamation of cultural influence and pressure; thus, gender can be considered a social construct. Gender essentialists—those who believe that gender functions as a binary system—hold the position that one’s biological sex, or sex assigned at birth, determines gender and that the two concepts cannot be separated. In other words, a child born with the sexual anatomy and chromosomes of a female should be raised as a woman, and a child born with the sexual anatomy and chromosomes of a male should be raised as a man.

Many critics of the gender binary system argue that gender essentialism is rooted in cisnormativity, a term that refers to the assumption that everyone is cisgender, and so it discriminates against individuals who identify as transgender or gender nonconforming. An alternative to the gender binary system, which is known as the gender continuum , is a non-essentialist, multiaxial model (a framework that considers several categories of factors) that allows gender identity to be understood along scales of mental, biological, and behavioral traits. Many find this model to be more inclusive toward transgender individuals (those who identify with a gender other than that assigned at birth) and nonbinary individuals (those who identify themselves as being outside the gender binary system and who may not identify with a single gender at all).

In Western cultures , the gender binary system can be understood as constituting an invisible foundation upon which much of everyday life is built. Gendered public restrooms are a universal example of how the gender binary system manifests in the world, and thus they may present obstacles for individuals who identify as transgender, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming. Gendered public restrooms are also problematic because many transgender individuals have faced discrimination and violence when using the public restrooms that correspond to their gender identity. This gender separation also persists in prisons , military services , schools, and sports . The gender binary system permeates the commercial world, where retail items such as clothing, toys , and toiletries are often classified by gender, and even advertisement campaigns, television shows, and other media are gender-coded. Critics of the gender binary system often see these dichotomies as being harmful, as they are thought to push the performance of either male or female gender. For example, women and girls are expected to prefer “girly” items and media, whereas men and boys are expected to prefer what is marketed as masculine and tough. These expectations may perpetuate damaging stereotypes toward both men and women. The concept of toxic masculinity (social guidelines associated with stereotypes of manliness that incentivize looking and acting tough and powerful, which can lead to negative outcomes), for example, may be considered a consequence of the strict opposition between femininity and masculinity that the gender binary system enforces. In turn, women have historically been considered weaker and less capable than men due to their femininity, which has resulted in inequalities such as wage gaps and fewer employment opportunities.

That the gender binary system seems so fundamental to everyday life may lead some to believe that it is intrinsic to human nature . However, critics often refute the purported universal nature of the gender binary system by pointing to the many non-Western cultures and civilizations that have embraced multigender systems for millennia. Among non-Western cultures, the categories of “two-spirit” in some North American Indigenous cultures and hijra in India are, in simplified terms, examples of third gender identities that are accepted within their respective cultures.

Has Gender Always Been Binary?

Gender has historically been viewed in a more fluid manner..

Posted September 16, 2018 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma

The extent to which men conform to stereotypical masculine behaviors and interests and the extent to which women conform to stereotypical feminine behaviors and interests can be described as gender conformity . When individuals stray from their expected gender roles—or behave in gender non-conforming ways—they tend to be evaluated negatively, although such negative views are not meted out equally. For example, men who possess feminine qualities or interests are often evaluated much more harshly than women who possess masculine interests or qualities. One does not need to look any further than the differing connotations applied to the concepts of a tomboy girl versus a sissy boy to see how society responds differently to gender nonconformity as a function of whether one is adopting or abandoning masculinity.

The very notion of gender non-conformity is predicated upon a concept known as the gender binary.

The gender binary refers to the notion that gender comes in two distinct flavors: men and women, in which men are masculine, women are feminine, and, importantly, men are of the male sex and women are of the female sex. Much of the world around us is based upon this binary understanding of sex and gender, such as the clothing we buy, barbershops vs. salons, and men’s rooms vs. women’s rooms. In fact, one of the first things new parents often learn about their future child is their sex, based on a grainy ultrasound image of tiny little genitals. From this point forward, a parent’s idea of who their child will grow up to be is significantly shaped by the sex, represented through the color of the nursery room, the types of clothing purchased, and of course, the list of potential baby names. Our expectations based on gender do not stop there. When we find out that a baby is a boy, we are more likely to describe him as strong, tough or handsome, whereas we will view baby girls as sweet, gentle and kind.

The gender binary is such a prevalent and well-accepted concept within our society that we tend to get upset when we are unable to place something or someone into one box or the other. We even extend this binary to our pets , often getting upset if people mistake our handsome boy dog for a girl, quickly correcting the offending stranger by emphasizing our response to “Ohhhh what a cute little puppy, what is her name?” with “ His name is Buddy!” This isn't to say that there is no such thing as a male dog or a female dog, but rather, it emphasizes our cultural investment in perceiving someone's (or some dog's) gender correctly and using that piece of information as an overarching tool through which to understand the person or dog that we have just encountered.

Yet, while the gender binary is certainly well anchored within society and our social mores, there is actually a long history of gender not being viewed in such a black and white manner. Indeed, many indigenous cultures around the globe held more fluid and dynamic understandings of gender before encountering Western theories of gender. Even within Western cultures, the characteristics associated with one gender or the other have changed stripes so many times through history that it is almost surprising how adamantly we now argue that heels , wigs, makeup , and the color pink are only for women and girls, when all of these things were previously reserved only for men and boys.

Thus, while it may seem like discussions about non-binary understandings of gender and acceptance of gender nonconforming behavior are new additions to the daily dialogue, there is perhaps more in our collective past to point us towards a more diverse understanding of gender than there is to keep us focused on rigidly defined, binary gender roles.

While these topics seem to come up most frequently when discussing transgender and non-binary individuals and their respective rights, as well as the controversies that surround their ability to access those rights, the concept of dismantling a binary view of gender is actually one that applies to everyone, whether you identify as cisgender (someone whose gender identity and expression is the same as the sex they were assigned at birth), transgender (someone whose gender identity and/or expression is different from the sex they were assigned at birth), non-binary (someone who does not define their gender based on the binaries of men and women) or agender (someone who identifies as not having a gender). Adopting a more open and fluid understanding of gender certainly makes it easier to accept transgender, non-binary and agender individuals, but it also makes it easier to be accepting of anyone who possesses, expresses, or desires qualities that have previously been earmarked as being the prevue of only one gender or the other.

In my next few posts, I will be exploring some recent research related to the gender binary, including a study that examined whether an individual’s gender non-conforming behavior is seen as more or less threatening when the individual is transgender vs. cisgender and a recent symposium that explored the experiences of transgender and gender nonconforming individuals around the globe.

Hoskin, R. A. (2017). Femme theory: Refocusing the intersectional lens . Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice, 38 (1), 95-109.

Vasey, P. L., & Bartlett, N. H. (2007). What can the Samoan" fa'afafine " teach us about the Western concept of gender identity disorder in childhood? . Perspectives in biology and medicine, 50 (4), 481-490.

Sheppard, M., & Mayo Jr, J. B. (2013). The social construction of gender and sexuality: Learning from two spirit traditions . The Social Studies, 104 (6), 259-270.

Nanda, S. (1986). The Hijras of India: Cultural and individual dimensions of an institutionalized third gender role . Journal of Homosexuality, 11 (3-4), 35-54.

Aznar, A., & Tenenbaum, H. R. (2015). Gender and age differences in parent–child emotion talk . British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 33 (1), 148-155.

Lindgren, C. (2010). Pink Brain Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps . Acta Paediatrica, 99 (7), 1108-1108.

Karen Blair, Ph.D. , is an assistant professor of psychology at Trent University. She researches the social determinants of health throughout the lifespan within the context of relationships.

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Parenting Beyond the Gender Binary

Neutrality guided me through their childhood. but did i prepare my trans kid for life outside our family’s orbit.

When Erinn M. Eichinger listened to the ’70s album Free to Be You and Me , she recognized a message about gender-neutral parenting at the heart of it. It guided her when, decades later, her own child came out as transgender. Eichinger and her child Skylar. Courtesy of author.

by Erinn M. Eichinger | August 5, 2024

Can we, and should we, ever really be neutral? In a new series, Zócalo explores the idea of neutrality —in politics, sports, gender, journalism, international law, and more. In this essay, writer Erinn M. Eichinger reflects on how gender-neutral parenting prepared her to raise her kids, especially her trans child.

Skylar was born a girl, meaning they were assigned female at birth by their doctors. Today, Skylar identifies as male. Their preferred pronouns are he/him or they/them.

I raised Skylar as a girl. Up until a few years ago, they were, in my mind, unequivocally my daughter. Long hair and pretty dresses were their thing, but so were hunting for bugs, dreaming of dinosaurs, and digging in the dirt. I didn’t expect Skylar to play with dolls, or for them to be a princess on Halloween when they preferred Legos and Dracula costumes. Skylar’s preferences often swung toward what society might deem boyish things, but then again, they were a sucker for a skirt they could really twirl in.

Skylar didn’t come to me as a young child and proclaim that they were not a girl or that they felt like they were born into the wrong body. In fact, there were no conversations with Skylar regarding them not feeling in alignment with the sex and gender of their birth until puberty.

When Skylar did begin to express feelings of being transgender, it wasn’t easy for me. I felt incredible internal resistance, even loss. But I also knew that Skylar did feel safe enough to explore these feelings and to lean on me for guidance and support.

Now, Skylar is moving out, leaving California for Oregon. As they get ready to launch, it makes me question if my parenting, which looking back, might be labeled gender neutral , has prepared them for a world outside our family’s orbit—a world where gender roles are fraught with divisiveness.

The word neutral has many meanings: indifferent, impartial, disengaged. When you talk about neutrality in terms of parenting, it means something completely different. In the past few years, there has been a growing resurrection of the conversation around gender-neutral or gender-responsive parenting.

This kind of parenting was already a thing by the early ’70s, when I was a quintessential girl: shy and bookish, I hated sports, loved my dolls, and could spend a perfect summer afternoon watching soap operas with my grandma. My mom was an interesting mix of traditional and hippie who insisted on good manners and “ladylike” behavior, but who also wanted me and my sister to be original thinkers and stand on our own two feet.

When Skylar was growing up, Erin M. Eichinger writes that she always encouraged them to be “free” to be themselves: someone who loved to twirl in skirts and hunt for bugs.

Eichinger set out to raise Skylar (pictured) and her other three children with an awareness of gender identities that are “unique, fluid, and complex.”

Looking back, Eichinger writes that she wouldn’t change much about her parenting style, aside from being even more conscious and intentional around language and her attitudes surrounding gender roles.

When I was around 5, Mom gave me a copy of the children’s album Free to Be You and Me, which came out in 1972.

At the heart of the album was a message about gender-neutral parenting that encouraged kids and adults to see themselves in ways that broke loose from rigid notions of what it meant to be a boy or a girl. Boys can play with dolls. Girls can run fast.  And, it’s okay for all of us to cry.   Tapping into the Gloria Steinem-style feminism of the time, the album was a reaction to a hyper-gendered postwar America, where marketers painted everything in shades of pink or blue.

Free to Be You and Me provided a new vision of how things could be. I wore that record out, playing it on my white suitcase record player until I knew every song and story by heart.

About 25 years passed from the first time I listened to the album to when I became a mom myself. My approach to parenting my three step kids and Skylar, my first and only born, turned out to be fairly gender neutral. I taught my kids that boys and girls are a lot more alike than they are different. I encouraged them to be “free” to wear whatever they like; play however they like and be however they like.

I was winging it, with Free to Be You and Me as my compass.

Skylar hopes to be a parent themselves one day, and their thoughts on gender-neutral parenting are interesting: “I would keep things neutral when it comes to my child. I would use neutral pronouns, names, toys, and clothes.”

While Skylar realizes that total neutrality would be an impossibility, they would try, at least with those in the child’s inner circle, to maintain as neutral an environment as possible.

If this caused confusion, once the child had more contact with people outside their family group,  Skylar feels that it could be a launching point for communication. “It would be a way to talk to them about gender from a young age, like kids who are raised always knowing they are adopted. They may not understand the concept when they are little, but once they do, there is no fear around it.”

Many people seem to think gender neutrality is something completely new and foreign.

What I’ve come to believe is that we have a generation of young people who are giving us a new lexicon surrounding gender. They are not describing a new phenomenon; they are, as historian Laura Lovett has noted, “resuscitating an old movement, not creating a new one.”

As far as public discussions around gender go, we have made great strides, and yet with that, comes pushback. In 2024, there have been more than 600 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced in 43 states. In Florida, the state board of medicine is acting to block any kind of gender-affirming care for people under the age of 18, even with parental consent. In California, Elon Musk announced he’d be moving his Space X headquarters out of the state. This, in response to a bill that bans teachers from forcibly outing transgender students to their families. Musk is the father of a transgender daughter from whom he is estranged, and he blames her California private school education for “making her trans.”

Gender roles are imprecise, constantly changing, and ever-evolving. Because of this nebulous quality, they are often confusing and even misleading. As a pushback to what they see as socially imposed rules, some parents today are taking the concept of neutrality in parenting even further, a strict concealment of their baby’s gender from all but a small circle of caretakers. In doing so, they aim to make the child’s formative years completely free of gender markers or stereotypes. Think gender-neutral names, clothing, and toys. Definitely no gender-reveal parties. At some point, the thinking goes, the child will naturally express their gender with no need for any outside influence.

This reminds me of the widely read short story about “Baby X,” a fictional child whose gender is revealed to only a select few. The piece was published in Ms. magazine in 1978, just a few years after Free to Be You and Me —and it pushed readers to question the impact gender roles have on children and society at large.

While my approach of raising children with an awareness of gender identities that are unique, fluid, and complex feels right, the idea of raising kids with total neutrality seems unnecessary to me. I wonder if the practice could be needlessly confusing, leading to misinterpretations and misunderstanding for the child and those who love them, not to mention the level of watchfulness required on the parent’s part.

If I had the chance to raise Skylar again, I am not sure I would change my parenting style. Maybe I would be more conscious around language or more intentional about my attitudes surrounding gender roles.

Here’s the tricky part about raising kids: If you do a good job, the reward is that they become one of your favorite people in the whole world. The other reward is that they learn to stand on their own two feet. And then, they leave you.

So, you help them leave. You break your own heart in service of their future and you wonder if you have prepared them for the world out there.

So, here I am, helping my child take their next step. As I look into the proverbial rearview mirror, to the kid Skylar was, and to the adult they are becoming, I can only hope I prepared them well. I hope too, that when they look into the mirror, they see what I see: a funny, loving, wicked smart, and compassionate person.

What else could a parent want for their child?

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The Classic Journal

A journal of undergraduate writing and research, from wip at uga, feminist thought and transcending the gender binary: a discussion, feminist thought and transcending the gender binary, a discussion.

by Rowan Thompson

I analyze the role and influence of people identifying outside of the traditional gender binary within modern feminist discourse. Using concepts discussed in feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s seminal book The Second Sex , I argue that the traditional gender binary is a tool with which cisgender men uphold their own supremacy and that wider acceptance of non-binary people into feminist circles will serve to challenge this power dynamic. To illustrate the value of non-binary peoples’ lived experiences to feminist philosophy, I will discuss hormonal, surgical, and social transitioning; differences in experiences depending on gender assigned at birth; and my own experience living as non-binary. It is my hope that my research and discussion will improve the reader’s understanding of non-binary identities and help to challenge the primacy of cisgender males, thereby breaking down gender essentialism and fostering a culture of acceptance for all genders.

KEYWORDS: non-binary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, transition, gender binary

Since the inception of modern feminism, its leaders have made a name for themselves by breaking rules. As it rose out of aggressively patriarchal and colonialist Europe and the Americas, women fought for suffrage and rebelled against laws confining them to home and hearth. Later, with the advent of the birth-control pill, feminists rallied for women’s reproductive rights, flying in the face of ancient attitudes about women’s roles as child-bearers. Later still, feminism challenged hierarchies centering white men and sought to address the lived experiences of women of color, disabled women, and queer women. Even today, popular culture is facing a reckoning wherein men are being held accountable for sexual assault, and the common expectation that women should tolerate sexual abuse is being dismantled. However, a certain rule lies more or less unbroken by popular feminism, and even the most radical thinkers have only managed to chip away at it. The binary of man and woman originated in pre-Biblical times and mostly centered around observable biological sex, but we as a society have constructed a highly limiting set of roles hinging on this binary that does not allow room for the infinite range of human self-expression. While the concept of people identifying and living entirely outside of the gender binary is an ancient one, dualist and hierarchical thought, especially in the West, has all but erased it. Transgender people have made great strides in recent years, but those in the public eye are typically gender-conforming and fit neatly into this binary. More recently, however, societies worldwide have seen a boom in people identifying as non-binary, a broad identity encompassing genders that are neither wholly male nor female, including but not limited to genderqueer, gender fluid, and agender (Richards 2016). Much has been said about these people and their place within feminist activism.  I argue that the gender binary is a tool used by cisgender men to establish their own primacy at the expense of other genders and that, by embracing non-binary identities in all their forms, feminists can challenge and dismantle a power structure that stifles every person’s right to self-determination.

As it is understood today, to be non-binary simply means to identify as neither male nor female. This identity falls under the transgender label, though not all non-binary individuals refer to themselves as trans. It is a common mistake to equate this identity to gender non-conformity, as cisgender people can be gender-nonconforming. Furthermore, like trans people who fall within the binary, non-binary people frequently undergo hormone replacement therapy and surgery with the intent of removing their original secondary-sex characteristics rather than obtaining those of the “opposite” sex. However, unlike those who consider themselves strictly man or woman, whether cis or trans, non-binary people frequently employ intentional androgyny and the blending of gender signifiers such as fashion and makeup. To complicate matters further, not all non-binary individuals are digestibly genderless in their presentation; some align very closely in their dress and mannerisms with their assigned gender at birth. The mere existence of this identity dismantles much of what we have been taught from a very young age—that genitals determine gender and that the clothes we choose reflect it. However, cursory research shows that this binary is not the natural law that the popular paradigm says it is. Rather than assuming gender roles by sex assigned at birth, many cultures around the world have specific terms for people that fill gender-variant roles. Examples include “two-spirit,” meaning that one embodies the masculine and the feminine, which can be found in multiple Native American societies; or hijras, which in Hindu culture is a blanket term for trans and gender non-conforming individuals. Thus, the gender binary is both Western and colonialist in its application, and it effectively erases everything outside the archetypal cisgender male and what we perceive as its inverse.

A dualist model of the mind versus the body was originally conceived by the philosopher Rene Descartes, but the feminist scholar Simone de Beauvoir further modified and expounded upon dualist concepts in her seminal work The Second Sex. De Beauvoir famously stated that, in their power as knowledge-makers, men established themselves as the Self, the Absolute, and made women the Other. However, she specifically contrasted her model with that of poles, stating “man represents both positive and the neutral,” while women are relegated to the negative, defined only in terms of their non-maleness (163). When we expand our definition of gender to include a sliding scale between male and female as well as genders that fall off that scale entirely, the cisgender man does not lose his status as the Self, but the Other only grows larger until it swallows easily over half of humanity. It then becomes difficult to deny that Selfhood does not represent the total of the human experience but is rather manufactured by unearned power and deliberate erasure of the Other. This power dynamic born out of a social construct, much like racism and colonialism, is exactly the type that feminism should concern itself with dismantling, so that we may gain a clearer image of humankind’s true nature.

As feminism seeks to liberate women from sexist oppression, few would dispute that those designated “female” by society belong within the movement and indeed have a vested interest in its success. However, while much of misogyny intertwines with sexism—that is, discrimination based on natal sex—not every person with a uterus, ovaries, and the typically corresponding anatomy identifies as female or wants to assume a “feminine” role. These two statements are not at odds with each other, as it may seem, and feminism should aim to eliminate oppression rooted in both sex assigned at birth and the roles we assume as a result of it. However, non-binary people assigned female at birth (or “AFAB,” as it is known in the trans community) often find themselves in a cruel double bind; they can either present as typical women to their comfort level and face misogyny or they can transition away from female to affirm their genders and face transphobia. While misogyny is a far broader issue than can be adequately discussed here, we can at least mitigate transphobic attitudes with discussion of what it means to transition from female to something else.

A common misconception around non-binary AFAB people is that they are simply gender non-conforming women, butch lesbians, or “tomboys.” While all these identities are perfectly valid, they do not capture the AFAB’s lack of connection to womanhood in general. Some do refer to themselves as lesbians if they are attracted to women, and they may consider “lesbian” to be both their sexuality and their gender. However, they do not think of themselves as women in the way cisgender women do, and they may transition, even to the same degree that a trans man might, without identifying as male. Common but non-permanent methods of transitioning include breast-binding, short haircuts, and face-contouring to create a more masculine appearance. (I personally employ face-contouring and binding on a daily basis.) Less commonly, double mastectomies (“top surgeries”) are performed on such individuals, and testosterone can be taken in widely varying doses to achieve as androgynous or as masculine a body and voice as one desires. All in all, this identity is a complex one with an even more complex relationship with feminism.

One might think that AFAB individuals would be wholeheartedly welcome in feminist circles regardless of identity, but some unfortunate blind spots have led to rifts between the two groups. Namely, mainstream feminism has a tendency toward cissexism, using imagery of vaginas and uteri alongside slogans about “girl power” and “sisterhood.” AFAB non-binary people also frequently find themselves tacked onto “women-only” gatherings, as if they still fundamentally count as women. As stated by Deidre Olsen for Argot Magazine, “genital-based catchphrases like “The Future Is Female,” “Viva la Vulva” and “Pussy Grabs Back” in activism only forward the interests of cisgender women” (2017). This aggressively gendered atmosphere leaves AFABs feeling alienated and shoved into an ill-fitting box for the convenience of others. Feminists have a great deal to learn from such people. Those perceived as women by wider society face immense pressure to fall in line, be “ladylike,” submit to men, and not make waves. Those who not only reject womanhood but identify and present as something neither male nor female are helping to deconstruct what it means to be either. The self-knowledge needed to forgo roles entirely and write one’s own script, especially in the face of constant societal shame, is a skill that feminism as a whole can use. To exist outside the binary in a society that expects one’s compliance and submission is a radical show of self-determination, a refusal to uphold the societal Self by playing the traditional role of the Other. By uplifting their AFAB friends, feminists can show people of all genders that their bodies and minds are theirs alone and can be molded in whatever way affirms them.

Contrariwise, people assigned male at birth (AMAB) can be non-binary in as wide a variety of ways as those assigned female. However, in feminist circles, they occupy a much more fragile space. While the people assigned female are generally embraced by feminism, regardless of their identity, even open-minded activists may regard AMABs with some suspicion and unease. However, further education on the lives of such people is the key to easing the tensions and dispelling the confusion that contribute to this divide. Non-binary AMABs and AFABs typically feel similarly about their gender presentation; they most often want to hide or to remove secondary-sex characteristics without necessarily taking on others. However, we already conceive of androgyny as being slightly masculine, harkening back to de Beauvoir and the status of male as neutral. Someone already assigned male but who feels disconnected from manhood must reckon with this dissonance, and, in expressing their gender through traditionally feminine dress or mannerisms, they will likely be read as a transgender woman. It is perhaps for this reason that a small majority of those who identify as non-binary are AFAB, while AMAB individuals find it much harder to settle on a comfortable middle ground in their presentation. That said, many such people embrace a more masculine presentation, are highly feminine, or balance the two to their comfort level; they are no less non-binary for it. To accentuate their style, some wear makeup or jewelry as well as more overtly feminine dress such as skirts and high heels. Options for medical transition are as varied as they are for AFAB people (perhaps more so, as vaginoplasty is more possible with current medicine than phalloplasty), including any combination of estrogen treatment, breast implants, facial surgeries, and laser hair removal.

A non-binary AMAB is distinct from a trans woman and should not be referred to as such, regardless of one’s degree of transition, but both groups would, in an ideal world, be welcomed by feminist circles. The reality, unfortunately, is that feminists tend to cast a critical eye on people who lived most of their life as male entering their spaces, as trans activist Emi Koyama details in her essay “A Transfeminist Manifesto,” citing the widespread rejection of trans women by radical feminist circles (2001). To a small degree this is understandable, as AMABs do not experience oppression based on their assigned sex at birth. However, some of the basic goals of feminism, such as undoing of toxic masculinity and reducing the stigma around “feminine” clothing and mannerisms, are hard at work in the non-binary community. Wider society has a difficult time digesting the fact that anyone born male would “step down” from that place of privilege, so making oneself undefinable by gender and the power vested in maleness is a radical act. Feminism promotes the same self-confidence and willingness to push boundaries that enable non-binary AMABs to live their truth. Bringing more of them into the fold and welcoming them would signify feminism’s ability to adapt and to address its own preconceptions and to become a place from which people can draw the strength to live authentically.

While the endgame for many non-binary people is medical transition to ease bodily dysphoria, surgery is prohibitively expensive. Thus, most rely on clothing and general personal style to express their detachment from the binary and to present in the way they feel comfortable. For example, as an obviously female non-binary person, I avoid short skirts and tight dresses and specifically choose loose-fitting, more masculine clothes. However, because the non-binary community is, almost as a rule, layered with contradictions, not everybody dresses in an entirely non-conforming manner, and it is popular to combine highly masculine and highly feminine components in a single outfit. For another personal example, I frequently accentuate very masculine outfits with nail polish and makeup, solely because I find it aesthetically pleasing. Other people may bind their breasts and wear a dress at the same time or wear both a skirt and a full beard. To further complicate the matter, some non-binary people are indistinguishable from cisgender men and women and conform more or less completely to their assigned genders. I have known such people personally, and all were equally non-binary. However, under patriarchy, such people would never have a choice in the matter, and all deviation from gendered fashion would be ruthlessly punished, as it is to varying degrees today. If feminism aims to combat gendered expectations of self-expression, feminists must un-gender clothing for themselves and learn not to assume gender based on appearance. This will take away the power of categorization and the ability of men to identify Selves and Others on sight, fostering an environment of deeper engagement with one another free of assumptions.

I do not argue lightly for dispensing with the gender binary. Not only is this particular binary ingrained in nearly every facet of our society, but human beings are heavily geared towards simplicity. As de Beauvoir put it, “Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought” (163). Dismantling this system would be radical, and, as it stands, it seems impossible. Indeed, it is rooted in a biological reality we cannot deny—that there are people with one reproductive system and people with another, people we named males and females. It is to this concept that the hardline traditionalists point when the topic of trans identity is at hand, asserting that gender is as immutable as sex. Radical feminists, ironically, take a similarly essentialist stance when discussing trans identities. Rebecca Reilly-Cooper at the University of Warwick argues that gender is entirely socially constructed to oppress women, and that “To call yourself non-binary or genderfluid while demanding that others call themselves cisgender is to insist that the vast majority of humans must stay in their boxes, because you identify as boxless” (2016.)

These arguments, however, unravel upon closer examination. For example, recent discoveries have found that chromosomes are not nearly as unambiguous as we once thought, with countless variations possible among people with the same external anatomy. In addition, as with all things in biology, external sex is not an absolute, considering intersex conditions such as congenital adrenal hyperplasia or androgen insensitivity syndrome (Jones 2018). Furthermore, the radical feminist concept of gender as a weapon used against women is harshly limiting. Gender, while complex and intimidating to explore, can be a powerful source of self-love and happiness. It stems not from genitals or a patriarchal society, but from every message about gender we retain as we grow, how we come to think about our bodies, and how we want to present ourselves to the world.

With the advent of social media and with information constantly available at our fingertips, it should come as no surprise that people are finding gender identity to be far more complicated than in decades past. The author and philosopher Donna Haraway imagined that all types of binaries would be broken down as technology advanced and that now “the dichotomies between mind and body, nature and culture, men and women…are all in question ideologically” (347). It should come as no surprise that, as people reach out to one another and discover countless new ways of being, they also reflect upon what they learn and explore their identities without fear.

Feminism was originally, and in some cases still is, considered to stand for the political, social, and economic equality of the sexes. While the sexes become more and more equal on paper, the public does not always follow; therefore, it has become important to remake feminism routinely in order to fix whatever problems present themselves. Now, as the binary between men and women blurs, it is necessary to rethink how feminism conceives gender, how gender is used to grant power, and how we as feminists can ally ourselves with those who have been Othered by a society in which the cisgender man is the Self. Even while vocal minorities protest and hold fast to their feminist theory rooted in dualism and bio-essentialism, feminism as a whole must embrace non-binary existence. Doing so will pave the way for freedom of all people to live as their fullest, most authentic selves.

Works Cited

De Beauvoir, Simone. “The Second Sex.” Feminist Theory: A Reader. Eds. Wendy Kolmar and Frances Bartowski. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2013.

Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Feminist Theory: A Reader. Eds. Wendy Kolmar and Frances Bartowski. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2013.

Jones, Tiffany. “Intersex Studies: A Systematic Review of International Health Literature.”  SAGE OPEN , vol. 8, no. 2.  EBSCOhost , doi:10.1177/2158244017745577.

Koyama, Emi. “The Transfeminist Manifesto.” Catching A Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21 st Century. Eds. Rory Dicker and Alison Piepmeier. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001.

Olsen, Deidre. “The Future Is Not Female – It Is Two-Spirit, Trans and Non-Binary.” Argot Magazine , Argot Magazine, 5 June 2017, www.argotmagazine.com/first-person-and-perspectives/the-future-is-not-female-it-is-two-spirit-trans-and-non-binary .

Reilly-Cooper, Rebecca. “The Idea That Gender Is a Spectrum Is a New Gender Prison.” Aeon . Ed. Nigel Warburton. Aeon, 28 June 2016, aeon.co/essays/the-idea-that-gender-is-a-spectrum-is-a-new-gender-prison .

Richards, Christina, et al. “Non-Binary or Genderqueer Genders.”  International Review of Psychiatry , vol. 28, no. 1, Feb. 2016, pp. 95–102.  EBSCOhost , doi:10.3109/09540261.2015.1106446.

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Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender

Feminism is said to be the movement to end women’s oppression (hooks 2000, 26). One possible way to understand ‘woman’ in this claim is to take it as a sex term: ‘woman’ picks out human females and being a human female depends on various biological and anatomical features (like genitalia). Historically many feminists have understood ‘woman’ differently: not as a sex term, but as a gender term that depends on social and cultural factors (like social position). In so doing, they distinguished sex (being female or male) from gender (being a woman or a man), although most ordinary language users appear to treat the two interchangeably. In feminist philosophy, this distinction has generated a lively debate. Central questions include: What does it mean for gender to be distinct from sex, if anything at all? How should we understand the claim that gender depends on social and/or cultural factors? What does it mean to be gendered woman, man, or genderqueer? This entry outlines and discusses distinctly feminist debates on sex and gender considering both historical and more contemporary positions.

1.1 Biological determinism

1.2 gender terminology, 2.1 gender socialisation, 2.2 gender as feminine and masculine personality, 2.3 gender as feminine and masculine sexuality, 3.1.1 particularity argument, 3.1.2 normativity argument, 3.2 is sex classification solely a matter of biology, 3.3 are sex and gender distinct, 3.4 is the sex/gender distinction useful, 4.1.1 gendered social series, 4.1.2 resemblance nominalism, 4.2.1 social subordination and gender, 4.2.2 gender uniessentialism, 4.2.3 gender as positionality, 5. beyond the binary, 6. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the sex/gender distinction..

The terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ mean different things to different feminist theorists and neither are easy or straightforward to characterise. Sketching out some feminist history of the terms provides a helpful starting point.

Most people ordinarily seem to think that sex and gender are coextensive: women are human females, men are human males. Many feminists have historically disagreed and have endorsed the sex/ gender distinction. Provisionally: ‘sex’ denotes human females and males depending on biological features (chromosomes, sex organs, hormones and other physical features); ‘gender’ denotes women and men depending on social factors (social role, position, behaviour or identity). The main feminist motivation for making this distinction was to counter biological determinism or the view that biology is destiny.

A typical example of a biological determinist view is that of Geddes and Thompson who, in 1889, argued that social, psychological and behavioural traits were caused by metabolic state. Women supposedly conserve energy (being ‘anabolic’) and this makes them passive, conservative, sluggish, stable and uninterested in politics. Men expend their surplus energy (being ‘katabolic’) and this makes them eager, energetic, passionate, variable and, thereby, interested in political and social matters. These biological ‘facts’ about metabolic states were used not only to explain behavioural differences between women and men but also to justify what our social and political arrangements ought to be. More specifically, they were used to argue for withholding from women political rights accorded to men because (according to Geddes and Thompson) “what was decided among the prehistoric Protozoa cannot be annulled by Act of Parliament” (quoted from Moi 1999, 18). It would be inappropriate to grant women political rights, as they are simply not suited to have those rights; it would also be futile since women (due to their biology) would simply not be interested in exercising their political rights. To counter this kind of biological determinism, feminists have argued that behavioural and psychological differences have social, rather than biological, causes. For instance, Simone de Beauvoir famously claimed that one is not born, but rather becomes a woman, and that “social discrimination produces in women moral and intellectual effects so profound that they appear to be caused by nature” (Beauvoir 1972 [original 1949], 18; for more, see the entry on Simone de Beauvoir ). Commonly observed behavioural traits associated with women and men, then, are not caused by anatomy or chromosomes. Rather, they are culturally learned or acquired.

Although biological determinism of the kind endorsed by Geddes and Thompson is nowadays uncommon, the idea that behavioural and psychological differences between women and men have biological causes has not disappeared. In the 1970s, sex differences were used to argue that women should not become airline pilots since they will be hormonally unstable once a month and, therefore, unable to perform their duties as well as men (Rogers 1999, 11). More recently, differences in male and female brains have been said to explain behavioural differences; in particular, the anatomy of corpus callosum, a bundle of nerves that connects the right and left cerebral hemispheres, is thought to be responsible for various psychological and behavioural differences. For instance, in 1992, a Time magazine article surveyed then prominent biological explanations of differences between women and men claiming that women’s thicker corpus callosums could explain what ‘women’s intuition’ is based on and impair women’s ability to perform some specialised visual-spatial skills, like reading maps (Gorman 1992). Anne Fausto-Sterling has questioned the idea that differences in corpus callosums cause behavioural and psychological differences. First, the corpus callosum is a highly variable piece of anatomy; as a result, generalisations about its size, shape and thickness that hold for women and men in general should be viewed with caution. Second, differences in adult human corpus callosums are not found in infants; this may suggest that physical brain differences actually develop as responses to differential treatment. Third, given that visual-spatial skills (like map reading) can be improved by practice, even if women and men’s corpus callosums differ, this does not make the resulting behavioural differences immutable. (Fausto-Sterling 2000b, chapter 5).

In order to distinguish biological differences from social/psychological ones and to talk about the latter, feminists appropriated the term ‘gender’. Psychologists writing on transsexuality were the first to employ gender terminology in this sense. Until the 1960s, ‘gender’ was often used to refer to masculine and feminine words, like le and la in French. However, in order to explain why some people felt that they were ‘trapped in the wrong bodies’, the psychologist Robert Stoller (1968) began using the terms ‘sex’ to pick out biological traits and ‘gender’ to pick out the amount of femininity and masculinity a person exhibited. Although (by and large) a person’s sex and gender complemented each other, separating out these terms seemed to make theoretical sense allowing Stoller to explain the phenomenon of transsexuality: transsexuals’ sex and gender simply don’t match.

Along with psychologists like Stoller, feminists found it useful to distinguish sex and gender. This enabled them to argue that many differences between women and men were socially produced and, therefore, changeable. Gayle Rubin (for instance) uses the phrase ‘sex/gender system’ in order to describe “a set of arrangements by which the biological raw material of human sex and procreation is shaped by human, social intervention” (1975, 165). Rubin employed this system to articulate that “part of social life which is the locus of the oppression of women” (1975, 159) describing gender as the “socially imposed division of the sexes” (1975, 179). Rubin’s thought was that although biological differences are fixed, gender differences are the oppressive results of social interventions that dictate how women and men should behave. Women are oppressed as women and “by having to be women” (Rubin 1975, 204). However, since gender is social, it is thought to be mutable and alterable by political and social reform that would ultimately bring an end to women’s subordination. Feminism should aim to create a “genderless (though not sexless) society, in which one’s sexual anatomy is irrelevant to who one is, what one does, and with whom one makes love” (Rubin 1975, 204).

In some earlier interpretations, like Rubin’s, sex and gender were thought to complement one another. The slogan ‘Gender is the social interpretation of sex’ captures this view. Nicholson calls this ‘the coat-rack view’ of gender: our sexed bodies are like coat racks and “provide the site upon which gender [is] constructed” (1994, 81). Gender conceived of as masculinity and femininity is superimposed upon the ‘coat-rack’ of sex as each society imposes on sexed bodies their cultural conceptions of how males and females should behave. This socially constructs gender differences – or the amount of femininity/masculinity of a person – upon our sexed bodies. That is, according to this interpretation, all humans are either male or female; their sex is fixed. But cultures interpret sexed bodies differently and project different norms on those bodies thereby creating feminine and masculine persons. Distinguishing sex and gender, however, also enables the two to come apart: they are separable in that one can be sexed male and yet be gendered a woman, or vice versa (Haslanger 2000b; Stoljar 1995).

So, this group of feminist arguments against biological determinism suggested that gender differences result from cultural practices and social expectations. Nowadays it is more common to denote this by saying that gender is socially constructed. This means that genders (women and men) and gendered traits (like being nurturing or ambitious) are the “intended or unintended product[s] of a social practice” (Haslanger 1995, 97). But which social practices construct gender, what social construction is and what being of a certain gender amounts to are major feminist controversies. There is no consensus on these issues. (See the entry on intersections between analytic and continental feminism for more on different ways to understand gender.)

2. Gender as socially constructed

One way to interpret Beauvoir’s claim that one is not born but rather becomes a woman is to take it as a claim about gender socialisation: females become women through a process whereby they acquire feminine traits and learn feminine behaviour. Masculinity and femininity are thought to be products of nurture or how individuals are brought up. They are causally constructed (Haslanger 1995, 98): social forces either have a causal role in bringing gendered individuals into existence or (to some substantial sense) shape the way we are qua women and men. And the mechanism of construction is social learning. For instance, Kate Millett takes gender differences to have “essentially cultural, rather than biological bases” that result from differential treatment (1971, 28–9). For her, gender is “the sum total of the parents’, the peers’, and the culture’s notions of what is appropriate to each gender by way of temperament, character, interests, status, worth, gesture, and expression” (Millett 1971, 31). Feminine and masculine gender-norms, however, are problematic in that gendered behaviour conveniently fits with and reinforces women’s subordination so that women are socialised into subordinate social roles: they learn to be passive, ignorant, docile, emotional helpmeets for men (Millett 1971, 26). However, since these roles are simply learned, we can create more equal societies by ‘unlearning’ social roles. That is, feminists should aim to diminish the influence of socialisation.

Social learning theorists hold that a huge array of different influences socialise us as women and men. This being the case, it is extremely difficult to counter gender socialisation. For instance, parents often unconsciously treat their female and male children differently. When parents have been asked to describe their 24- hour old infants, they have done so using gender-stereotypic language: boys are describes as strong, alert and coordinated and girls as tiny, soft and delicate. Parents’ treatment of their infants further reflects these descriptions whether they are aware of this or not (Renzetti & Curran 1992, 32). Some socialisation is more overt: children are often dressed in gender stereotypical clothes and colours (boys are dressed in blue, girls in pink) and parents tend to buy their children gender stereotypical toys. They also (intentionally or not) tend to reinforce certain ‘appropriate’ behaviours. While the precise form of gender socialization has changed since the onset of second-wave feminism, even today girls are discouraged from playing sports like football or from playing ‘rough and tumble’ games and are more likely than boys to be given dolls or cooking toys to play with; boys are told not to ‘cry like a baby’ and are more likely to be given masculine toys like trucks and guns (for more, see Kimmel 2000, 122–126). [ 1 ]

According to social learning theorists, children are also influenced by what they observe in the world around them. This, again, makes countering gender socialisation difficult. For one, children’s books have portrayed males and females in blatantly stereotypical ways: for instance, males as adventurers and leaders, and females as helpers and followers. One way to address gender stereotyping in children’s books has been to portray females in independent roles and males as non-aggressive and nurturing (Renzetti & Curran 1992, 35). Some publishers have attempted an alternative approach by making their characters, for instance, gender-neutral animals or genderless imaginary creatures (like TV’s Teletubbies). However, parents reading books with gender-neutral or genderless characters often undermine the publishers’ efforts by reading them to their children in ways that depict the characters as either feminine or masculine. According to Renzetti and Curran, parents labelled the overwhelming majority of gender-neutral characters masculine whereas those characters that fit feminine gender stereotypes (for instance, by being helpful and caring) were labelled feminine (1992, 35). Socialising influences like these are still thought to send implicit messages regarding how females and males should act and are expected to act shaping us into feminine and masculine persons.

Nancy Chodorow (1978; 1995) has criticised social learning theory as too simplistic to explain gender differences (see also Deaux & Major 1990; Gatens 1996). Instead, she holds that gender is a matter of having feminine and masculine personalities that develop in early infancy as responses to prevalent parenting practices. In particular, gendered personalities develop because women tend to be the primary caretakers of small children. Chodorow holds that because mothers (or other prominent females) tend to care for infants, infant male and female psychic development differs. Crudely put: the mother-daughter relationship differs from the mother-son relationship because mothers are more likely to identify with their daughters than their sons. This unconsciously prompts the mother to encourage her son to psychologically individuate himself from her thereby prompting him to develop well defined and rigid ego boundaries. However, the mother unconsciously discourages the daughter from individuating herself thereby prompting the daughter to develop flexible and blurry ego boundaries. Childhood gender socialisation further builds on and reinforces these unconsciously developed ego boundaries finally producing feminine and masculine persons (1995, 202–206). This perspective has its roots in Freudian psychoanalytic theory, although Chodorow’s approach differs in many ways from Freud’s.

Gendered personalities are supposedly manifested in common gender stereotypical behaviour. Take emotional dependency. Women are stereotypically more emotional and emotionally dependent upon others around them, supposedly finding it difficult to distinguish their own interests and wellbeing from the interests and wellbeing of their children and partners. This is said to be because of their blurry and (somewhat) confused ego boundaries: women find it hard to distinguish their own needs from the needs of those around them because they cannot sufficiently individuate themselves from those close to them. By contrast, men are stereotypically emotionally detached, preferring a career where dispassionate and distanced thinking are virtues. These traits are said to result from men’s well-defined ego boundaries that enable them to prioritise their own needs and interests sometimes at the expense of others’ needs and interests.

Chodorow thinks that these gender differences should and can be changed. Feminine and masculine personalities play a crucial role in women’s oppression since they make females overly attentive to the needs of others and males emotionally deficient. In order to correct the situation, both male and female parents should be equally involved in parenting (Chodorow 1995, 214). This would help in ensuring that children develop sufficiently individuated senses of selves without becoming overly detached, which in turn helps to eradicate common gender stereotypical behaviours.

Catharine MacKinnon develops her theory of gender as a theory of sexuality. Very roughly: the social meaning of sex (gender) is created by sexual objectification of women whereby women are viewed and treated as objects for satisfying men’s desires (MacKinnon 1989). Masculinity is defined as sexual dominance, femininity as sexual submissiveness: genders are “created through the eroticization of dominance and submission. The man/woman difference and the dominance/submission dynamic define each other. This is the social meaning of sex” (MacKinnon 1989, 113). For MacKinnon, gender is constitutively constructed : in defining genders (or masculinity and femininity) we must make reference to social factors (see Haslanger 1995, 98). In particular, we must make reference to the position one occupies in the sexualised dominance/submission dynamic: men occupy the sexually dominant position, women the sexually submissive one. As a result, genders are by definition hierarchical and this hierarchy is fundamentally tied to sexualised power relations. The notion of ‘gender equality’, then, does not make sense to MacKinnon. If sexuality ceased to be a manifestation of dominance, hierarchical genders (that are defined in terms of sexuality) would cease to exist.

So, gender difference for MacKinnon is not a matter of having a particular psychological orientation or behavioural pattern; rather, it is a function of sexuality that is hierarchal in patriarchal societies. This is not to say that men are naturally disposed to sexually objectify women or that women are naturally submissive. Instead, male and female sexualities are socially conditioned: men have been conditioned to find women’s subordination sexy and women have been conditioned to find a particular male version of female sexuality as erotic – one in which it is erotic to be sexually submissive. For MacKinnon, both female and male sexual desires are defined from a male point of view that is conditioned by pornography (MacKinnon 1989, chapter 7). Bluntly put: pornography portrays a false picture of ‘what women want’ suggesting that women in actual fact are and want to be submissive. This conditions men’s sexuality so that they view women’s submission as sexy. And male dominance enforces this male version of sexuality onto women, sometimes by force. MacKinnon’s thought is not that male dominance is a result of social learning (see 2.1.); rather, socialization is an expression of power. That is, socialized differences in masculine and feminine traits, behaviour, and roles are not responsible for power inequalities. Females and males (roughly put) are socialised differently because there are underlying power inequalities. As MacKinnon puts it, ‘dominance’ (power relations) is prior to ‘difference’ (traits, behaviour and roles) (see, MacKinnon 1989, chapter 12). MacKinnon, then, sees legal restrictions on pornography as paramount to ending women’s subordinate status that stems from their gender.

3. Problems with the sex/gender distinction

3.1 is gender uniform.

The positions outlined above share an underlying metaphysical perspective on gender: gender realism . [ 2 ] That is, women as a group are assumed to share some characteristic feature, experience, common condition or criterion that defines their gender and the possession of which makes some individuals women (as opposed to, say, men). All women are thought to differ from all men in this respect (or respects). For example, MacKinnon thought that being treated in sexually objectifying ways is the common condition that defines women’s gender and what women as women share. All women differ from all men in this respect. Further, pointing out females who are not sexually objectified does not provide a counterexample to MacKinnon’s view. Being sexually objectified is constitutive of being a woman; a female who escapes sexual objectification, then, would not count as a woman.

One may want to critique the three accounts outlined by rejecting the particular details of each account. (For instance, see Spelman [1988, chapter 4] for a critique of the details of Chodorow’s view.) A more thoroughgoing critique has been levelled at the general metaphysical perspective of gender realism that underlies these positions. It has come under sustained attack on two grounds: first, that it fails to take into account racial, cultural and class differences between women (particularity argument); second, that it posits a normative ideal of womanhood (normativity argument).

Elizabeth Spelman (1988) has influentially argued against gender realism with her particularity argument. Roughly: gender realists mistakenly assume that gender is constructed independently of race, class, ethnicity and nationality. If gender were separable from, for example, race and class in this manner, all women would experience womanhood in the same way. And this is clearly false. For instance, Harris (1993) and Stone (2007) criticise MacKinnon’s view, that sexual objectification is the common condition that defines women’s gender, for failing to take into account differences in women’s backgrounds that shape their sexuality. The history of racist oppression illustrates that during slavery black women were ‘hypersexualised’ and thought to be always sexually available whereas white women were thought to be pure and sexually virtuous. In fact, the rape of a black woman was thought to be impossible (Harris 1993). So, (the argument goes) sexual objectification cannot serve as the common condition for womanhood since it varies considerably depending on one’s race and class. [ 3 ]

For Spelman, the perspective of ‘white solipsism’ underlies gender realists’ mistake. They assumed that all women share some “golden nugget of womanness” (Spelman 1988, 159) and that the features constitutive of such a nugget are the same for all women regardless of their particular cultural backgrounds. Next, white Western middle-class feminists accounted for the shared features simply by reflecting on the cultural features that condition their gender as women thus supposing that “the womanness underneath the Black woman’s skin is a white woman’s, and deep down inside the Latina woman is an Anglo woman waiting to burst through an obscuring cultural shroud” (Spelman 1988, 13). In so doing, Spelman claims, white middle-class Western feminists passed off their particular view of gender as “a metaphysical truth” (1988, 180) thereby privileging some women while marginalising others. In failing to see the importance of race and class in gender construction, white middle-class Western feminists conflated “the condition of one group of women with the condition of all” (Spelman 1988, 3).

Betty Friedan’s (1963) well-known work is a case in point of white solipsism. [ 4 ] Friedan saw domesticity as the main vehicle of gender oppression and called upon women in general to find jobs outside the home. But she failed to realize that women from less privileged backgrounds, often poor and non-white, already worked outside the home to support their families. Friedan’s suggestion, then, was applicable only to a particular sub-group of women (white middle-class Western housewives). But it was mistakenly taken to apply to all women’s lives — a mistake that was generated by Friedan’s failure to take women’s racial and class differences into account (hooks 2000, 1–3).

Spelman further holds that since social conditioning creates femininity and societies (and sub-groups) that condition it differ from one another, femininity must be differently conditioned in different societies. For her, “females become not simply women but particular kinds of women” (Spelman 1988, 113): white working-class women, black middle-class women, poor Jewish women, wealthy aristocratic European women, and so on.

This line of thought has been extremely influential in feminist philosophy. For instance, Young holds that Spelman has definitively shown that gender realism is untenable (1997, 13). Mikkola (2006) argues that this isn’t so. The arguments Spelman makes do not undermine the idea that there is some characteristic feature, experience, common condition or criterion that defines women’s gender; they simply point out that some particular ways of cashing out what defines womanhood are misguided. So, although Spelman is right to reject those accounts that falsely take the feature that conditions white middle-class Western feminists’ gender to condition women’s gender in general, this leaves open the possibility that women qua women do share something that defines their gender. (See also Haslanger [2000a] for a discussion of why gender realism is not necessarily untenable, and Stoljar [2011] for a discussion of Mikkola’s critique of Spelman.)

Judith Butler critiques the sex/gender distinction on two grounds. They critique gender realism with their normativity argument (1999 [original 1990], chapter 1); they also hold that the sex/gender distinction is unintelligible (this will be discussed in section 3.3.). Butler’s normativity argument is not straightforwardly directed at the metaphysical perspective of gender realism, but rather at its political counterpart: identity politics. This is a form of political mobilization based on membership in some group (e.g. racial, ethnic, cultural, gender) and group membership is thought to be delimited by some common experiences, conditions or features that define the group (Heyes 2000, 58; see also the entry on Identity Politics ). Feminist identity politics, then, presupposes gender realism in that feminist politics is said to be mobilized around women as a group (or category) where membership in this group is fixed by some condition, experience or feature that women supposedly share and that defines their gender.

Butler’s normativity argument makes two claims. The first is akin to Spelman’s particularity argument: unitary gender notions fail to take differences amongst women into account thus failing to recognise “the multiplicity of cultural, social, and political intersections in which the concrete array of ‘women’ are constructed” (Butler 1999, 19–20). In their attempt to undercut biologically deterministic ways of defining what it means to be a woman, feminists inadvertently created new socially constructed accounts of supposedly shared femininity. Butler’s second claim is that such false gender realist accounts are normative. That is, in their attempt to fix feminism’s subject matter, feminists unwittingly defined the term ‘woman’ in a way that implies there is some correct way to be gendered a woman (Butler 1999, 5). That the definition of the term ‘woman’ is fixed supposedly “operates as a policing force which generates and legitimizes certain practices, experiences, etc., and curtails and delegitimizes others” (Nicholson 1998, 293). Following this line of thought, one could say that, for instance, Chodorow’s view of gender suggests that ‘real’ women have feminine personalities and that these are the women feminism should be concerned about. If one does not exhibit a distinctly feminine personality, the implication is that one is not ‘really’ a member of women’s category nor does one properly qualify for feminist political representation.

Butler’s second claim is based on their view that“[i]dentity categories [like that of women] are never merely descriptive, but always normative, and as such, exclusionary” (Butler 1991, 160). That is, the mistake of those feminists Butler critiques was not that they provided the incorrect definition of ‘woman’. Rather, (the argument goes) their mistake was to attempt to define the term ‘woman’ at all. Butler’s view is that ‘woman’ can never be defined in a way that does not prescribe some “unspoken normative requirements” (like having a feminine personality) that women should conform to (Butler 1999, 9). Butler takes this to be a feature of terms like ‘woman’ that purport to pick out (what they call) ‘identity categories’. They seem to assume that ‘woman’ can never be used in a non-ideological way (Moi 1999, 43) and that it will always encode conditions that are not satisfied by everyone we think of as women. Some explanation for this comes from Butler’s view that all processes of drawing categorical distinctions involve evaluative and normative commitments; these in turn involve the exercise of power and reflect the conditions of those who are socially powerful (Witt 1995).

In order to better understand Butler’s critique, consider their account of gender performativity. For them, standard feminist accounts take gendered individuals to have some essential properties qua gendered individuals or a gender core by virtue of which one is either a man or a woman. This view assumes that women and men, qua women and men, are bearers of various essential and accidental attributes where the former secure gendered persons’ persistence through time as so gendered. But according to Butler this view is false: (i) there are no such essential properties, and (ii) gender is an illusion maintained by prevalent power structures. First, feminists are said to think that genders are socially constructed in that they have the following essential attributes (Butler 1999, 24): women are females with feminine behavioural traits, being heterosexuals whose desire is directed at men; men are males with masculine behavioural traits, being heterosexuals whose desire is directed at women. These are the attributes necessary for gendered individuals and those that enable women and men to persist through time as women and men. Individuals have “intelligible genders” (Butler 1999, 23) if they exhibit this sequence of traits in a coherent manner (where sexual desire follows from sexual orientation that in turn follows from feminine/ masculine behaviours thought to follow from biological sex). Social forces in general deem individuals who exhibit in coherent gender sequences (like lesbians) to be doing their gender ‘wrong’ and they actively discourage such sequencing of traits, for instance, via name-calling and overt homophobic discrimination. Think back to what was said above: having a certain conception of what women are like that mirrors the conditions of socially powerful (white, middle-class, heterosexual, Western) women functions to marginalize and police those who do not fit this conception.

These gender cores, supposedly encoding the above traits, however, are nothing more than illusions created by ideals and practices that seek to render gender uniform through heterosexism, the view that heterosexuality is natural and homosexuality is deviant (Butler 1999, 42). Gender cores are constructed as if they somehow naturally belong to women and men thereby creating gender dimorphism or the belief that one must be either a masculine male or a feminine female. But gender dimorphism only serves a heterosexist social order by implying that since women and men are sharply opposed, it is natural to sexually desire the opposite sex or gender.

Further, being feminine and desiring men (for instance) are standardly assumed to be expressions of one’s gender as a woman. Butler denies this and holds that gender is really performative. It is not “a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, gender is … instituted … through a stylized repetition of [habitual] acts ” (Butler 1999, 179): through wearing certain gender-coded clothing, walking and sitting in certain gender-coded ways, styling one’s hair in gender-coded manner and so on. Gender is not something one is, it is something one does; it is a sequence of acts, a doing rather than a being. And repeatedly engaging in ‘feminising’ and ‘masculinising’ acts congeals gender thereby making people falsely think of gender as something they naturally are . Gender only comes into being through these gendering acts: a female who has sex with men does not express her gender as a woman. This activity (amongst others) makes her gendered a woman.

The constitutive acts that gender individuals create genders as “compelling illusion[s]” (Butler 1990, 271). Our gendered classification scheme is a strong pragmatic construction : social factors wholly determine our use of the scheme and the scheme fails to represent accurately any ‘facts of the matter’ (Haslanger 1995, 100). People think that there are true and real genders, and those deemed to be doing their gender ‘wrong’ are not socially sanctioned. But, genders are true and real only to the extent that they are performed (Butler 1990, 278–9). It does not make sense, then, to say of a male-to-female trans person that s/he is really a man who only appears to be a woman. Instead, males dressing up and acting in ways that are associated with femininity “show that [as Butler suggests] ‘being’ feminine is just a matter of doing certain activities” (Stone 2007, 64). As a result, the trans person’s gender is just as real or true as anyone else’s who is a ‘traditionally’ feminine female or masculine male (Butler 1990, 278). [ 5 ] Without heterosexism that compels people to engage in certain gendering acts, there would not be any genders at all. And ultimately the aim should be to abolish norms that compel people to act in these gendering ways.

For Butler, given that gender is performative, the appropriate response to feminist identity politics involves two things. First, feminists should understand ‘woman’ as open-ended and “a term in process, a becoming, a constructing that cannot rightfully be said to originate or end … it is open to intervention and resignification” (Butler 1999, 43). That is, feminists should not try to define ‘woman’ at all. Second, the category of women “ought not to be the foundation of feminist politics” (Butler 1999, 9). Rather, feminists should focus on providing an account of how power functions and shapes our understandings of womanhood not only in the society at large but also within the feminist movement.

Many people, including many feminists, have ordinarily taken sex ascriptions to be solely a matter of biology with no social or cultural dimension. It is commonplace to think that there are only two sexes and that biological sex classifications are utterly unproblematic. By contrast, some feminists have argued that sex classifications are not unproblematic and that they are not solely a matter of biology. In order to make sense of this, it is helpful to distinguish object- and idea-construction (see Haslanger 2003b for more): social forces can be said to construct certain kinds of objects (e.g. sexed bodies or gendered individuals) and certain kinds of ideas (e.g. sex or gender concepts). First, take the object-construction of sexed bodies. Secondary sex characteristics, or the physiological and biological features commonly associated with males and females, are affected by social practices. In some societies, females’ lower social status has meant that they have been fed less and so, the lack of nutrition has had the effect of making them smaller in size (Jaggar 1983, 37). Uniformity in muscular shape, size and strength within sex categories is not caused entirely by biological factors, but depends heavily on exercise opportunities: if males and females were allowed the same exercise opportunities and equal encouragement to exercise, it is thought that bodily dimorphism would diminish (Fausto-Sterling 1993a, 218). A number of medical phenomena involving bones (like osteoporosis) have social causes directly related to expectations about gender, women’s diet and their exercise opportunities (Fausto-Sterling 2005). These examples suggest that physiological features thought to be sex-specific traits not affected by social and cultural factors are, after all, to some extent products of social conditioning. Social conditioning, then, shapes our biology.

Second, take the idea-construction of sex concepts. Our concept of sex is said to be a product of social forces in the sense that what counts as sex is shaped by social meanings. Standardly, those with XX-chromosomes, ovaries that produce large egg cells, female genitalia, a relatively high proportion of ‘female’ hormones, and other secondary sex characteristics (relatively small body size, less body hair) count as biologically female. Those with XY-chromosomes, testes that produce small sperm cells, male genitalia, a relatively high proportion of ‘male’ hormones and other secondary sex traits (relatively large body size, significant amounts of body hair) count as male. This understanding is fairly recent. The prevalent scientific view from Ancient Greeks until the late 18 th century, did not consider female and male sexes to be distinct categories with specific traits; instead, a ‘one-sex model’ held that males and females were members of the same sex category. Females’ genitals were thought to be the same as males’ but simply directed inside the body; ovaries and testes (for instance) were referred to by the same term and whether the term referred to the former or the latter was made clear by the context (Laqueur 1990, 4). It was not until the late 1700s that scientists began to think of female and male anatomies as radically different moving away from the ‘one-sex model’ of a single sex spectrum to the (nowadays prevalent) ‘two-sex model’ of sexual dimorphism. (For an alternative view, see King 2013.)

Fausto-Sterling has argued that this ‘two-sex model’ isn’t straightforward either (1993b; 2000a; 2000b). Based on a meta-study of empirical medical research, she estimates that 1.7% of population fail to neatly fall within the usual sex classifications possessing various combinations of different sex characteristics (Fausto-Sterling 2000a, 20). In her earlier work, she claimed that intersex individuals make up (at least) three further sex classes: ‘herms’ who possess one testis and one ovary; ‘merms’ who possess testes, some aspects of female genitalia but no ovaries; and ‘ferms’ who have ovaries, some aspects of male genitalia but no testes (Fausto-Sterling 1993b, 21). (In her [2000a], Fausto-Sterling notes that these labels were put forward tongue–in–cheek.) Recognition of intersex people suggests that feminists (and society at large) are wrong to think that humans are either female or male.

To illustrate further the idea-construction of sex, consider the case of the athlete Maria Patiño. Patiño has female genitalia, has always considered herself to be female and was considered so by others. However, she was discovered to have XY chromosomes and was barred from competing in women’s sports (Fausto-Sterling 2000b, 1–3). Patiño’s genitalia were at odds with her chromosomes and the latter were taken to determine her sex. Patiño successfully fought to be recognised as a female athlete arguing that her chromosomes alone were not sufficient to not make her female. Intersex people, like Patiño, illustrate that our understandings of sex differ and suggest that there is no immediately obvious way to settle what sex amounts to purely biologically or scientifically. Deciding what sex is involves evaluative judgements that are influenced by social factors.

Insofar as our cultural conceptions affect our understandings of sex, feminists must be much more careful about sex classifications and rethink what sex amounts to (Stone 2007, chapter 1). More specifically, intersex people illustrate that sex traits associated with females and males need not always go together and that individuals can have some mixture of these traits. This suggests to Stone that sex is a cluster concept: it is sufficient to satisfy enough of the sex features that tend to cluster together in order to count as being of a particular sex. But, one need not satisfy all of those features or some arbitrarily chosen supposedly necessary sex feature, like chromosomes (Stone 2007, 44). This makes sex a matter of degree and sex classifications should take place on a spectrum: one can be more or less female/male but there is no sharp distinction between the two. Further, intersex people (along with trans people) are located at the centre of the sex spectrum and in many cases their sex will be indeterminate (Stone 2007).

More recently, Ayala and Vasilyeva (2015) have argued for an inclusive and extended conception of sex: just as certain tools can be seen to extend our minds beyond the limits of our brains (e.g. white canes), other tools (like dildos) can extend our sex beyond our bodily boundaries. This view aims to motivate the idea that what counts as sex should not be determined by looking inwards at genitalia or other anatomical features. In a different vein, Ásta (2018) argues that sex is a conferred social property. This follows her more general conferralist framework to analyse all social properties: properties that are conferred by others thereby generating a social status that consists in contextually specific constraints and enablements on individual behaviour. The general schema for conferred properties is as follows (Ásta 2018, 8):

Conferred property: what property is conferred. Who: who the subjects are. What: what attitude, state, or action of the subjects matter. When: under what conditions the conferral takes place. Base property: what the subjects are attempting to track (consciously or not), if anything.

With being of a certain sex (e.g. male, female) in mind, Ásta holds that it is a conferred property that merely aims to track physical features. Hence sex is a social – or in fact, an institutional – property rather than a natural one. The schema for sex goes as follows (72):

Conferred property: being female, male. Who: legal authorities, drawing on the expert opinion of doctors, other medical personnel. What: “the recording of a sex in official documents ... The judgment of the doctors (and others) as to what sex role might be the most fitting, given the biological characteristics present.” When: at birth or after surgery/ hormonal treatment. Base property: “the aim is to track as many sex-stereotypical characteristics as possible, and doctors perform surgery in cases where that might help bring the physical characteristics more in line with the stereotype of male and female.”

This (among other things) offers a debunking analysis of sex: it may appear to be a natural property, but on the conferralist analysis is better understood as a conferred legal status. Ásta holds that gender too is a conferred property, but contra the discussion in the following section, she does not think that this collapses the distinction between sex and gender: sex and gender are differently conferred albeit both satisfying the general schema noted above. Nonetheless, on the conferralist framework what underlies both sex and gender is the idea of social construction as social significance: sex-stereotypical characteristics are taken to be socially significant context specifically, whereby they become the basis for conferring sex onto individuals and this brings with it various constraints and enablements on individuals and their behaviour. This fits object- and idea-constructions introduced above, although offers a different general framework to analyse the matter at hand.

In addition to arguing against identity politics and for gender performativity, Butler holds that distinguishing biological sex from social gender is unintelligible. For them, both are socially constructed:

If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all. (Butler 1999, 10–11)

(Butler is not alone in claiming that there are no tenable distinctions between nature/culture, biology/construction and sex/gender. See also: Antony 1998; Gatens 1996; Grosz 1994; Prokhovnik 1999.) Butler makes two different claims in the passage cited: that sex is a social construction, and that sex is gender. To unpack their view, consider the two claims in turn. First, the idea that sex is a social construct, for Butler, boils down to the view that our sexed bodies are also performative and, so, they have “no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute [their] reality” (1999, 173). Prima facie , this implausibly implies that female and male bodies do not have independent existence and that if gendering activities ceased, so would physical bodies. This is not Butler’s claim; rather, their position is that bodies viewed as the material foundations on which gender is constructed, are themselves constructed as if they provide such material foundations (Butler 1993). Cultural conceptions about gender figure in “the very apparatus of production whereby sexes themselves are established” (Butler 1999, 11).

For Butler, sexed bodies never exist outside social meanings and how we understand gender shapes how we understand sex (1999, 139). Sexed bodies are not empty matter on which gender is constructed and sex categories are not picked out on the basis of objective features of the world. Instead, our sexed bodies are themselves discursively constructed : they are the way they are, at least to a substantial extent, because of what is attributed to sexed bodies and how they are classified (for discursive construction, see Haslanger 1995, 99). Sex assignment (calling someone female or male) is normative (Butler 1993, 1). [ 6 ] When the doctor calls a newly born infant a girl or a boy, s/he is not making a descriptive claim, but a normative one. In fact, the doctor is performing an illocutionary speech act (see the entry on Speech Acts ). In effect, the doctor’s utterance makes infants into girls or boys. We, then, engage in activities that make it seem as if sexes naturally come in two and that being female or male is an objective feature of the world, rather than being a consequence of certain constitutive acts (that is, rather than being performative). And this is what Butler means in saying that physical bodies never exist outside cultural and social meanings, and that sex is as socially constructed as gender. They do not deny that physical bodies exist. But, they take our understanding of this existence to be a product of social conditioning: social conditioning makes the existence of physical bodies intelligible to us by discursively constructing sexed bodies through certain constitutive acts. (For a helpful introduction to Butler’s views, see Salih 2002.)

For Butler, sex assignment is always in some sense oppressive. Again, this appears to be because of Butler’s general suspicion of classification: sex classification can never be merely descriptive but always has a normative element reflecting evaluative claims of those who are powerful. Conducting a feminist genealogy of the body (or examining why sexed bodies are thought to come naturally as female and male), then, should ground feminist practice (Butler 1993, 28–9). Feminists should examine and uncover ways in which social construction and certain acts that constitute sex shape our understandings of sexed bodies, what kinds of meanings bodies acquire and which practices and illocutionary speech acts ‘make’ our bodies into sexes. Doing so enables feminists to identity how sexed bodies are socially constructed in order to resist such construction.

However, given what was said above, it is far from obvious what we should make of Butler’s claim that sex “was always already gender” (1999, 11). Stone (2007) takes this to mean that sex is gender but goes on to question it arguing that the social construction of both sex and gender does not make sex identical to gender. According to Stone, it would be more accurate for Butler to say that claims about sex imply gender norms. That is, many claims about sex traits (like ‘females are physically weaker than males’) actually carry implications about how women and men are expected to behave. To some extent the claim describes certain facts. But, it also implies that females are not expected to do much heavy lifting and that they would probably not be good at it. So, claims about sex are not identical to claims about gender; rather, they imply claims about gender norms (Stone 2007, 70).

Some feminists hold that the sex/gender distinction is not useful. For a start, it is thought to reflect politically problematic dualistic thinking that undercuts feminist aims: the distinction is taken to reflect and replicate androcentric oppositions between (for instance) mind/body, culture/nature and reason/emotion that have been used to justify women’s oppression (e.g. Grosz 1994; Prokhovnik 1999). The thought is that in oppositions like these, one term is always superior to the other and that the devalued term is usually associated with women (Lloyd 1993). For instance, human subjectivity and agency are identified with the mind but since women are usually identified with their bodies, they are devalued as human subjects and agents. The opposition between mind and body is said to further map on to other distinctions, like reason/emotion, culture/nature, rational/irrational, where one side of each distinction is devalued (one’s bodily features are usually valued less that one’s mind, rationality is usually valued more than irrationality) and women are associated with the devalued terms: they are thought to be closer to bodily features and nature than men, to be irrational, emotional and so on. This is said to be evident (for instance) in job interviews. Men are treated as gender-neutral persons and not asked whether they are planning to take time off to have a family. By contrast, that women face such queries illustrates that they are associated more closely than men with bodily features to do with procreation (Prokhovnik 1999, 126). The opposition between mind and body, then, is thought to map onto the opposition between men and women.

Now, the mind/body dualism is also said to map onto the sex/gender distinction (Grosz 1994; Prokhovnik 1999). The idea is that gender maps onto mind, sex onto body. Although not used by those endorsing this view, the basic idea can be summed by the slogan ‘Gender is between the ears, sex is between the legs’: the implication is that, while sex is immutable, gender is something individuals have control over – it is something we can alter and change through individual choices. However, since women are said to be more closely associated with biological features (and so, to map onto the body side of the mind/body distinction) and men are treated as gender-neutral persons (mapping onto the mind side), the implication is that “man equals gender, which is associated with mind and choice, freedom from body, autonomy, and with the public real; while woman equals sex, associated with the body, reproduction, ‘natural’ rhythms and the private realm” (Prokhovnik 1999, 103). This is said to render the sex/gender distinction inherently repressive and to drain it of any potential for emancipation: rather than facilitating gender role choice for women, it “actually functions to reinforce their association with body, sex, and involuntary ‘natural’ rhythms” (Prokhovnik 1999, 103). Contrary to what feminists like Rubin argued, the sex/gender distinction cannot be used as a theoretical tool that dissociates conceptions of womanhood from biological and reproductive features.

Moi has further argued that the sex/gender distinction is useless given certain theoretical goals (1999, chapter 1). This is not to say that it is utterly worthless; according to Moi, the sex/gender distinction worked well to show that the historically prevalent biological determinism was false. However, for her, the distinction does no useful work “when it comes to producing a good theory of subjectivity” (1999, 6) and “a concrete, historical understanding of what it means to be a woman (or a man) in a given society” (1999, 4–5). That is, the 1960s distinction understood sex as fixed by biology without any cultural or historical dimensions. This understanding, however, ignores lived experiences and embodiment as aspects of womanhood (and manhood) by separating sex from gender and insisting that womanhood is to do with the latter. Rather, embodiment must be included in one’s theory that tries to figure out what it is to be a woman (or a man).

Mikkola (2011) argues that the sex/gender distinction, which underlies views like Rubin’s and MacKinnon’s, has certain unintuitive and undesirable ontological commitments that render the distinction politically unhelpful. First, claiming that gender is socially constructed implies that the existence of women and men is a mind-dependent matter. This suggests that we can do away with women and men simply by altering some social practices, conventions or conditions on which gender depends (whatever those are). However, ordinary social agents find this unintuitive given that (ordinarily) sex and gender are not distinguished. Second, claiming that gender is a product of oppressive social forces suggests that doing away with women and men should be feminism’s political goal. But this harbours ontologically undesirable commitments since many ordinary social agents view their gender to be a source of positive value. So, feminism seems to want to do away with something that should not be done away with, which is unlikely to motivate social agents to act in ways that aim at gender justice. Given these problems, Mikkola argues that feminists should give up the distinction on practical political grounds.

Tomas Bogardus (2020) has argued in an even more radical sense against the sex/gender distinction: as things stand, he holds, feminist philosophers have merely assumed and asserted that the distinction exists, instead of having offered good arguments for the distinction. In other words, feminist philosophers allegedly have yet to offer good reasons to think that ‘woman’ does not simply pick out adult human females. Alex Byrne (2020) argues in a similar vein: the term ‘woman’ does not pick out a social kind as feminist philosophers have “assumed”. Instead, “women are adult human females–nothing more, and nothing less” (2020, 3801). Byrne offers six considerations to ground this AHF (adult, human, female) conception.

• It reproduces the dictionary definition of ‘woman’.
• One would expect English to have a word that picks out the category adult human female, and ‘woman’ is the only candidate.
• AHF explains how we sometimes know that an individual is a woman, despite knowing nothing else relevant about her other than the fact that she is an adult human female.
• AHF stands or falls with the analogous thesis for girls, which can be supported independently.
• AHF predicts the correct verdict in cases of gender role reversal.
• AHF is supported by the fact that ‘woman’ and ‘female’ are often appropriately used as stylistic variants of each other, even in hyperintensional contexts.

Robin Dembroff (2021) responds to Byrne and highlights various problems with Byrne’s argument. First, framing: Byrne assumes from the start that gender terms like ‘woman’ have a single invariant meaning thereby failing to discuss the possibility of terms like ‘woman’ having multiple meanings – something that is a familiar claim made by feminist theorists from various disciplines. Moreover, Byrne (according to Dembroff) assumes without argument that there is a single, universal category of woman – again, something that has been extensively discussed and critiqued by feminist philosophers and theorists. Second, Byrne’s conception of the ‘dominant’ meaning of woman is said to be cherry-picked and it ignores a wealth of contexts outside of philosophy (like the media and the law) where ‘woman’ has a meaning other than AHF . Third, Byrne’s own distinction between biological and social categories fails to establish what he intended to establish: namely, that ‘woman’ picks out a biological rather than a social kind. Hence, Dembroff holds, Byrne’s case fails by its own lights. Byrne (2021) responds to Dembroff’s critique.

Others such as ‘gender critical feminists’ also hold views about the sex/gender distinction in a spirit similar to Bogardus and Byrne. For example, Holly Lawford-Smith (2021) takes the prevalent sex/gender distinction, where ‘female’/‘male’ are used as sex terms and ‘woman’/’man’ as gender terms, not to be helpful. Instead, she takes all of these to be sex terms and holds that (the norms of) femininity/masculinity refer to gender normativity. Because much of the gender critical feminists’ discussion that philosophers have engaged in has taken place in social media, public fora, and other sources outside academic philosophy, this entry will not focus on these discussions.

4. Women as a group

The various critiques of the sex/gender distinction have called into question the viability of the category women . Feminism is the movement to end the oppression women as a group face. But, how should the category of women be understood if feminists accept the above arguments that gender construction is not uniform, that a sharp distinction between biological sex and social gender is false or (at least) not useful, and that various features associated with women play a role in what it is to be a woman, none of which are individually necessary and jointly sufficient (like a variety of social roles, positions, behaviours, traits, bodily features and experiences)? Feminists must be able to address cultural and social differences in gender construction if feminism is to be a genuinely inclusive movement and be careful not to posit commonalities that mask important ways in which women qua women differ. These concerns (among others) have generated a situation where (as Linda Alcoff puts it) feminists aim to speak and make political demands in the name of women, at the same time rejecting the idea that there is a unified category of women (2006, 152). If feminist critiques of the category women are successful, then what (if anything) binds women together, what is it to be a woman, and what kinds of demands can feminists make on behalf of women?

Many have found the fragmentation of the category of women problematic for political reasons (e.g. Alcoff 2006; Bach 2012; Benhabib 1992; Frye 1996; Haslanger 2000b; Heyes 2000; Martin 1994; Mikkola 2007; Stoljar 1995; Stone 2004; Tanesini 1996; Young 1997; Zack 2005). For instance, Young holds that accounts like Spelman’s reduce the category of women to a gerrymandered collection of individuals with nothing to bind them together (1997, 20). Black women differ from white women but members of both groups also differ from one another with respect to nationality, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation and economic position; that is, wealthy white women differ from working-class white women due to their economic and class positions. These sub-groups are themselves diverse: for instance, some working-class white women in Northern Ireland are starkly divided along religious lines. So if we accept Spelman’s position, we risk ending up with individual women and nothing to bind them together. And this is problematic: in order to respond to oppression of women in general, feminists must understand them as a category in some sense. Young writes that without doing so “it is not possible to conceptualize oppression as a systematic, structured, institutional process” (1997, 17). Some, then, take the articulation of an inclusive category of women to be the prerequisite for effective feminist politics and a rich literature has emerged that aims to conceptualise women as a group or a collective (e.g. Alcoff 2006; Ásta 2011; Frye 1996; 2011; Haslanger 2000b; Heyes 2000; Stoljar 1995, 2011; Young 1997; Zack 2005). Articulations of this category can be divided into those that are: (a) gender nominalist — positions that deny there is something women qua women share and that seek to unify women’s social kind by appealing to something external to women; and (b) gender realist — positions that take there to be something women qua women share (although these realist positions differ significantly from those outlined in Section 2). Below we will review some influential gender nominalist and gender realist positions. Before doing so, it is worth noting that not everyone is convinced that attempts to articulate an inclusive category of women can succeed or that worries about what it is to be a woman are in need of being resolved. Mikkola (2016) argues that feminist politics need not rely on overcoming (what she calls) the ‘gender controversy’: that feminists must settle the meaning of gender concepts and articulate a way to ground women’s social kind membership. As she sees it, disputes about ‘what it is to be a woman’ have become theoretically bankrupt and intractable, which has generated an analytical impasse that looks unsurpassable. Instead, Mikkola argues for giving up the quest, which in any case in her view poses no serious political obstacles.

Elizabeth Barnes (2020) responds to the need to offer an inclusive conception of gender somewhat differently, although she endorses the need for feminism to be inclusive particularly of trans people. Barnes holds that typically philosophical theories of gender aim to offer an account of what it is to be a woman (or man, genderqueer, etc.), where such an account is presumed to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for being a woman or an account of our gender terms’ extensions. But, she holds, it is a mistake to expect our theories of gender to do so. For Barnes, a project that offers a metaphysics of gender “should be understood as the project of theorizing what it is —if anything— about the social world that ultimately explains gender” (2020, 706). This project is not equivalent to one that aims to define gender terms or elucidate the application conditions for natural language gender terms though.

4.1 Gender nominalism

Iris Young argues that unless there is “some sense in which ‘woman’ is the name of a social collective [that feminism represents], there is nothing specific to feminist politics” (1997, 13). In order to make the category women intelligible, she argues that women make up a series: a particular kind of social collective “whose members are unified passively by the objects their actions are oriented around and/or by the objectified results of the material effects of the actions of the other” (Young 1997, 23). A series is distinct from a group in that, whereas members of groups are thought to self-consciously share certain goals, projects, traits and/ or self-conceptions, members of series pursue their own individual ends without necessarily having anything at all in common. Young holds that women are not bound together by a shared feature or experience (or set of features and experiences) since she takes Spelman’s particularity argument to have established definitely that no such feature exists (1997, 13; see also: Frye 1996; Heyes 2000). Instead, women’s category is unified by certain practico-inert realities or the ways in which women’s lives and their actions are oriented around certain objects and everyday realities (Young 1997, 23–4). For example, bus commuters make up a series unified through their individual actions being organised around the same practico-inert objects of the bus and the practice of public transport. Women make up a series unified through women’s lives and actions being organised around certain practico-inert objects and realities that position them as women .

Young identifies two broad groups of such practico-inert objects and realities. First, phenomena associated with female bodies (physical facts), biological processes that take place in female bodies (menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth) and social rules associated with these biological processes (social rules of menstruation, for instance). Second, gender-coded objects and practices: pronouns, verbal and visual representations of gender, gender-coded artefacts and social spaces, clothes, cosmetics, tools and furniture. So, women make up a series since their lives and actions are organised around female bodies and certain gender-coded objects. Their series is bound together passively and the unity is “not one that arises from the individuals called women” (Young 1997, 32).

Although Young’s proposal purports to be a response to Spelman’s worries, Stone has questioned whether it is, after all, susceptible to the particularity argument: ultimately, on Young’s view, something women as women share (their practico-inert realities) binds them together (Stone 2004).

Natalie Stoljar holds that unless the category of women is unified, feminist action on behalf of women cannot be justified (1995, 282). Stoljar too is persuaded by the thought that women qua women do not share anything unitary. This prompts her to argue for resemblance nominalism. This is the view that a certain kind of resemblance relation holds between entities of a particular type (for more on resemblance nominalism, see Armstrong 1989, 39–58). Stoljar is not alone in arguing for resemblance relations to make sense of women as a category; others have also done so, usually appealing to Wittgenstein’s ‘family resemblance’ relations (Alcoff 1988; Green & Radford Curry 1991; Heyes 2000; Munro 2006). Stoljar relies more on Price’s resemblance nominalism whereby x is a member of some type F only if x resembles some paradigm or exemplar of F sufficiently closely (Price 1953, 20). For instance, the type of red entities is unified by some chosen red paradigms so that only those entities that sufficiently resemble the paradigms count as red. The type (or category) of women, then, is unified by some chosen woman paradigms so that those who sufficiently resemble the woman paradigms count as women (Stoljar 1995, 284).

Semantic considerations about the concept woman suggest to Stoljar that resemblance nominalism should be endorsed (Stoljar 2000, 28). It seems unlikely that the concept is applied on the basis of some single social feature all and only women possess. By contrast, woman is a cluster concept and our attributions of womanhood pick out “different arrangements of features in different individuals” (Stoljar 2000, 27). More specifically, they pick out the following clusters of features: (a) Female sex; (b) Phenomenological features: menstruation, female sexual experience, child-birth, breast-feeding, fear of walking on the streets at night or fear of rape; (c) Certain roles: wearing typically female clothing, being oppressed on the basis of one’s sex or undertaking care-work; (d) Gender attribution: “calling oneself a woman, being called a woman” (Stoljar 1995, 283–4). For Stoljar, attributions of womanhood are to do with a variety of traits and experiences: those that feminists have historically termed ‘gender traits’ (like social, behavioural, psychological traits) and those termed ‘sex traits’. Nonetheless, she holds that since the concept woman applies to (at least some) trans persons, one can be a woman without being female (Stoljar 1995, 282).

The cluster concept woman does not, however, straightforwardly provide the criterion for picking out the category of women. Rather, the four clusters of features that the concept picks out help single out woman paradigms that in turn help single out the category of women. First, any individual who possesses a feature from at least three of the four clusters mentioned will count as an exemplar of the category. For instance, an African-American with primary and secondary female sex characteristics, who describes herself as a woman and is oppressed on the basis of her sex, along with a white European hermaphrodite brought up ‘as a girl’, who engages in female roles and has female phenomenological features despite lacking female sex characteristics, will count as woman paradigms (Stoljar 1995, 284). [ 7 ] Second, any individual who resembles “any of the paradigms sufficiently closely (on Price’s account, as closely as [the paradigms] resemble each other) will be a member of the resemblance class ‘woman’” (Stoljar 1995, 284). That is, what delimits membership in the category of women is that one resembles sufficiently a woman paradigm.

4.2 Neo-gender realism

In a series of articles collected in her 2012 book, Sally Haslanger argues for a way to define the concept woman that is politically useful, serving as a tool in feminist fights against sexism, and that shows woman to be a social (not a biological) notion. More specifically, Haslanger argues that gender is a matter of occupying either a subordinate or a privileged social position. In some articles, Haslanger is arguing for a revisionary analysis of the concept woman (2000b; 2003a; 2003b). Elsewhere she suggests that her analysis may not be that revisionary after all (2005; 2006). Consider the former argument first. Haslanger’s analysis is, in her terms, ameliorative: it aims to elucidate which gender concepts best help feminists achieve their legitimate purposes thereby elucidating those concepts feminists should be using (Haslanger 2000b, 33). [ 8 ] Now, feminists need gender terminology in order to fight sexist injustices (Haslanger 2000b, 36). In particular, they need gender terms to identify, explain and talk about persistent social inequalities between males and females. Haslanger’s analysis of gender begins with the recognition that females and males differ in two respects: physically and in their social positions. Societies in general tend to “privilege individuals with male bodies” (Haslanger 2000b, 38) so that the social positions they subsequently occupy are better than the social positions of those with female bodies. And this generates persistent sexist injustices. With this in mind, Haslanger specifies how she understands genders:

S is a woman iff [by definition] S is systematically subordinated along some dimension (economic, political, legal, social, etc.), and S is ‘marked’ as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a female’s biological role in reproduction.

S is a man iff [by definition] S is systematically privileged along some dimension (economic, political, legal, social, etc.), and S is ‘marked’ as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a male’s biological role in reproduction. (2003a, 6–7)

These are constitutive of being a woman and a man: what makes calling S a woman apt, is that S is oppressed on sex-marked grounds; what makes calling S a man apt, is that S is privileged on sex-marked grounds.

Haslanger’s ameliorative analysis is counterintuitive in that females who are not sex-marked for oppression, do not count as women. At least arguably, the Queen of England is not oppressed on sex-marked grounds and so, would not count as a woman on Haslanger’s definition. And, similarly, all males who are not privileged would not count as men. This might suggest that Haslanger’s analysis should be rejected in that it does not capture what language users have in mind when applying gender terms. However, Haslanger argues that this is not a reason to reject the definitions, which she takes to be revisionary: they are not meant to capture our intuitive gender terms. In response, Mikkola (2009) has argued that revisionary analyses of gender concepts, like Haslanger’s, are both politically unhelpful and philosophically unnecessary.

Note also that Haslanger’s proposal is eliminativist: gender justice would eradicate gender, since it would abolish those sexist social structures responsible for sex-marked oppression and privilege. If sexist oppression were to cease, women and men would no longer exist (although there would still be males and females). Not all feminists endorse such an eliminativist view though. Stone holds that Haslanger does not leave any room for positively revaluing what it is to be a woman: since Haslanger defines woman in terms of subordination,

any woman who challenges her subordinate status must by definition be challenging her status as a woman, even if she does not intend to … positive change to our gender norms would involve getting rid of the (necessarily subordinate) feminine gender. (Stone 2007, 160)

But according to Stone this is not only undesirable – one should be able to challenge subordination without having to challenge one’s status as a woman. It is also false: “because norms of femininity can be and constantly are being revised, women can be women without thereby being subordinate” (Stone 2007, 162; Mikkola [2016] too argues that Haslanger’s eliminativism is troublesome).

Theodore Bach holds that Haslanger’s eliminativism is undesirable on other grounds, and that Haslanger’s position faces another more serious problem. Feminism faces the following worries (among others):

Representation problem : “if there is no real group of ‘women’, then it is incoherent to make moral claims and advance political policies on behalf of women” (Bach 2012, 234). Commonality problems : (1) There is no feature that all women cross-culturally and transhistorically share. (2) Delimiting women’s social kind with the help of some essential property privileges those who possess it, and marginalizes those who do not (Bach 2012, 235).

According to Bach, Haslanger’s strategy to resolve these problems appeals to ‘social objectivism’. First, we define women “according to a suitably abstract relational property” (Bach 2012, 236), which avoids the commonality problems. Second, Haslanger employs “an ontologically thin notion of ‘objectivity’” (Bach 2012, 236) that answers the representation problem. Haslanger’s solution (Bach holds) is specifically to argue that women make up an objective type because women are objectively similar to one another, and not simply classified together given our background conceptual schemes. Bach claims though that Haslanger’s account is not objective enough, and we should on political grounds “provide a stronger ontological characterization of the genders men and women according to which they are natural kinds with explanatory essences” (Bach 2012, 238). He thus proposes that women make up a natural kind with a historical essence:

The essential property of women, in virtue of which an individual is a member of the kind ‘women,’ is participation in a lineage of women. In order to exemplify this relational property, an individual must be a reproduction of ancestral women, in which case she must have undergone the ontogenetic processes through which a historical gender system replicates women. (Bach 2012, 271)

In short, one is not a woman due to shared surface properties with other women (like occupying a subordinate social position). Rather, one is a woman because one has the right history: one has undergone the ubiquitous ontogenetic process of gender socialization. Thinking about gender in this way supposedly provides a stronger kind unity than Haslanger’s that simply appeals to shared surface properties.

Not everyone agrees; Mikkola (2020) argues that Bach’s metaphysical picture has internal tensions that render it puzzling and that Bach’s metaphysics does not provide good responses to the commonality and presentation problems. The historically essentialist view also has anti-trans implications. After all, trans women who have not undergone female gender socialization won’t count as women on his view (Mikkola [2016, 2020] develops this line of critique in more detail). More worryingly, trans women will count as men contrary to their self-identification. Both Bettcher (2013) and Jenkins (2016) consider the importance of gender self-identification. Bettcher argues that there is more than one ‘correct’ way to understand womanhood: at the very least, the dominant (mainstream), and the resistant (trans) conceptions. Dominant views like that of Bach’s tend to erase trans people’s experiences and to marginalize trans women within feminist movements. Rather than trans women having to defend their self-identifying claims, these claims should be taken at face value right from the start. And so, Bettcher holds, “in analyzing the meaning of terms such as ‘woman,’ it is inappropriate to dismiss alternative ways in which those terms are actually used in trans subcultures; such usage needs to be taken into consideration as part of the analysis” (2013, 235).

Specifically with Haslanger in mind and in a similar vein, Jenkins (2016) discusses how Haslanger’s revisionary approach unduly excludes some trans women from women’s social kind. On Jenkins’s view, Haslanger’s ameliorative methodology in fact yields more than one satisfying target concept: one that “corresponds to Haslanger’s proposed concept and captures the sense of gender as an imposed social class”; another that “captures the sense of gender as a lived identity” (Jenkins 2016, 397). The latter of these allows us to include trans women into women’s social kind, who on Haslanger’s social class approach to gender would inappropriately have been excluded. (See Andler 2017 for the view that Jenkins’s purportedly inclusive conception of gender is still not fully inclusive. Jenkins 2018 responds to this charge and develops the notion of gender identity still further.)

In addition to her revisionary argument, Haslanger has suggested that her ameliorative analysis of woman may not be as revisionary as it first seems (2005, 2006). Although successful in their reference fixing, ordinary language users do not always know precisely what they are talking about. Our language use may be skewed by oppressive ideologies that can “mislead us about the content of our own thoughts” (Haslanger 2005, 12). Although her gender terminology is not intuitive, this could simply be because oppressive ideologies mislead us about the meanings of our gender terms. Our everyday gender terminology might mean something utterly different from what we think it means; and we could be entirely ignorant of this. Perhaps Haslanger’s analysis, then, has captured our everyday gender vocabulary revealing to us the terms that we actually employ: we may be applying ‘woman’ in our everyday language on the basis of sex-marked subordination whether we take ourselves to be doing so or not. If this is so, Haslanger’s gender terminology is not radically revisionist.

Saul (2006) argues that, despite it being possible that we unknowingly apply ‘woman’ on the basis of social subordination, it is extremely difficult to show that this is the case. This would require showing that the gender terminology we in fact employ is Haslanger’s proposed gender terminology. But discovering the grounds on which we apply everyday gender terms is extremely difficult precisely because they are applied in various and idiosyncratic ways (Saul 2006, 129). Haslanger, then, needs to do more in order to show that her analysis is non-revisionary.

Charlotte Witt (2011a; 2011b) argues for a particular sort of gender essentialism, which Witt terms ‘uniessentialism’. Her motivation and starting point is the following: many ordinary social agents report gender being essential to them and claim that they would be a different person were they of a different sex/gender. Uniessentialism attempts to understand and articulate this. However, Witt’s work departs in important respects from the earlier (so-called) essentialist or gender realist positions discussed in Section 2: Witt does not posit some essential property of womanhood of the kind discussed above, which failed to take women’s differences into account. Further, uniessentialism differs significantly from those position developed in response to the problem of how we should conceive of women’s social kind. It is not about solving the standard dispute between gender nominalists and gender realists, or about articulating some supposedly shared property that binds women together and provides a theoretical ground for feminist political solidarity. Rather, uniessentialism aims to make good the widely held belief that gender is constitutive of who we are. [ 9 ]

Uniessentialism is a sort of individual essentialism. Traditionally philosophers distinguish between kind and individual essentialisms: the former examines what binds members of a kind together and what do all members of some kind have in common qua members of that kind. The latter asks: what makes an individual the individual it is. We can further distinguish two sorts of individual essentialisms: Kripkean identity essentialism and Aristotelian uniessentialism. The former asks: what makes an individual that individual? The latter, however, asks a slightly different question: what explains the unity of individuals? What explains that an individual entity exists over and above the sum total of its constituent parts? (The standard feminist debate over gender nominalism and gender realism has largely been about kind essentialism. Being about individual essentialism, Witt’s uniessentialism departs in an important way from the standard debate.) From the two individual essentialisms, Witt endorses the Aristotelian one. On this view, certain functional essences have a unifying role: these essences are responsible for the fact that material parts constitute a new individual, rather than just a lump of stuff or a collection of particles. Witt’s example is of a house: the essential house-functional property (what the entity is for, what its purpose is) unifies the different material parts of a house so that there is a house, and not just a collection of house-constituting particles (2011a, 6). Gender (being a woman/a man) functions in a similar fashion and provides “the principle of normative unity” that organizes, unifies and determines the roles of social individuals (Witt 2011a, 73). Due to this, gender is a uniessential property of social individuals.

It is important to clarify the notions of gender and social individuality that Witt employs. First, gender is a social position that “cluster[s] around the engendering function … women conceive and bear … men beget” (Witt 2011a, 40). These are women and men’s socially mediated reproductive functions (Witt 2011a, 29) and they differ from the biological function of reproduction, which roughly corresponds to sex on the standard sex/gender distinction. Witt writes: “to be a woman is to be recognized to have a particular function in engendering, to be a man is to be recognized to have a different function in engendering” (2011a, 39). Second, Witt distinguishes persons (those who possess self-consciousness), human beings (those who are biologically human) and social individuals (those who occupy social positions synchronically and diachronically). These ontological categories are not equivalent in that they possess different persistence and identity conditions. Social individuals are bound by social normativity, human beings by biological normativity. These normativities differ in two respects: first, social norms differ from one culture to the next whereas biological norms do not; second, unlike biological normativity, social normativity requires “the recognition by others that an agent is both responsive to and evaluable under a social norm” (Witt 2011a, 19). Thus, being a social individual is not equivalent to being a human being. Further, Witt takes personhood to be defined in terms of intrinsic psychological states of self-awareness and self-consciousness. However, social individuality is defined in terms of the extrinsic feature of occupying a social position, which depends for its existence on a social world. So, the two are not equivalent: personhood is essentially about intrinsic features and could exist without a social world, whereas social individuality is essentially about extrinsic features that could not exist without a social world.

Witt’s gender essentialist argument crucially pertains to social individuals , not to persons or human beings: saying that persons or human beings are gendered would be a category mistake. But why is gender essential to social individuals? For Witt, social individuals are those who occupy positions in social reality. Further, “social positions have norms or social roles associated with them; a social role is what an individual who occupies a given social position is responsive to and evaluable under” (Witt 2011a, 59). However, qua social individuals, we occupy multiple social positions at once and over time: we can be women, mothers, immigrants, sisters, academics, wives, community organisers and team-sport coaches synchronically and diachronically. Now, the issue for Witt is what unifies these positions so that a social individual is constituted. After all, a bundle of social position occupancies does not make for an individual (just as a bundle of properties like being white , cube-shaped and sweet do not make for a sugar cube). For Witt, this unifying role is undertaken by gender (being a woman or a man): it is

a pervasive and fundamental social position that unifies and determines all other social positions both synchronically and diachronically. It unifies them not physically, but by providing a principle of normative unity. (2011a, 19–20)

By ‘normative unity’, Witt means the following: given our social roles and social position occupancies, we are responsive to various sets of social norms. These norms are “complex patterns of behaviour and practices that constitute what one ought to do in a situation given one’s social position(s) and one’s social context” (Witt 2011a, 82). The sets of norms can conflict: the norms of motherhood can (and do) conflict with the norms of being an academic philosopher. However, in order for this conflict to exist, the norms must be binding on a single social individual. Witt, then, asks: what explains the existence and unity of the social individual who is subject to conflicting social norms? The answer is gender.

Gender is not just a social role that unifies social individuals. Witt takes it to be the social role — as she puts it, it is the mega social role that unifies social agents. First, gender is a mega social role if it satisfies two conditions (and Witt claims that it does): (1) if it provides the principle of synchronic and diachronic unity of social individuals, and (2) if it inflects and defines a broad range of other social roles. Gender satisfies the first in usually being a life-long social position: a social individual persists just as long as their gendered social position persists. Further, Witt maintains, trans people are not counterexamples to this claim: transitioning entails that the old social individual has ceased to exist and a new one has come into being. And this is consistent with the same person persisting and undergoing social individual change via transitioning. Gender satisfies the second condition too. It inflects other social roles, like being a parent or a professional. The expectations attached to these social roles differ depending on the agent’s gender, since gender imposes different social norms to govern the execution of the further social roles. Now, gender — as opposed to some other social category, like race — is not just a mega social role; it is the unifying mega social role. Cross-cultural and trans-historical considerations support this view. Witt claims that patriarchy is a social universal (2011a, 98). By contrast, racial categorisation varies historically and cross-culturally, and racial oppression is not a universal feature of human cultures. Thus, gender has a better claim to being the social role that is uniessential to social individuals. This account of gender essentialism not only explains social agents’ connectedness to their gender, but it also provides a helpful way to conceive of women’s agency — something that is central to feminist politics.

Linda Alcoff holds that feminism faces an identity crisis: the category of women is feminism’s starting point, but various critiques about gender have fragmented the category and it is not clear how feminists should understand what it is to be a woman (2006, chapter 5). In response, Alcoff develops an account of gender as positionality whereby “gender is, among other things, a position one occupies and from which one can act politically” (2006, 148). In particular, she takes one’s social position to foster the development of specifically gendered identities (or self-conceptions): “The very subjectivity (or subjective experience of being a woman) and the very identity of women are constituted by women’s position” (Alcoff 2006, 148). Alcoff holds that there is an objective basis for distinguishing individuals on the grounds of (actual or expected) reproductive roles:

Women and men are differentiated by virtue of their different relationship of possibility to biological reproduction, with biological reproduction referring to conceiving, giving birth, and breast-feeding, involving one’s body . (Alcoff 2006, 172, italics in original)

The thought is that those standardly classified as biologically female, although they may not actually be able to reproduce, will encounter “a different set of practices, expectations, and feelings in regard to reproduction” than those standardly classified as male (Alcoff 2006, 172). Further, this differential relation to the possibility of reproduction is used as the basis for many cultural and social phenomena that position women and men: it can be

the basis of a variety of social segregations, it can engender the development of differential forms of embodiment experienced throughout life, and it can generate a wide variety of affective responses, from pride, delight, shame, guilt, regret, or great relief from having successfully avoided reproduction. (Alcoff 2006, 172)

Reproduction, then, is an objective basis for distinguishing individuals that takes on a cultural dimension in that it positions women and men differently: depending on the kind of body one has, one’s lived experience will differ. And this fosters the construction of gendered social identities: one’s role in reproduction helps configure how one is socially positioned and this conditions the development of specifically gendered social identities.

Since women are socially positioned in various different contexts, “there is no gender essence all women share” (Alcoff 2006, 147–8). Nonetheless, Alcoff acknowledges that her account is akin to the original 1960s sex/gender distinction insofar as sex difference (understood in terms of the objective division of reproductive labour) provides the foundation for certain cultural arrangements (the development of a gendered social identity). But, with the benefit of hindsight

we can see that maintaining a distinction between the objective category of sexed identity and the varied and culturally contingent practices of gender does not presume an absolute distinction of the old-fashioned sort between culture and a reified nature. (Alcoff 2006, 175)

That is, her view avoids the implausible claim that sex is exclusively to do with nature and gender with culture. Rather, the distinction on the basis of reproductive possibilities shapes and is shaped by the sorts of cultural and social phenomena (like varieties of social segregation) these possibilities gives rise to. For instance, technological interventions can alter sex differences illustrating that this is the case (Alcoff 2006, 175). Women’s specifically gendered social identities that are constituted by their context dependent positions, then, provide the starting point for feminist politics.

Recently Robin Dembroff (2020) has argued that existing metaphysical accounts of gender fail to address non-binary gender identities. This generates two concerns. First, metaphysical accounts of gender (like the ones outlined in previous sections) are insufficient for capturing those who reject binary gender categorisation where people are either men or women. In so doing, these accounts are not satisfying as explanations of gender understood in a more expansive sense that goes beyond the binary. Second, the failure to understand non-binary gender identities contributes to a form of epistemic injustice called ‘hermeneutical injustice’: it feeds into a collective failure to comprehend and analyse concepts and practices that undergird non-binary classification schemes, thereby impeding on one’s ability to fully understand themselves. To overcome these problems, Dembroff suggests an account of genderqueer that they call ‘critical gender kind’:

a kind whose members collectively destabilize one or more elements of dominant gender ideology. Genderqueer, on my proposed model, is a category whose members collectively destabilize the binary axis, or the idea that the only possible genders are the exclusive and exhaustive kinds men and women. (2020, 2)

Note that Dembroff’s position is not to be confused with ‘gender critical feminist’ positions like those noted above, which are critical of the prevalent feminist focus on gender, as opposed to sex, kinds. Dembroff understands genderqueer as a gender kind, but one that is critical of dominant binary understandings of gender.

Dembroff identifies two modes of destabilising the gender binary: principled and existential. Principled destabilising “stems from or otherwise expresses individuals’ social or political commitments regarding gender norms, practices, and structures”, while existential destabilising “stems from or otherwise expresses individuals’ felt or desired gender roles, embodiment, and/or categorization” (2020, 13). These modes are not mutually exclusive, and they can help us understand the difference between allies and members of genderqueer kinds: “While both resist dominant gender ideology, members of [genderqueer] kinds resist (at least in part) due to felt or desired gender categorization that deviates from dominant expectations, norms, and assumptions” (2020, 14). These modes of destabilisation also enable us to formulate an understanding of non-critical gender kinds that binary understandings of women and men’s kinds exemplify. Dembroff defines these kinds as follows:

For a given kind X , X is a non-critical gender kind relative to a given society iff X ’s members collectively restabilize one or more elements of the dominant gender ideology in that society. (2020, 14)

Dembroff’s understanding of critical and non-critical gender kinds importantly makes gender kind membership something more and other than a mere psychological phenomenon. To engage in collectively destabilising or restabilising dominant gender normativity and ideology, we need more than mere attitudes or mental states – resisting or maintaining such normativity requires action as well. In so doing, Dembroff puts their position forward as an alternative to two existing internalist positions about gender. First, to Jennifer McKitrick’s (2015) view whereby gender is dispositional: in a context where someone is disposed to behave in ways that would be taken by others to be indicative of (e.g.) womanhood, the person has a woman’s gender identity. Second, to Jenkin’s (2016, 2018) position that takes an individual’s gender identity to be dependent on which gender-specific norms the person experiences as being relevant to them. On this view, someone is a woman if the person experiences norms associated with women to be relevant to the person in the particular social context that they are in. Neither of these positions well-captures non-binary identities, Dembroff argues, which motivates the account of genderqueer identities as critical gender kinds.

As Dembroff acknowledges, substantive philosophical work on non-binary gender identities is still developing. However, it is important to note that analytic philosophers are beginning to engage in gender metaphysics that goes beyond the binary.

This entry first looked at feminist objections to biological determinism and the claim that gender is socially constructed. Next, it examined feminist critiques of prevalent understandings of gender and sex, and the distinction itself. In response to these concerns, the entry looked at how a unified women’s category could be articulated for feminist political purposes. This illustrated that gender metaphysics — or what it is to be a woman or a man or a genderqueer person — is still very much a live issue. And although contemporary feminist philosophical debates have questioned some of the tenets and details of the original 1960s sex/gender distinction, most still hold onto the view that gender is about social factors and that it is (in some sense) distinct from biological sex. The jury is still out on what the best, the most useful, or (even) the correct definition of gender is.

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I am very grateful to Tuukka Asplund, Jenny Saul, Alison Stone and Nancy Tuana for their extremely helpful and detailed comments when writing this entry.

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The Struggles of Rejecting the Gender Binary

Not everyone identifies as male or female. This is what it’s like to be nonbinary in a world that wants to box you in.

Salem, a nonbinary 20-year-old in North Carolina. Credit... Jessica Dimmock for The New York Times

Supported by

By Daniel Bergner

• June 4, 2019

‘W hy didn’t you wear makeup today?’

Jan Tate asked her client during a therapy session in May of last year.

“I didn’t feel the need to.”

“Would today be the day to begin using Salem instead of Hannah?”

There was a long pause and a hushed reply: “Yeah. But it would hurt a lot worse to start asking people to call me Salem and have them not do it than not to ask them.”

Tate is a psychotherapist at the Carolina Partners clinic in Durham, N.C. She specializes in clients who are pushing against the bounds of gender. Salem is 20 and was, in the phrase Salem prefers, assigned male at birth, with a more clearly masculine name — that it is a “deadname” is all Salem will say about it. Salem uses gender-neutral they/them pronouns . They’d failed, so far, to get their parents, their sister or their two remaining friends to understand and accept that they were neither a man nor a woman, that they were nonbinary , gender fluid, gender expansive. They’d chosen the name Salem to fit with their identity, but they’d almost never asked anyone to call them by it. It was easier — definitely not easy, but easier — to let themself be considered conventionally transgender, male to female, and go by the name Hannah.

Tate, who is 31, suggested that Salem practice the request now, in the safety of her office. Sitting across from the therapist, they could hardly manage it — “Can you call me Salem?” — and as soon as they did, they turned their face away. Their brown hair fell with a loose curl just past their slim shoulders. Unlike two days before, when Salem arrived for therapy with their full lips in dark red lipstick and a dash of blush across each cheekbone, and with their long fingernails painted a bright lavender, this afternoon there was only the nail polish.

They wore a gray V-neck T-shirt and jeans. With an ankle crossed over the other knee, they picked at the rubber rim of one of their sneakers, picking, picking. The pain of being nonbinary was “excruciating,” they told me later, a torment mixing disconnection from themself and isolation from everyone else. Tate said to me that “I often find myself gut-knotted after sessions with Salem, because of the things they don’t say” — because of the feelings Salem kept locked away, even from her, for fear that their experience was inexpressible, incomprehensible. She imagined Salem in an “abyss,” undergoing a torture that was the emotional equivalent of “taking a saw blade and cutting into the skin of an arm.”

Tate was raised Southern Baptist on a small tobacco-and-cattle farm in a town not far from Salem’s. She is cisgender — the gender she was assigned at birth and her sense of identity match up. But she’s gay, and as a teenager, when she was struggling with her sexuality, she found solace in talks with the father of a close friend, a former deacon at her church, a middle-aged doctor who was making a full transition from male to female and was barred from the congregation and kicked out of her medical practice. Ever since, Tate has felt keenly for anyone pitted against gender conformity. She’s especially invested in the battles of people like Salem, who yearn not to go from one category to the other but to escape altogether. And philosophically, she’s electrified by the profound challenge that people like Salem put up against dominant preconceptions. What if our most fundamental means of perceiving and classifying one another is illusory and can be swept away?

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Why be nonbinary?

A world segregated into male and female categories feels suffocating. nonbinary identity is a radical escape hatch.

by Robin Dembroff   + BIO

Recently, I found myself at London Stansted Airport, travelling back to the United States. I’m a frequent flyer, so I’m familiar with the airport ritual: shoes, laptop, body scanner. But for myself and many others, the final instalment of this liturgy tends to become a social test. As usual, I braced myself and stepped into the scanner.

‘Arms like this… Anything in your pockets? Stand still.’ As the security agent stepped back to the controller, she looked up. Gender panic rose in her face. Her eyes desperately tried to undress me: female or male? Pink or blue button? (Yes, pink or blue.) ‘Female,’ I sighed, but the Plexiglas muffled my voice. ‘Female!’ I yelled. ‘The pink button!’ Other travellers froze, expecting a scene, but the agent’s face lit up. ‘I thought you were a woman!’ she announced triumphantly. She jabbed the button featuring a pink stick figure: vagina; female; woman.

As someone who is gender nonbinary, I’ve gathered hundreds of these stories. Some are funny, others vicious. Despite a widespread assumption that everyone fits into neat gender categories, I’ve always been treated as a gender question mark. My social interactions since childhood have been filled with wildly vacillating gender expectations. These days, though, I identify as nonbinary not because I am androgynous. Rather, I do so because experiencing life as an androgynous person has made me acutely aware of how gendered expectations and assumptions saturate our lives.

Unreflective critics like to accuse people like me of being ‘obsessed’ with gender. But far from being obsessed, many of us are just plain tired of it. I am tired of living in a society where everyone forces each other into a blue or a pink box. The ferocity with which these gender boxes are maintained – and the Hail Mary attempts to justify them with science – is truly staggering. Anyone who dares to challenge these boxes is met with distortion and ridicule. I don’t want to put up with it any longer: my identity is a petition for an escape hatch.

M ost people assume that gender is tied to biological sex. For the majority, this means that gender is identical to sex, where sex is taken to be determined by one’s reproductive features. Call this the ‘identity’ view of gender. For others, following Simone de Beauvoir , gender is the social meaning of sex. Call this the ‘social position’ view of gender.

On either the identity or the social-position view, your gender is constrained by whether your body is sexed as male or as female. According to the identity view, your gender just is your sexed body. And, according to the social view, your gender is unavoidably indexed to your sexed body, because society imposes social roles onto you on the basis of your biology. On either view, then, it would seem that nonbinary genders do not – cannot – exist. But this is mistaken.

Consider first those who hold to a strict identity relation between gender and sex. On this view, nonbinary gender cannot exist because – it is assumed – everyone has either a male or a female body. This view proliferates on countless blogs, forums and news sources, where one finds wildly distorted discussions of what it means to be nonbinary. Nearly all conclude that nonbinary gender is a biological impossibility. The more vitriolic commenters add to this that anyone who says they are nonbinary is deranged.

It seems, then, that when I say: ‘I am nonbinary’, a staggering number of people take this to mean: ‘I don’t have female or male reproductive features’, and so dismiss my claim as absurd. But this is a conversational failure. Maybe even a bald-faced lie. We are nowhere near the end of militant insistence that nonbinary genders are a ‘biological’ impossibility. But the insistence is a façade hiding a bad argument. Let’s take the reasoning at face value:

Premise 1: Someone’s gender is identical to their set of reproductive features.

Premise 2: There are only two possible sets of reproductive features.

Conclusion: So it is impossible for someone to have a nonbinary gender.

An initial thing to notice is that the second premise is demonstrably false. The science journalist Claire Ainsworth, writing for the journal Nature in 2015 , points out that this ‘simple scenario’ is distant from reality:

According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary – their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another … What’s more, new technologies in DNA sequencing and cell biology are revealing that almost everyone is, to varying degrees, a patchwork of genetically distinct cells, some with a sex that might not match that of the rest of their body.

In other words, it’s uncontroversial among doctors, biologists and geneticists that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a line in nature that cleanly divides people into males and females. So, even granting the first premise, the argument fails: reproductive features do not neatly fall into binary categories. The biological world is far messier than XX and XY chromosomes.

Making this point and walking away would be hasty. True, intersex people – those whose biological features combine male- and female-coded reproductive features – exist. But it doesn’t further our understanding of nonbinary identities, because having an intersex condition is neither sufficient nor necessary for being nonbinary. The majority of nonbinary individuals do not have an intersex condition, nor do they take themselves to.

Having feet is correlated with walking, but I can walk on my hands if I want to

The argument is meant to conclude that nonbinary genders – not intersex conditions – are impossible. But if it indeed does, a vital error surfaces within the argument. The term ‘gender’, as it is used in the first premise, refers to sets of reproductive features. But the term ‘gender’, as it is used in the conclusion, must refer to social identifications and not biological classifications. In short, the argument equivocates, and so fails.

Many discussions about nonbinary identities suffer from a lack of basic terminological agreement. Without it, we are engaged in what philosophers call metalinguistic negotiation : an argument over what a word should mean, and not an argument about what the world is like. Suppose the US Vice President Mike Pence tells me, after the legal success of marriage equality in the United States, that: ‘I believe marriage is only between a man and a woman.’ I respond by brushing him off as delusional: ‘Just because you say something about the law doesn’t make it so!’ Anyone paying attention would identify my response as missing the mark. Clearly, whatever Pence means by the word ‘marriage’ – something based on certain Biblical precepts, no doubt – is not what I mean by it.

Similarly, even a brief glance inside the communities that developed and regularly use terms such as ‘nonbinary’, ‘agender’, ‘genderqueer’ and so on reveals that these terms certainly don’t mean something about one’s reproductive features. Consider just one example, borrowed from a 2017 qualitative study of transgender (increasingly known simply as ‘trans’) individuals:

‘My gender changes. Sometimes I am female, sometimes I am a boy, sometimes I am both, and sometimes I am neither.’

If we substitute ‘have a vagina’ for ‘am female’, and ‘have a penis’ for ‘am a boy’, the result is nonsensical. Yet for the doubters’ argument to be valid, it would need to be the case that ‘gender’ must refer to one’s set of reproductive features. The main problem with this suggestion – other than violating any plausible theory of semantics – is that no one believes it. For all the huffing about how gender is just body parts, no one in practice holds the identity view of gender. If gender is just reproductive features and nothing more , it makes no more sense to insist that people must look, love or act in particular ways on the basis of gender than it would to demand that people modify their behaviour on the basis of eye colour or height.

Even if reproductive traits are correlated to personality, physical capabilities or social interests, such correlations don’t equate to norms. As David Hume has taught us, is doesn’t make ought . Having feet is correlated with walking, but I can walk on my hands if I want to. Having a tongue is correlated with experiencing taste, but who cares if I decide to drink Soylent every day? Once we recognise that gender categories mark how one ought to be, and not only how one’s body is , the identity view unravels. To build in the ‘oughts’ is to admit that gender is more than just body parts.

T he idea that gender is more than body parts is old news to feminists. A distinction between sex and gender, in which genders are the social positions forced upon certain sexed bodies, has long circulated among feminist theorists and activists. And, no doubt, this way of thinking about gender has helped to debunk ideas about how female persons ‘naturally’ should be and reveal widespread social discriminations against these persons.

But while the social-position view distinguishes between bodily features and gender, and takes gender to be a fundamentally social phenomenon, this view still welds gender to assigned sex. For example, on this theory, someone is a woman if they are (or were from birth) socially marked as female. And, since many nonbinary persons are (and were) marked as male or female, they are in fact men or women on the social-position view. They do not have a nonbinary gender.

Here we run again into linguistic mismatch: most nonbinary persons do not claim they are (or were) not marked with a binary sex, or socialised according to that assigned sex. Whatever these persons mean by claiming nonbinary identities, it is not a lack of gendered socialisation. So what does it mean to be nonbinary then?

To see gendered reality, be a Tiresias, throbbing between overlapping but radically segregated worlds

One popular idea is that being nonbinary simply means being gender-nonconforming, or being androgynous. Terms such as ‘androgynous’, ‘gender fluid’ and ‘nonbinary’ are often used interchangeably in marketing campaigns and social media. But this won’t do either: many nonbinary persons are not androgynous, and many androgynous persons would not claim nonbinary identities. True, nonbinary persons are often androgynous. But, in many cases, androgyny simply is the catalyst for realising how thoroughly arbitrary and suffocating gender is: it cannot remain invisible to someone whose ability to fit within its structures is perpetually scrutinised.

Take what happened to me a few months ago. I came out of a women’s restroom to find a very angry man and (I presume) his girlfriend. ‘What the fuck were you doing in the women’s bathroom?’ he yelled in my face. ‘I should beat the shit out of you.’ I’m not sure what I said, but I replied, with my female-coded voice. His demeanour shifted completely. He stammered: ‘I thought… You look…’ Then he ran away.

Such experiences have taught me – even if in a muted sense – how much our perceived gender constrains how we move through the world. In his poem The Waste Land (1922) , T S Eliot was right to describe Tiresias, a mythological prophet who was transformed into a woman, as someone who ‘though blind … can see’. The best way to see gendered reality is to be a Tiresias, throbbing between overlapping but radically segregated worlds. Some prefer to live in those worlds: nonbinary persons seek an alternative.

I consider nonbinary identity to be an unabashedly political identity. It is for anyone who wishes to wield self-understanding in service of dismantling a mandatory, self-reproducing gender system that strictly controls what we can do and be. As the philosopher Kate Manne puts it in her book Down Girl (2017), this system rewards and valorises those who conform to binary gender expectations, and punishes and polices those who do not. To be nonbinary is to set one’s existence in opposition to this system at its conceptual core.

As a result, nonbinary identity cannot be based on having androgynous reproductive features or aesthetic expression. Androgyny itself is defined with reference to binary gender concepts. But gendered conformity – even conformity to nonconformity – cannot be a requirement of nonbinary identity. It cannot be defined in a way that upholds the very concepts it seeks to unravel. Unlike womanhood or manhood, nonbinary identity is open to anyone and forced upon no one. It is radically anti-essentialist. It is opt-in only.

‘I don’t want to be a girl wearing boy’s clothes, nor do I want to be a girl who presents as a boy,’ said the nonbinary teenager Kelsey Beckham in an interview with The Washington Post in 2014. ‘ I’m just a person wearing people clothes (my emphasis).’ Beckham’s claim gets at the heart of nonbinary identity. Beckham does not deny that they have female- or male-coded sex characteristics. They do not deny having a gendered social position. They do not insist that they have an androgynous aesthetic. In my view, Beckham’s claim is best interpreted as a challenge: Why do you insist on perceiving me through binary gender concepts? Their statement illuminates, if only for a moment, our constant and unthinking habit of using binary gender categories as a lens through which to view and evaluate nearly everything about a person – their relationships, occupation, clothes, heights, athletic ability, intelligence, personality, and on and on, ad nauseum.

What justifies this habit? Why do we continue to do it? Nonbinary individuals, by refusing to comply with binary categories, raise these questions and – with their very existence – refuse to put them down. While other feminisms question the unequal value placed on femininity and masculinity, highlighting the resulting gender inequalities, the nonbinary movement questions why we insist on these categories at all.

Some prefer to make these categories gooey on the inside; I prefer to torch them

To reduce the world to pink and blue buttons, we’ve relied on an ability to designate and maintain rigid groupings of physical features, aesthetic expressions, sexualities, personalities and social dispositions. These groupings are maintained by normed conformity: anyone who fails to conform should conform on pain of being ‘gender trash’, to borrow a term from the activist Riki Wilchins. A slew of terms existed to denigrate those who are gender trash: ‘dyke’, ‘fairy’, ‘tranny’, ‘sissy’, ‘queer’. In reclaiming these and other terms, people have started to embrace being gender trash. Nonbinary individuals go a step further: they challenge the categories that allow persons to be marked as gender trash in the first place.

Policing masculinity and femininity requires that there be men and women. Challenging these categories, in part by revealing the false but pervasive assumption that everyone fits within them, threatens those who wish to preserve social control over sexed bodies – especially control that systematically favours males who conform to dominant masculine norms. If people embrace an ontological space outside the gender binary, it undermines this ideology. Its perpetuation relies on the myth that gender – understood as sets of reproductive features that make us apt for certain social roles – is binary , universal and natural . Claims to nonbinary gender, unlike the social-position view of gender, open up a fissure between reproductive features and social possibility. They question the ontological basis of gender as well as its political justification.

None of this is to deny the many means of gender resistance within the binary. It is powerful to insist that women and men should be able to look, act and simply be any way they want. Countless people identify as men or women while simultaneously bucking gender norms. For many of them, being understood as a man or a woman is important for describing how they were socialised as children, how others interpret their bodies, or how they feel about their own bodies. This is wonderful: the more sledgehammers we take to gender categories, the better. Some prefer to make these categories gooey on the inside; I prefer to torch them. There’s enough room for all at the barbecue.

Rather than insist that men and women can be and can do anything, I and other nonbinary persons question why we categorise people as women and men at all. Questions about what categories should guide our social lives cannot be answered by simply describing the world, because they ask how we should describe the world. They are inherently normative questions. Philosophers have long discussed reasons why some categories are better to use than others. In the sciences, for example, it seems clear that considerations of simplicity and explanatory power are significant when determining how best to categorise reality. Nonbinary identities force us to place binary gender categories under similar scrutiny, but with greater attention to moral and political considerations. We must ask not only what these categories are, but also why and whether we should continue to use them.

Are we nearing the end of gender as we know it? As it has been imposed upon us since birth? On more optimistic days, especially after interacting with my students, I feel hopeful. At other times, I read that the US Department of Justice is dismantling trans rights by ordering that workplace discrimination laws do not apply to discrimination based on gender identity. Or that the Trump administration is attempting to legally erase trans persons’ existence by defining gender based on a person’s genitalia at birth. Or that Ciara Minaj Frazier, a 31-year-old black trans woman, has become the 22nd trans person known to have been murdered in the US in 2018 alone. On these days, I’m not as sure.

What I do know is that our gender systems are not only broken, but that they never worked. For binary and nonbinary folks alike, they damage mental and physical health, promote economic inequality, and fuel sexual and other gendered violence. For my gender trash kin, and especially persons of colour, they make life into a tightrope where one misstep or just bad luck ends in unemployment, harassment, rape, beatings or even death. We must continue to question a culture that mandates infants’ genitals be coded according to a binary that determines much of their lives. ‘Gender obsessed’ indeed.

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Justin Garson

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The great wealth wave

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Neuroscience

The melting brain

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Clayton Page Aldern

PERSONAL ESSAY | Not what I seem: How I discovered I was non-binary

'when i am referred to as 'she,' i still feel excluded, invisible, misunderstood,' says r.c. woodmass.

Social Sharing

"Good evening, ladies! Can I get you ladies a cocktail to start the evening?"

My mom and I were out to dinner celebrating the last evening of her vacation before she went back home to Winnipeg.

I was trying to stay relaxed and happy; trying to smile and move on. The server was being perfectly pleasant and polite, but she didn't realize that repeatedly calling me a lady made my stomach drop, my heart rate speed up, and a bit of the light leave my eyes.

I am decidedly not a lady — I am non-binary.

I identified as a cisgender woman for most of my life. Having been raised as an Evangelical Christian in and around Winnipeg, Man., I was taught to believe that people were assigned their gender by God, and that he made everyone perfectly, exactly as they were supposed to be.

Not accepting your assigned gender would have been considered an abomination according to my church, at least at that time — not that I was ever exposed to any transgender or non-binary people growing up, none that I knew of anyway.

I did not have the language, the understanding or the openness to consider that I may be neither heterosexual nor cisgender.

My first exposure to non-binary and genderqueer people was in Montreal, when I first came out as queer and started making friends with other queers — and dating them!

We would all meet up to play basketball once a week, drink beer, and talk about everything under the sun.

I had started to learn that the ways in which the strict gender binary — which is enforced by our legal systems, the media, and default ways of speaking and thinking — limits the ways that all people can express themselves fully.

"Gender binary" is the notion that all body shapes and behaviours fit into societal boxes of male or female. Non-binary people aren't trying to prevent people from living as men and women if that's what they feel they truly are; our existences do, however, intentionally challenge the common belief that gender is a binary.

I am so grateful to my partners, lovers and friends for their patience with me. I put my foot in my mouth quite often as I learned how to use the singular "they" pronoun, other "neo-pronouns" like zie/zir/zirs, and how to gracefully ask what someone's pronouns were.

My gender cherry had been popped.

It was a few years later, at age 31, when I first suspected I may not be a woman.

I had just gotten sober after a 12-step program. I felt awake to the world and to my own body and emotions like I had never felt before.

That word — lady — started to make me feel sick to my stomach when it was applied to me in public spaces.

Madame was also jarring. " Je ne suis PAS votre dame ," I would think.

I started to request that people refer to me with the pronouns: they/them. The first time I heard someone refer to me as "they," I remember feeling elated, seen, and accepted.

When I am referred to as "she," I still feel excluded, invisible, misunderstood. This is a feeling that I do my best to transform into energy to educate would-be allies.

When I am misgendered more than a few times during the course of a day, sometimes it's just best if I meditate, go to bed early, or talk to people who understand my struggle.

The server came back to the table to take our orders. "Have we decided, ladies?"

I decided to speak up.

"Actually, I'm not a lady; I'm non-binary. It's totally understandable that you couldn't have known that by looking at me, but it is something to think about in the future," I blushed.

I had no idea how she'd react.

"Oh, my goodness, I'm so sorry," she said. "I really had no idea! I need to learn more about this. What could I say instead?"

"'Folks' always works well," I breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you so much for asking!"

Keep on speaking up

I don't always have the energy to speak up, but when I do, it's generally quite well-accepted.

So I, and so many other non-binary people I know, keep on teaching, keep on speaking up, keep on advocating for ourselves.

One person at a time, we are transforming the way our world thinks about gender. Even if you may not understand our identities, you can always respect and support us — and that will always be enough.

Close up on Gender is a CBC Montreal series for radio, web and television. You'll hear from Montrealers who are sharing their stories, or thinking and acting differently when it comes to gender in 2019.

Explore more from Close Up on Gender:

• Dresses, rainbows and unicorns for boys: Raising children without gender norms
• Point of View: When I wear makeup, I am embracing masculinity
• AUDIO: Pushing for maternity leave benefits at a Montreal startup

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

founder of Queerit Web Design Agency

R.C. Woodmass is a genderqueer dyke who founded Queerit Web Design Agency and works as Product Designer at inclusion tech startup, Crescendo. They advocate for their fellow non-binary people in tech using the hashtag, #NonbinaryInTech. Follow them on social media @rwoodmass.

• Follow R.C. Woodmass on social media @rwoodmass

Related Stories

• CLOSE UP ON GENDER Dresses, rainbows and unicorns for boys: Raising children without gender norms
• CLOSE UP ON GENDER Point of View: When I wear makeup, I am embracing masculinity
• CLOSE UP ON GENDER 'My child was depressed, my child was anxious': Where to turn when you learn your kid is transgender
• close up on gender New basketball program in Montreal gets girls in the game

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The BPSI Library Committee Presents Beyond the Binary: Essays on Gender

Posted in History , Library Corner , Recent Work

We are happy to announce the publication of Beyond the Binary: Essays on Gender , a manuscript edited by BPSI Member Shari Thurer, ScD, in collaboration with the Library Committee. This is the fourth publication sponsored by the Library Committee of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and the first published by Phoenix. Click here to purchase a copy!

About the Book:  

The increase in the number of non-binary children and adults in our society raises important treatment questions as well as much controversy. It seems essential that analysts and candidates grapple with the challenges this change in society presents. As we struggle in our psychoanalytic societies to diversify our membership and broaden our understanding of difference, this collection offers an opportunity for further discussion and study of one of the most important issues of our time. 

The opening essay by editor Shari Thurer provides a clear overview of recent cultural changes and the evolution of thinking about gender identification by the American Psychoanalytic Association. Next is an autobiographical essay by long-term non-binary individual Robin Haas plus a clinical reflection on Haas’ contribution by Rita Teusch. A recent account of an individual becoming non-binary from Francesca Spence is followed by the reactions of their parents, L. Harry Spence and Robin Ely. After that are psychoanalytic thoughts about the body and gender by Malkah Notman and reflections on gender from Dan Jacobs. The book ends with an extensive bibliography on the subjects of transsexuality and non-binary gender by Oren Gozlan. 

Beyond the Binary: Essays on Gender introduces readers to current ideas about gender fluidity and choice, as well as giving voice to those who are non-binary. This is a must-read for all practicing clinicians that will help broaden their perspective on this growing issue. 

About the Editor  

Shari Thurer, ScD, is a Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute Psychotherapist and Library Committee Member, a former Adjunct Associate Professor at Boston University, a psychologist in Boston, and the author of many noted publications, including Myths of Motherhood: How Culture Reinvents the Good Mother (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1994) and The End of Gender: A Psychological Autopsy (Routledge, 2005). 

Reviews  

Ken Corbett, Clinical Assistant Professor, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy   

‘Gender is always arriving, and psychoanalysts seem always to be chasing its coattails. Most often this chase has been an effort to corral gender: to capture, categorize, and conclude. Beyond the Binary – a collection of essays written as history, memoir, guide, critique, bibliography – works to move past the capture of categories. This monograph is possessed of a beguiling intimacy that engages the reader to rethink gender, gendered embodiment, and the analytic enterprise in listening to gender, its vicissitudes, and discontents.’ 

Dr Daniel Anderson, psychiatrist and group analyst, author of ‘The Body of the Group: Sexuality and Gender in Group Analysis’  

‘Beyond The Binary is a deeply personal and beautiful collection of reflections about contemporary understandings of gender in the psychoanalytic community. Eloquently written and accessible to all who are curious, it impresses through its inclusivity and compelling engagement between the reader and its authors.’ 

Jack Drescher, MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University, Adjunct Professor, New York University, Training and Supervising Analyst, William Alanson White Institute  

‘Psychoanalysis originated within a nineteenth-century, binary view conflating sexuality with gender. In this matrix, Freud hypothesized a biological, drive-driven, cross-cultural universal theory of mind. Times have changed. Today’s nontraditional gender presentations instead rely on individual subjectivities that call into question universalizing, cisnormative beliefs. These new clinical presentations also challenge psychoanalysts to move beyond procrustean developmental theories, theories that all too frequently lead to countertransferential impositions of therapists’ subjectivity onto patients. 

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• 10 June 2024

Beyond the trans/cis binary: introducing new terms will enrich gender research

• Florence Ashley 0 ,
• Shari Brightly-Brown 1 &
• G. Nic Rider 2

Florence Ashley (they/them) is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Alberta and in the John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Shari Brightly-Brown (they/them) is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Sexual and Gender Health and in the National Center for Gender Health, University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis.

G. Nic Rider (they/them) is an assistant professor at the Institute for Sexual and Gender Health and director of the National Center for Gender Health, University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis.

Illustration: Sophi Gullbrants

You have full access to this article via your institution.

“Are you transgender?” Participating in a study for their public-health class, neither Alex nor Luna knew how to answer. Alex uses they/them pronouns and identifies as agender. They are also among a growing number of young people who have been raised in a gender-neutral manner: their parents did not refer to them as a boy or a girl until they were old enough to choose for themselves. Whatever genitals Alex was born with is not common knowledge. If you are agender and were never assigned a gender, does that make you transgender?

As for Luna, today she identifies as a woman, which aligns with the gender she was assigned at birth. But this is a recent development: Luna identified as a boy for as long as she can remember and, after coming out as trans, lived openly as one throughout her childhood and adolescence. As a woman who has detransitioned, she often feels that she has more in common with transgender women than with cisgender ones, whose gender identity corresponds to the gender they were assigned at birth. Although Luna doesn’t call herself transgender, she fears that answering ‘no’ to the study’s question means that her gender trajectory and experiences will be erased.

Collection: Sex and gender in science

The difficulties Alex and Luna experienced might seem unusual. But many individuals find themselves unmoored from binary terms such as male and female, or cis and trans 1 . In the United States, an estimated 9.2% of secondary-school students don’t wholly identify with the gender they were assigned at birth 2 , yet only 1.8% anonymously answer ‘yes’ when asked whether they are transgender 3 . These identities are not trivial. How people identify shapes not only their experiences of marginalization, but also their bodies — be it by influencing their smoking habits, whether they exercise, what they eat or whether they undergo hormone therapy or transition-related surgeries.

Human experiences are inevitably richer than the categories we carve out for them. But finding the right concepts and language to describe their diversity is an essential part of the scientific endeavour. It helps researchers to capture the experiences of participants more accurately, enhances analytical clarity and contributes to people feeling included and respected. Scientists need terms that are flexible enough to capture the nuances of people’s experience, that leave space for language to evolve and that are nonetheless pragmatic enough to be used in research.

Encompassing diversity

The term ‘gender modality’ could enable researchers to broaden their horizons.

A person’s gender identity is their sense of gender at any given time. By contrast, gender modality refers to how a person’s gender identity relates to the gender they were assigned at birth (see go.nature.com/3x34784 ). It is a mode or way of being one’s gender.

The best-known gender modalities are ‘cisgender’ and ‘transgender’, but the term allows for other possibilities, such as ‘agender’, which includes those who do not identify with any gender, and ‘detrans’ or ‘retrans’ for people who have ceased, shifted or reversed their gender transition. The term also makes space for gender modalities specific to intersex individuals, gender-questioning people, people with dissociative identity disorder and people with culture-specific identities (see ‘Many ways of being’). Gender modality serves a similar purpose to sexual orientation, which describes a facet of human existence and makes space for orientations beyond gay and straight.

Many ways of being

‘Gender modality’ refers to how a person’s gender identity relates to the gender they were assigned at birth, and includes options other than cisgender and transgender. This is not an exhaustive list.

Agender: people who do not identify with any gender.

Cisgender: people whose gender identity corresponds to the gender they were assigned at birth.

Closeted trans people: individuals whose gender identity does not correspond to the gender they were assigned at birth, but who do not share their gender identity publicly.

Culture-specific identities: individuals can have identities, such as Two-Spirit identities in North American Indigenous communities and hijra on the Indian subcontinent, that might not align with Western concepts of gender and sexuality. People with these identities might not consider themselves cis or trans because of the Western philosophies that underpin these terms.

Detrans/retrans: People who have ceased, shifted or reversed their gender transition.

Gender questioning: people who are unsure of their gender identity and are in the process of working it out.

Intersex: people who were born or who endogenously developed sexual traits that differ from typical expectations of female and male bodies. Some intersex people do not consider themselves to be cis or trans.

People with dissociative identity disorder whose alters have distinct gender identities: people with this condition, also known as plural people, can have several identities, known as alters or headmates, that have distinct gender identities. These alters can have different gender modalities.

Raised in a gender-neutral manner: people who were raised without being referred to as a boy/he or girl/she until they were old enough to express their gender identity.

Transgender: people whose gender identity does not correspond to the gender they were assigned at birth.

The term gender modality was coined in 2019 by one of us (F.A.) in response to frustrations felt as a trans bioethicist and jurist with the limits of existing language (see go.nature.com/3x34784 ). The term has since been used by transgender communities, clinicians and policymakers to describe the realities of trans communities and the heterogeneity of trans experiences. It is increasingly being used in trans health research 4 – 6 and has been included in official documentation by the government agency Statistics Canada (see go.nature.com/3wvzczw ); in educational materials by the US non-profit organization Planned Parenthood (see go.nature.com/4arxzuw ); and in decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada.

In our view, researchers can use gender modality to improve their work in three important ways.

First, scientists can expand the gamut of gender modalities included in questionnaires given to participants, to capture a broader range of experiences than those represented by the binary of cis and trans. Formulating new categories, adapted to the study design, will enhance the validity of the research 7 , 8 . It could also improve response rates and reduce the likelihood of people dropping out.

We need more-nuanced approaches to exploring sex and gender in research

Researchers who exclude possibilities beyond cis and trans typically rely on several tacit assumptions about bodies and social experiences. For instance, they might assume that participants whose gender identity corresponds to their gender assigned at birth are cisgender men and women — which would be incorrect for people, like Alex, who were raised in a wholly gender-neutral manner. Or they could assume that a person’s gender identity hasn’t changed across their lifespan and that they can infer certain facts about the participant’s body or medical history from their response — which would be incorrect for those, like Luna, who have detransitioned.

Other false assumptions could include the idea that every culture understands gender in a similar manner, that gender assigned at birth straightforwardly reflects anatomy at birth, that everyone has only one gender identity and that everyone can identify and communicate their gender identity.

This is not to say that every study should include every possible gender modality. The guiding principles are feasibility, necessity and respect. Sometimes, there are too few participants in a subgroup for researchers to analyse them separately. Moreover, some gender modalities could be irrelevant to the study question. For instance, it might not be necessary to include a detrans gender modality in a study if researchers are specifically interested in health outcomes among trans people. The point is to avoid uncritically assuming that the cis/trans binary suffices. It might, or it might not.

Capturing the human experience

The second way in which researchers can use gender modality to improve their work is by using it to refine how they phrase questions or discuss results.

By reflecting on gender modality, researchers can better ensure that participants feel respected, and can avoid assigning gender modalities that conflict with participants’ identities. Recognizing gender modalities beyond cis and trans is a matter of justice 9 . In some studies, offering write-in opportunities can help participants to feel respected despite the nuances of their experiences not being captured. But it could be as simple as using ‘gender modality’ instead of ‘gender identity’ or ‘transgender status’ in a table heading, because the last two terms can be seen as inaccurate or marginalizing.

Unlike terms such as transgender status, gender modality places cis, trans and other gender-expansive people on an equal footing. It reflects a universalizing conception of gender diversity 10 , in which everyone has a gender modality and being trans, detrans or cis comprises just some of the options in the vast expanse of human experience. This is important, given the long history of trans and gender non-conforming people being treated as deviant or abnormal.

Finally, researchers can use gender modality to think more meticulously about what it is that they are really trying to capture in their study.

Male–female comparisons are powerful in biomedical research — don’t abandon them

Linguistic gaps abound when it comes to our ability to describe trans people’s experiences. For instance, discrimination against trans people is often described as discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Although this shorthand might be workable, it is not entirely accurate. If a trans woman is fired for being trans, should we say that her gender identity was targeted when she has the same gender identity as cis women? Although her gender identity was part of the equation, it would be more accurate to say that she was discriminated against on the basis of her gender modality 11 . Gender modality, not gender identity, is what distinguishes trans women from cis women.

Gender modality can help researchers to describe participant experiences with improved accuracy by shaping how they phrase their study questions or frame the discussion section of their papers. For example, asking whether participants experienced discrimination because of their gender identity can cause confusion, which could be dispelled by asking whether they experienced discrimination because they are trans, detrans or another gender modality. Used thoughtfully, gender modality is a means of achieving improved clarity, accuracy and understanding. A researcher’s first question should always be: ‘What am I really trying to work out?’

Fluid and flexible language

Gender modality is not a panacea. Rather, it is one piece in the toolbox of those who engage in research involving human participants, whether in the medical, biological or social sciences. Its power lies in what people make of it. Our hope is that researchers and others will play with it, stretching it and exploring its full potential. Rather than foreclosing the evolution of language, gender modality welcomes it.

Not everyone is male or female. Not everyone is cis or trans. The sooner we make space for these truths, the better. And inviting scientists to adopt the concept of gender modality will hopefully foster research that better reflects the intricacies and nuances of our increasingly gender-expansive world.

The first step in science should never be to assume that something is correct. It should be to engage with the world in front of us — in all its magnificent complexity. Researching gender should begin with critically engaging with current language and concepts. Thoughtfulness, flexibility, curiosity and empathy are what science needs.

Nature 630 , 293-295 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01719-9

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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The Experiences, Challenges and Hopes of Transgender and Nonbinary U.S. Adults

Findings from pew research center focus groups, table of contents, identity and the gender journey, navigating gender day-to-day, seeking medical care for gender transitions , connections with the broader lgbtq+ community, policy and social change.

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Introduction

Transgender and nonbinary people have gained visibility in the U.S. in recent years as celebrities from  Laverne Cox  to  Caitlyn Jenner  to  Elliot Page  have spoken openly about their gender transitions. On March 30, 2022, the White House issued a proclamation  recognizing Transgender Day of Visibility , the first time a U.S. president has done so.  

More recently, singer and actor Janelle Monáe  came out as nonbinary , while the U.S. State Department and Social Security Administration announced that Americans  will be allowed to select “X” rather than “male” or “female” for their sex  marker on their passport and Social Security applications. 

At the same time, several states have enacted or are considering legislation that would  limit the rights of transgender and nonbinary people . These include bills requiring people to use public bathrooms that correspond with the sex they were assigned at birth, prohibiting trans athletes from competing on teams that match their gender identity, and restricting the availability of health care to trans youth seeking to medically transition. 

A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 1.6% of U.S. adults are transgender or nonbinary – that is, their gender is different from the sex they were assigned at birth. This includes people who describe themselves as a man, a woman or nonbinary, or who use terms such as gender fluid or agender to describe their gender. While relatively few U.S. adults are transgender, a growing share say they know someone who is (44% today vs.  37% in 2017 ). One-in-five say they know someone who doesn’t identify as a man or woman. 

In order to better understand the experiences of transgender and nonbinary adults at a time when gender identity is at the center of many national debates, Pew Research Center conducted a series of focus groups with trans men, trans women and nonbinary adults on issues ranging from their gender journey, to how they navigate issues of gender in their day-to-day life, to what they see as the most pressing policy issues facing people who are trans or nonbinary. This is part of a larger study that includes a survey of the general public on their attitudes about gender identity and issues related to people who are transgender or nonbinary.

The terms  transgender  and  trans  are used interchangeably throughout this essay to refer to people whose gender is different from the sex they were assigned at birth. This includes, but is not limited to, transgender men (that is, men who were assigned female at birth) and transgender women (women who were assigned male at birth). 

Nonbinary adults  are defined here as those who are neither a man nor a woman or who aren’t strictly one or the other. While some nonbinary focus group participants sometimes use different terms to describe themselves, such as “gender queer,” “gender fluid” or “genderless,” all said the term “nonbinary” describes their gender in the screening questionnaire. Some, but not all, nonbinary participants also consider themselves to be transgender.

References to  gender transitions  relate to the process through which trans and nonbinary people express their gender as different from social expectations associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. This may include social, legal and medical transitions. The social aspect of a gender transition may include going by a new name or using different pronouns, or expressing their gender through their dress, mannerisms, gender roles or other ways. The legal aspect may include legally changing their name or changing their sex or gender designation on legal documents or identification.  Medical care  may include treatments such as hormone therapy, laser hair removal and/or surgery. 

References to  femme  indicate feminine gender expression. This is often in contrast to “masc,” meaning masculine gender expression.

Cisgender  is used to describe people whose gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth and who do not identify as transgender or nonbinary. 

Misgendering  is defined as referring to or addressing a person in ways that do not align with their gender identity, including using incorrect pronouns, titles (such as “sir” or “ma’am”), and other terms (such as “son” or “daughter”) that do not match their gender. 

References to  dysphoria  may include feelings of distress due to the mismatch of one’s gender and sex assigned at birth, as well as a  diagnosis of gender dysphoria , which is sometimes a prerequisite for access to health care and medical transitions.

The acronym  LGBTQ+  refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (or, in some cases, questioning), and other sexual orientations or gender identities that are not straight or cisgender, such as intersex, asexual or pansexual. 

Pew Research Center conducted this research to better understand the experiences and views of transgender and nonbinary U.S. adults. Because transgender and nonbinary people make up only about 1.6% of the adult U.S. population, this is a difficult population to reach with a probability-based, nationally representative survey. As an alternative, we conducted a series of focus groups with trans and nonbinary adults covering a variety of topics related to the trans and nonbinary experience. This allows us to go more in-depth on some of these topics than a survey would typically allow, and to share these experiences in the participants’ own words.

For this project, we conducted six online focus groups, with a total of 27 participants (four to five participants in each group), from March 8-10, 2022. Participants were recruited by targeted email outreach among a panel of adults who had previously said on a survey that they were transgender or nonbinary, as well as via connections through professional networks and LGBTQ+ organizations, followed by a screening call. Candidates were eligible if they met the technology requirements to participate in an online focus group and if they either said they consider themselves to be transgender or if they said their gender was nonbinary or another identity other than man or woman (regardless of whether or not they also said they were transgender). For more details, see the  Methodology . 

Participants who qualified were placed in groups as follows: one group of nonbinary adults only (with a nonbinary moderator); one group of trans women only (with a trans woman moderator); one group of trans men only (with a trans man moderator); and three groups with a mix of trans and nonbinary adults (with either a nonbinary moderator or a trans man moderator). All of the moderators had extensive experience facilitating groups, including with transgender and nonbinary participants. 

The participants were a mix of ages, races/ethnicities, and were from all corners of the country. For a detailed breakdown of the participants’ demographic characteristics, see the  Methodology .

The findings are not statistically representative and cannot be extrapolated to wider populations.

Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity or to remove identifying details. In this essay, participants are identified as trans men, trans women, or nonbinary adults based on their answers to the screening questionnaire. These words don’t necessarily encompass all of the ways in which participants described their gender. Participants’ ages are grouped into the following categories:  late teens; early/mid/late 20s, 30s and 40s; and 50s and 60s (those ages 50 to 69 were grouped into bigger “buckets” to better preserve their anonymity).

These focus groups were not designed to be representative of the entire population of trans and nonbinary U.S. adults, but the participants’ stories provide a glimpse into some of the experiences of people who are transgender and/or nonbinary. The groups included a total of 27 transgender and nonbinary adults from around the U.S. and ranging in age from late teens to mid-60s. Most currently live in an urban area, but about half said they grew up in a suburb. The groups included a mix of White, Black, Hispanic, Asian and multiracial American participants. See  Methodology  for more details.

Most focus group participants said they knew from an early age – many as young as preschool or elementary school – that there was something different about them, even if they didn’t have the words to describe what it was. Some described feeling like they didn’t fit in with other children of their sex but didn’t know exactly why. Others said they felt like they were in the wrong body. 

“I remember preschool, [where] the boys were playing on one side and the girls were playing on the other, and I just had a moment where I realized what side I was supposed to be on and what side people thought I was supposed to be on. … Yeah, I always knew that I was male, since my earliest memories.” – Trans man, late 30s

“As a small child, like around kindergarten [or] first grade … I just was [fascinated] by how some people were small girls, and some people were small boys, and it was on my mind constantly. And I started to feel very uncomfortable, just existing as a young girl.” – Trans man, early 30s

“I was 9 and I was at day camp and I was changing with all the other 9-year-old girls … and I remember looking at everybody’s body around me and at my own body, and even though I was visually seeing the exact shapeless nine-year-old form, I literally thought to myself, ‘oh, maybe I was supposed to be a boy,’ even though I know I wasn’t seeing anything different. … And I remember being so unbothered by the thought, like not a panic, not like, ‘oh man, I’m so different, like everybody here I’m so different and this is terrible,’ I was like, ‘oh, maybe I was supposed to be a boy,’ and for some reason that exact quote really stuck in my memory.” – Nonbinary person, late 30s

“Since I was little, I felt as though I was a man who, when they were passing out bodies, someone made a goof and I got a female body instead of the male body that I should have had. But I was forced by society, especially at that time growing up, to just make my peace with having a female body.” – Nonbinary person, 50s

“I’ve known ever since I was little. I’m not really sure the age, but I just always knew when I put on boy clothes, I just felt so uncomfortable.” – Trans woman, late 30s

“It was probably as early as I can remember that I wasn’t like my brother or my father [and] not exactly like my girl cousins but I was something else, but I didn’t know what it was.” – Nonbinary person, 60s

Many participants were well into adulthood before they found the words to describe their gender. For those focus group participants, the path to self-discovery varied. Some described meeting someone who was transgender and relating to their experience; others described learning about people who are trans or nonbinary in college classes or by doing their own research.  

“I read a Time magazine article … called ‘Homosexuality in America’ … in 1969. … Of course, we didn’t have language like we do now or people were not willing to use it … [but] it was kind of the first word that I had ever heard that resonated with me at all. So, I went to school and I took the magazine, we were doing show-and-tell, and I stood up in front of the class and said, ‘I am a homosexual.’ So that began my journey to figure this stuff out.” – Nonbinary person, 60s

“It wasn’t until maybe I was 20 or so when my friend started his transition where I was like, ‘Wow, that sounds very similar to the emotions and challenges I am going through with my own identity.’ … My whole life from a very young age I was confused, but I didn’t really put a name on it until I was about 20.” – Nonbinary person, late 20s

“I knew about drag queens, but I didn’t know what trans was until I got to college and was exposed to new things, and that was when I had a word for myself for the first time.” – Trans man, early 40s

“I thought that by figuring out that I was interested in women, identifying as lesbian, I thought [my anxiety and sadness] would dissipate in time, and that was me cracking the code. But then, when I got older, I left home for the first time. I started to meet other trans people in the world. That’s when I started to become equipped with the vocabulary. The understanding that this is a concept, and this makes sense. And that’s when I started to understand that I wasn’t cisgender.” – Trans man, early 30s

“When I took a human sexuality class in undergrad and I started learning about gender and different sexualities and things like that, I was like, ‘oh my god. I feel seen.’ So, that’s where I learned about it for the first time and started understanding how I identify.” – Nonbinary person, mid-20s

Focus group participants used a wide range of words to describe how they see their gender. For many nonbinary participants, the term “nonbinary” is more of an umbrella term, but when it comes to how they describe themselves, they tend to use words like “gender queer” or “gender fluid.” The word “queer” came up many times across different groups, often to describe anyone who is not straight or cisgender. Some trans men and women preferred just the terms “man” or “woman,” while some identified strongly with the term “transgender.” The graphic below shows just some of the words the participants used to describe their gender.

The way nonbinary people conceptualize their gender varies. Some said they feel like they’re both a man and a woman – and how much they feel like they are one or the other may change depending on the day or the circumstance. Others said they don’t feel like they are either a man or a woman, or that they don’t have a gender at all. Some, but not all, also identified with the term transgender. 

“I had days where I would go out and just play with the boys and be one of the boys, and then there would be times that I would play with the girls and be one of the girls. And then I just never really knew what I was. I just knew that I would go back and forth.” – Nonbinary person, mid-20s

“Growing up with more of a masculine side or a feminine side, I just never was a fan of the labelling in terms of, ‘oh, this is a bit too masculine, you don’t wear jewelry, you don’t wear makeup, oh you’re not feminine enough.’ … I used to alternate just based on who I felt I was. So, on a certain day if I felt like wearing a dress, or a skirt versus on a different day, I felt like wearing what was considered men’s pants. … So, for me it’s always been both.” – Nonbinary person, mid-30s

“I feel like my gender is so amorphous and hard to hold and describe even. It’s been important to find words for it, to find the outlines of it, to see the shape of it, but it’s not something that I think about as who I am, because I’m more than just that.” – Nonbinary person, early 30s

“What words would I use to describe me? Genderless, if gender wasn’t a thing. … I guess if pronouns didn’t exist and you just called me [by my name]. That’s what my gender is. … And I do use nonbinary also, just because it feels easier, I guess.” – Nonbinary person, late 20s

Some participants said their gender is one of the most important parts of their identity, while others described it as one of many important parts or a small piece of how they see themselves. For some, the focus on gender can get tiring. Those who said gender isn’t a central – or at least not the most central – part of their identity mentioned race, ethnicity, religion and socioeconomic class as important aspects that shape their identity and experiences.

“It is tough because [gender] does affect every factor of your life. If you are doing medical transitioning then you have appointments, you have to pay for the appointments, you have to be working in a job that supports you to pay for those appointments. So, it is definitely integral, and it has a lot of branches. And it deals with how you act, how you relate to friends, you know, I am sure some of us can relate to having to come out multiple times in our lives. That is why sexuality and gender are very integral and I would definitely say I am proud of it. And I think being able to say that I am proud of it, and my gender, I guess is a very important part of my identity.” – Nonbinary person, late 20s

“Sometimes I get tired of thinking about my gender because I am actively [undergoing my medical transition]. So, it is a lot of things on my mind right now, constantly, and it sometimes gets very tiring. I just want to not have to think about it some days. So, I would say it’s, it’s probably in my top three [most important parts of my identity] – parent, Black, queer nonbinary.” – Nonbinary person, mid-40s

“I live in a town with a large queer and trans population and I don’t have to think about my gender most of the time other than having to come out as trans. But I’m poor and that colors everything. It’s not a chosen part of my identity but that part of my identity is a lot more influential than my gender.” – Trans man, early 40s

“My gender is very important to my identity because I feel that they go hand in hand. Now my identity is also broken down into other factors [like] character, personality and other stuff that make up the recipe for my identity. But my gender plays a big part of it. … It is important because it’s how I live my life every day. When I wake up in the morning, I do things as a woman.” – Trans woman, mid-40s

“I feel more strongly connected to my other identities outside of my gender, and I feel like parts of it’s just a more universal thing, like there’s a lot more people in my socioeconomic class and we have much more shared experiences.” – Trans man, late 30s

Some participants spoke about how their gender interacted with other aspects of their identity, such as their race, culture and religion. For some, being transgender or nonbinary can be at odds with other parts of their identity or background. 

“Culturally I’m Dominican and Puerto Rican, a little bit of the macho machismo culture, in my family, and even now, if I’m going to be a man, I’ve got to be a certain type of man. So, I cannot just be who I’m meant to be or who I want myself to be, the human being that I am.” – Trans man, mid-30s

“[Judaism] is a very binary religion. There is a lot of things like for men to do and a lot of things for women to do. … So, it is hard for me now as a gender queer person, right, to connect on some levels with [my] religion … I have just now been exposed to a bunch of trans Jewish spaces online which is amazing.” – Nonbinary person, mid-40s

“Just being Indian American, I identify and love aspects of my culture and ethnicity, and I find them amazing and I identify with that, but it’s kind of separated. So, I identify with the culture, then I identify here in terms of gender and being who I am, but I kind of feel the necessity to separate the two, unfortunately.” – Nonbinary person, mid-30s

“I think it’s really me being a Black woman or a Black man that can sometimes be difficult. And also, my ethnic background too. It’s really rough for me with my family back home and things of that nature.” – Nonbinary person, mid-20s

For some, deciding how open to be about their gender identity can be a constant calculation. Some participants reported that they choose whether or not to disclose that they are trans or nonbinary in a given situation based on how safe or comfortable they feel and whether it’s necessary for other people to know. This also varies depending on whether the participant can easily pass as a cisgender man or woman (that is, they can blend in so that others assume them to be cisgender and don’t recognize that they are trans or nonbinary).

“It just depends on whether I feel like I have the energy to bring it up, or if it feels worth it to me like with doctors and stuff like that. I always bring it up with my therapists, my primary [care doctor], I feel like she would get it. I guess it does vary on the situation and my capacity level.” – Nonbinary person, late 20s

“I decide based on the person and based on the context, like if I feel comfortable enough to share that piece of myself with them, because I do have the privilege of being able to move through the world and be identified as cis[gender] if I want to. But then it is important to me – if you’re important to me, then you will know who I am and how I identify. Otherwise, if I don’t feel comfortable or safe then I might not.” – Nonbinary person, early 30s

“The expression of my gender doesn’t vary. Who I let in to know that I was formerly female – or formerly perceived as female – is kind of on a need to know basis.” – Trans man, 60s

“It’s important to me that people not see me as cis[gender], so I have to come out a lot when I’m around new people, and sometimes that’s challenging. … It’s not information that comes out in a normal conversation. You have to force it and that’s difficult sometimes.” – Trans man, early 40s

Work is one realm where many participants said they choose not to share that they are trans or nonbinary. In some cases, this is because they want to be recognized for their work rather than the fact that they are trans or nonbinary; in others, especially for nonbinary participants, they fear it will be perceived as unprofessional.

“It’s gotten a lot better recently, but I feel like when you’re nonbinary and you use they/them pronouns, it’s just seen as really unprofessional and has been for a lot of my life.” – Nonbinary person, early 30s

“Whether it’s LinkedIn or profiles [that] have been updated, I’ve noticed people’s resumes have their pronouns now. I don’t go that far because I just feel like it’s a professional environment, it’s nobody’s business.” – Nonbinary person, mid-30s

“I don’t necessarily volunteer the information just to make it public; I want to be recognized for my character, my skill set, in my work in other ways.” – Trans man, early 30s

Some focus group participants said they don’t mind answering questions about what it’s like to be trans or nonbinary but were wary of being seen as the token trans or nonbinary person in their workplace or among acquaintances. Whether or not they are comfortable answering these types of questions sometimes depends on who’s asking, why they want to know, and how personal the questions get.

“I’ve talked to [my cousin about being trans] a lot because she has a daughter, and her daughter wants to transition. So, she always will come to me asking questions.” – Trans woman, early 40s

“It is tough being considered the only resource for these topics, right? In my job, I would hate to call myself the token nonbinary, but I was the first nonbinary person that they hired and they were like, ‘Oh, my gosh, let me ask you all the questions as you are obviously the authority on the subject.’ And it is like, ‘No, that is a part of me, but there are so many other great resources.’” – Nonbinary person, late 20s

“I don’t want to be the token. I’m not going to be no spokesperson. If you have questions, I’m the first person you can ask. Absolutely. I don’t mind discussing. Ask me some of the hardest questions, because if you ask somebody else you might get you know your clock cleaned. So, ask me now … so you can be educated properly. Otherwise, I don’t believe it’s anybody’s business.” – Trans woman, early 40s

Most nonbinary participants said they use “they/them” as their pronouns, but some prefer alternatives. These alternatives include a combination of gendered and gender-neutral pronouns (like she/they) or simply preferring that others use one’s names rather than pronouns. 

“If I could, I would just say my name is my pronoun, which I do in some spaces, but it just is not like a larger view. It feels like I’d rather have less labor on me in that regard, so I just say they/them.” – Nonbinary person, late 20s

“For me personally, I don’t get mad if someone calls me ‘he’ because I see what they’re looking at. They look and they see a guy. So, I don’t get upset. I know a few people who do … and they correct you. Me, I’m a little more fluid. So, that’s how it works for me.” – Nonbinary person, mid-30s

“I use they/she pronouns and I put ‘they’ first because that is what I think is most comfortable and it’s what I want to draw people’s attention to, because I’m 5 feet tall and 100 pounds so it’s not like I scream masculine at first sight, so I like putting ‘they’ first because otherwise people always default to ‘she.’ But I have ‘she’ in there, and I don’t know if I’d have ‘she’ in there if I had not had kids.” – Nonbinary person, late 30s

“Why is it so hard for people to think of me as nonbinary? I choose not to use only they/them pronouns because I do sometimes identify with ‘she.’ But I’m like, ‘Do I need to use they/them pronouns to be respected as nonbinary?’ Sometimes I feel like I should do that. But I don’t want to feel like I should do anything. I just want to be myself and have that be accepted and respected.” – Nonbinary person, early 30s

“I have a lot of patience for people, but [once someone in public used] they/them pronouns and I thanked them and they were like, ‘Yeah, I just figure I’d do it when I don’t know [someone’s] pronouns.’ And I’m like, ‘I love it, thank you.’” – Nonbinary person, early 30s

Transgender and nonbinary participants find affirmation of their gender identity and support in various places. Many cited their friends, chosen families (and, less commonly, their relatives), therapists or other health care providers, religion, or LGBTQ+ spaces as sources of support.

“I’m just not close with my family [of origin], but I have a huge chosen family that I love and that fully respects my identity.” – Nonbinary person, early 30s

“Before the pandemic I used to go out to bars a lot; there’s a queer bar in my town and it was a really nice place just being friends with everybody who went and everybody who worked there, it felt really nice you know, and just hearing everybody use the right pronouns for me it just felt really good.” – Nonbinary person, early 30s

“I don’t necessarily go to a lot of dedicated support groups, but I found that there’s kind of a good amount of support in areas or groups or fandoms for things that have a large LGBT population within them. Like certain shows or video games, where it’s just kind of a joke that all the gay people flock to this.”  – Trans woman, late teens

“Being able to practice my religion in a location with a congregation that is just completely chill about it, or so far has been completely chill about it, has been really amazing.” – Nonbinary person, late 30s

Many participants shared specific moments they said were small in the grand scheme of things but made them feel accepted and affirmed. Examples included going on dates, gestures of acceptance by a friend or social group, or simply participating in everyday activities.

“I went on a date with a really good-looking, handsome guy. And he didn’t know that I was trans. But I told him, and we kept talking and hanging out. … That’s not the first time that I felt affirmed or felt like somebody is treating me as I present myself. But … he made me feel wanted and beautiful.” – Trans woman, late 30s

“I play [on a men’s rec league] hockey [team]. … I joined the league like right when I first transitioned and I showed up and I was … nervous with locker rooms and stuff, and they just accepted me as male right away.” – Trans man, late 30s

“I ended up going into a barbershop. … The barber was very welcoming, and talked to me as if I was just a casual customer and there was something that clicked within that moment where, figuring out my gender identity, I just wanted to exist in the world to do these natural things like other boys and men would do. So, there was just something exciting about that. It wasn’t a super macho masculine moment, … he just made me feel like I blended in.” – Trans man, early 30s

Participants also talked about negative experiences, such as being misgendered, either intentionally or unintentionally. For example, some shared instances where they were treated or addressed as a gender other than the gender that they identify as, such as people referring to them as “he” when they go by “she,” or where they were deadnamed, meaning they were called by the name they had before they transitioned. 

“I get misgendered on the phone a lot and that’s really annoying. And then, even after I correct them, they keep doing it, sometimes on purpose and sometimes I think they’re just reading a script or something.” – Trans man, late 30s

“The times that I have been out, presenting femme, there is this very subconscious misgendering that people do and it can be very frustrating. [Once, at a restaurant,] I was dressed in makeup and nails and shoes and everything and still everyone was like, ‘Sir, what would you like?’ … Those little things – those microaggressions – they can really eat away at people.” – Nonbinary person, mid-40s

“People not calling me by the right name. My family is a big problem, they just won’t call me by my name, you know? Except for my nephew, who is of the Millennial generation, so at least he gets it.” – Nonbinary person, 60s

“I’m constantly misgendered when I go out places. I accept this – because of the way I look, people are going to perceive me as a woman and it doesn’t cause me huge dysphoria or anything, it’s just nice that the company that I keep does use the right pronouns.” – Nonbinary person, early 30s

Some participants also shared stories of discrimination, bias, humiliation, and even violence. These experiences ranged from employment discrimination to being outed (that is, someone else disclosing the fact that they are transgender or nonbinary without their permission) without their permission to physical attacks.

“I was on a date with this girl and I had to use the bathroom … and the janitor … wouldn’t let me use the men’s room, and he kept refusing to let me use the men’s room, so essentially, I ended up having to use the same bathroom as my date.” – Trans man, late 30s

“I’ve been denied employment due to my gender identity. I walked into a supermarket looking for jobs. … And they flat out didn’t let me apply. They didn’t even let me apply.” – Trans man, mid-30s

“[In high school,] this group of guys said, ‘[name] is gay.’ I ignored them but they literally threw me and tore my shirt from my back and pushed me to the ground and tried to strip me naked. And I had to fight for myself and use my bag to hit him in the face.” – Trans woman, late 20s

“I took a college course [after] I had my name changed legally and the instructor called me out in front of the class and called me a liar and outed me.” – Trans man, late 30s 

Many, but not all, participants said they have received  medical care , such as surgery or hormone therapy, as part of their gender transition. For those who haven’t undergone a medical transition, the reasons ranged from financial barriers to being nervous about medical procedures in general to simply not feeling that it was the right thing for them.

“For me to really to live my truth and live my identity, I had to have the surgery, which is why I went through it. It doesn’t mean [that others] have to, or that it will make you more or less of a woman because you have it. But for me to be comfortable, … that was a big part of it. And so, that’s why I felt I had to get it.” – Trans woman, early 40s

“I’m older and it’s an operation. … I’m just kind of scared, I guess. I’ve never had an operation. I mean, like any kind of operation. I’ve never been to the hospital or anything like that. So, it [is] just kind of scary. But I mean, I want to. I think about all the time. I guess have got to get the courage up to do it.” – Trans woman, early 40s

“I’ve decided that the dysphoria of a second puberty … would just be too much for me and I’m gender fluid enough where I’m happy, I guess.” – Nonbinary person, early 30s

“I’m too old to change anything, I mean I am what I am. [laughs]” – Nonbinary person, 60s

Many focus group participants who have sought medical treatment for their gender transition faced barriers, although some had positive experiences. For those who said there were barriers, the cost and the struggle to find sympathetic doctors were often cited as challenges. 

“I was flat out turned down by the primary care physician who had to give the go-ahead to give me a referral to an endocrinologist; I was just shut down. That was it, end of story.” – Nonbinary person, 50s

“I have not had surgery, because I can’t access surgery. So unless I get breast cancer and have a double mastectomy, surgery is just not going to happen … because my health insurance wouldn’t cover something like that. … It would be an out-of-pocket plastic surgery expense and I can’t afford that at this time.” – Nonbinary person, 50s

“Why do I need the permission of a therapist to say, ‘This person’s identity is valid,’ before I can get the health care that I need to be me, that is vital for myself and for my way of life?” – Nonbinary person, mid-40s

“[My doctor] is basically the first person that actually embraced me and made me accept [who I am].” – Trans woman, late 20s

Many people who transitioned in previous decades described how access has gotten much easier in recent years. Some described relying on underground networks to learn which doctors would help them obtain medical care or where to obtain hormones illegally. 

“It was hard financially because I started so long ago, just didn’t have access like that. Sometimes you have to try to go to Mexico or learn about someone in Mexico that was a pharmacist, I can remember that. That was a big thing, going through the border to Mexico, that was wild. So, it was just hard financially because they would charge so much for testosterone. And there was the whole bodybuilding community. If you were transitioning, you went to bodybuilders, and they would charge you five times what they got it [for], so it was kind of tough.” – Trans man, early 40s

“It was a lot harder to get a surgeon when I started transitioning; insurance was out of the question, there wasn’t really a national discussion around trans people and their particular medical needs. So, it was challenging having to pay everything out of pocket at a young age.” – Trans man, early 30s

“I guess it was hard for me to access hormones initially just because you had to jump through so many hoops, get letters, and then you had to find a provider that was willing to write it. And now it’s like people are getting it from their primary care doctor, which is great, but a very different experience than I had.” – Trans man, early 40s

The discussions also touched on whether the participants feel a connection with a broader lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) community or with other people who are LGBTQ+. Views varied, with some saying they feel an immediate connection with other people who are LGBTQ+, even with those who aren’t trans or nonbinary, and others saying they don’t necessarily feel this way. 

“It’s kind of a recurring joke where you can meet another LGBT person and it is like there is an immediate understanding, and you are basically talking and giving each other emotional support, like you have been friends for 10-plus years.” – Trans woman, late teens 

“I don’t think it’s automatic friendship between queer people, there’s like a kinship, but I don’t think there’s automatic friendship or anything. I think it’s just normal, like, how normal people make friends, just based on common interests.” – Nonbinary person, early 30s 

“I do think of myself as part of the LGBT [community] … I use the resources that are put in place for these communities, whether that’s different health care programs, support groups, they have the community centers. … So, I do consider myself to be part of this community, and I’m able to hopefully take when needed, as well as give back.” – Trans man, mid-30s

“I feel like that’s such an important part of being a part of the [LGBTQ+] alphabet soup community, that process of constantly learning and listening to each other and … growing and developing language together … I love that aspect of creating who we are together, learning and unlearning together, and I feel like that’s a part of at least the queer community spaces that I want to be in. That’s something that’s core to me.” – Nonbinary person, early 30s

“I identify as queer. I feel like I’m a part of the LGBT community. That’s more of a part of my identity than being trans. … Before I came out as trans, I identified as a lesbian. That was also a big part of my identity. So, that may be too why I feel like I’m more part of the LGB community.” – Trans man, early 40s

While many trans and nonbinary participants said they felt accepted by others in the LGBTQ+ community, some participants described their gender identity as a barrier to full acceptance. There was a sense among some participants that cisgender people who are lesbian, gay or bisexual don’t always accept people who are transgender or nonbinary.  

“I would really like to be included in the [LGBTQ+] community. But I have seen some people try to separate the T from LGB … I’ve run into a few situations throughout my time navigating the [LGBTQ+] community where I’ve been perceived – and I just want to say that there’s nothing wrong with this – I’ve been perceived as like a more feminine or gay man in a social setting, even though I’m heterosexual. … But the minute that that person found out that I wasn’t a gay man … and that I was actually a transgender person, they became cold and just distancing themselves. And I’ve been in a lot of those types of circumstances where there’s that divide between the rest of the community.” – Trans man, early 30s

“There are some lesbians who see trans men as being traitors to womanhood. Those are not people that I really identify with or want to be close to.” – Trans man, early 40s 

“It’s only in the past maybe dozen or so years, that an identity like gender fluid or gender queer was acceptable even within the LGBTQ+ community. … I tried to go to certain LGBTQ+ events as a trans man and, you know, I was not allowed in because I looked too female. The gay men would not allow me to participate.” – Nonbinary person, 50s 

“Technically based on the letters [in the acronym LGBTQ+] I am part of that community, but I’ve felt discrimination, it’s very heavily exclusive to people who are either gay or lesbian and I think that’s true … for queer or bisexual or asexual, intersex … anybody who’s not like exclusively hardcore gay or lesbian. It’s very exclusive, like excluding to those people. … I feel like the BTQ is a separate group of people…. So, I identify with the second half of the letters as a separate subset.” – Trans man, late 30s

When asked to name the most important policy or political issues facing transgender and nonbinary people in the United States today, many participants named basic needs such as housing, employment, and health care. Others cited recent legislation or policies related to people who are transgender that have made national news.

“Housing is a huge issue. Health care might be good in New York, it might be good in California, but … it’s not a national equality for trans folks. Health care is not equal across the states. Housing is not equal across the states. So, I think that the issues right now that we’re all facing is health care and housing. That’s the top, the most important things.” – Trans woman, early 40s 

“Definitely education. I think that’s very important … Whether you identify as trans or not as a young child, it’s good to understand and know the different things under the umbrella, the queer umbrella. And it is also just a respect thing. And also, the violence that happens against trans and nonbinary people. I feel like educating them very young, that kind of helps – well, it is going to help because once you understand what’s going on and you see somebody that doesn’t identify the same as you, you’ll have that respect, or you’ll have that understanding and you’re less likely to be very violent towards them.” – Nonbinary person, mid-20s 

“Employment is a big one. And I know that some areas, more metropolitan progressive-leaning areas, are really on top of this, but they’re trans people everywhere that are still being discriminated against. I think it’s a personal thing for me that goes back to my military service, but still, it’s just unfortunate. It’s an unfortunate reality.” – Trans man, early 30s

“I think just the strong intersectionality of trans people with mental health issues, or even physical health issues. … So in that way, accessing good health care or having good mental health.” – Trans man, late 30s

“I honestly think that the situation in Texas is the most pressing political and policy situation because it is a direct attack on the trans community. … And it is so insidious because it doesn’t just target bathrooms. This is saying that if you provide medical care to trans youth it is tantamount to child abuse. And it is so enraging because it is a known proven fact that access to gender affirming medical care saves lives. It saves the lives of trans youth. And trans youth have the highest suicide rate in the country.” – Nonbinary person, mid-40s 

Participants had different takes on what gets in the way of progress on issues facing transgender and nonbinary people. Some pointed to the lack of knowledge surrounding the history of these issues or not knowing someone who is transgender or nonbinary. Others mentioned misconceptions people might have about transgender and nonbinary people that influence their political and policy perspectives. 

“People who don’t know trans people, honestly … that’s the only barrier I can understand because people fear what they don’t know and then react to it a lot of the time.” – Nonbinary person, early 30s

“Sometimes even if they know someone, they still don’t consider them to be a human being, they are an ‘other,’ they are an ‘it,’ they are a ‘not like me,’ ‘not like my family,’ person and so they are put into a place socially where they can be treated badly.” – Nonbinary person, 50s

“Just the ignorance and misinformation and this quick fake social media fodder, where it encourages people who should not be part of the conversation to spread things that are not true.” – Trans man, late 30s

“Also, the political issues that face nonbinary people, it’s that people think nonbinary is some made-up thing to feel cool. It’s not to feel cool. And if someone does do it to feel cool, maybe they’re just doing that because they don’t feel comfortable within themselves.” – Nonbinary person, mid-30s

“There’s so much fear around it, and misunderstanding, and people thinking that if you’re talking to kids about gender and sexuality, that it’s sexual. And it’s like, we really need to break down that our bodies are not inherently sexual. We need to be able to talk with students and children about their bodies so that they can then feel empowered to understand themselves, advocate for themselves.” – Nonbinary person, early 30s

When asked what makes them hopeful for the future for trans and nonbinary people, some participants pointed to the way things in society have already changed and progress that has been made. For example, some mentioned greater representation and visibility of transgender and nonbinary people in entertainment and other industries, while others focused on changing societal views as things that give them hope for the future. 

“I am hopeful about the future because I see so many of us coming out and being visible and representing and showing folks that we are not to stereotype.” – Trans woman, early 40s

“Also, even though celebrity is annoying, it’s still cool when people like Willow [Smith] or Billie Eilish or all these popstars that the kids really love are like, ‘I’m nonbinary, I’m queer,’ like a lot more progressive. … Even just more visibility in TV shows and movies, the more and more that happens the more it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, we are really here, you can’t not see us.’” – Nonbinary person, late 20s

“We shouldn’t have to look to the entertainment industry for role models, we shouldn’t have to, we should be able to look to our leaders, our political leaders, but I think, that’s what gives me hope. Soon, it’s going to become a nonissue, maybe in my lifetime.” – Trans man, 60s

“I have gotten a little bit into stand-up comedy in the last few weeks, and it is like the jokes that people made ten years ago are resurfacing online and people are enraged about it. They are saying like, ‘Oh, this is totally inappropriate.’ But that comes with the recognition that things have changed, and language has changed, and people are becoming more intolerant of allowing these things to occur. So that is why I am hopeful, is being able to see that progression and hopeful continued improvement on that front.” – Nonbinary person, late 20s

“I think because of the shift of what’s happening, how everything has become so normal, and people are being more open, and within the umbrella of queerness so many different things are happening, I think as we get more comfortable and we progress as a society, it’s just going to be better. So, people don’t have to hide who they are. So, that gives me hope.” – Nonbinary person, mid-20s

For many, young people are a source of hope. Several participants talked about younger generations being more accepting of those who are transgender or nonbinary and also being more accepted by their families if they themselves are trans or nonbinary. 

“And then the other portion that gives me hope are the kids, because I work now with so many kids who are coming out as trans earlier and their families are embracing them and everything. … So I really am trusting in the young generation.” – Nonbinary person, 60s

“I mean kids don’t judge you the same way as adults do about gender, and they’re so expansive and have so much creativity. … So it’s just the kids, Gen Z, and it just makes me feel really, really hopeful.” – Nonbinary person, early 30s

“The youth, the youth. They understand almost intrinsically so much more about these things than I feel like my generation did. They give me so much hope for the future.” – Nonbinary person, early 30s

“I think future generations, just seeing this growing amount of support that they have, that it’s just going to keep improving … there’s an increase in visibility but there’s also an increase in support … like resources for parents where they can see that they don’t have to punish their kids. Their kids can grow up feeling like, ‘This is okay to be this way.’ And I feel like that’s not something that can be stopped.” – Trans man, late 30s

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Cade Hildreth

Everything You SHOULD'VE Been Taught in School.

Gender Spectrum: A Scientist Explains Why Gender Isn’t Binary

March 23, 2024 By Cade Hildreth 24 Comments

The gender spectrum is an understanding that gender is not binary, but rather a spectrum of biological, mental and emotional traits that exist along a continuum.

In contrast, the gender binary—also called gender binarism or genderism—is a belief that gender is composed of two distinct and opposite genders (women/men) in which there is not overlap.

Unfortunately for those who believe in a gender binary, it is not scientifically or medically correct. Gender can’t be binary, because it is a personal identity and is socially constructed.

Sex, which refers to one’s biological characteristics, also exists as a spectrum, because intersex people exist. A person’s sex can be female, male, or intersex—which can present as an infinite number of biological combinations.

Today, numerous scientific fields, including biology, endocrinology, physiology, genetics, neuroscience, and reproductive science, have confirmed that both sex and gender exist as a spectrum.

This is true for humans and across the animal kingdom .

Gender Spectrum vs. Sex Spectrum

When using the terms sex and gender, it is important to note that “sex” (female/male/intersex) describes biological traits. In contrast, “gender” is a broader term that reflects how a person lives within society. One’s gender identity could be woman, man, transgender, nonbinary, or an infinite number of other possibilities.

Because gender is a personal identity, is socially constructed, and has limitless possibilities, it takes no further explanation to explain why it is a spectrum.

Therefore, when people question the existence of a gender spectrum , what they are usually questioning is the existence of a sex spectrum.

Sex (and Gender) are Bimodal, Not Binary

For all too long, the government, the medical system, and even our parents have assumed that sex is binary . Based on science, this is not biologically or medically accurate.

What is true is that sex characteristics tend to be bimodal , meaning there are clusters of characteristics that tend to be associated with people that we call “female” or “male.”

On average, males do have penises, and on average, females do have vaginas. This is what allows for reproduction. However, there are many examples where this is not the case, such as intersex people. External genitals (a biological marker of sex) present across a spectrum from full-size penis to small penis to micro-penis to clitoromegaly to enlarged clitoris to standard-sized clitoris.

On average, males tend to have XY chromosomes and females tend to have XX chromosomes. However, sex chromosomes come in a wide variety as well, with at least 16 different naturally occurring variations (see details below). This means that chromosomal presentation is not binary either.

On average, males tend to have more facial and body hair than females (a secondary sex characteristic), but there are also females with coarse and dense body hair and males who can’t grow a full beard.

On average, males tend to be taller than females, but there are most certainly females that are taller than some males. If skeletal structure (a biological marker of sex) was binary, then all males would have to be taller than all females, which of course, they are not.

As explained by these examples, sex is not binary , because people cannot be grouped into two separate, non-overlapping groups.

However, bimodal sex characteristics are not uncommon.

Bimodal means the presence of two (“bi”) statistical modes, which can be seen as peaks in a graph. The two modes represent probability clusters.

With regard to human sex, this means that for some sex characteristics, there may be common norms among people whom we tend to assign as “male” and “female.” However, there are also clearly overlaps present between the peaks. This is what makes sex bimodal, and not binary.

Finally, at risk of getting too mathematical, a bimodal distribution is by definition, a continuous probability distribution with two different modes.

In other words, biological sex is a spectrum that has clusters.

If sex is a spectrum, then gender is unquestionably a spectrum , because gender includes aspects of biological sex, interwoven with how a person lives within society and self identifies.

Why Genitals Do Not Determine Sex

With regard to assigning sex to people by their external genitalia, it is an inaccurate system at best. There are several reasons for this, as described below.

1) External Genitalia Are Diverse

In newborn humans, genitals are extremely diverse in size and shape. Until about week 7 to week 8 of pregnancy, all fetuses have what’s known as a “genital ridge.”

This genital ridge is the tissue that eventually becomes the sex organs.

At the time of birth, a newborn’s genitals are usually labeled by a physician as male or female, even if the newborn presents with sex organs or characteristics that are intersex, ambiguous, or undefined. In a few places, such as Ontario (Canada), 19 U.S. states, and Washington, DC, “nonbinary” or “gender unspecified” options now exist , but this is not yet the norm.

All sex organs come from the same genital ridge , with the testes in men being equivalent to labia and ovaries in women and the penis being equivalent to the clitoris.

This is why the penis and vagina do not exist as a binary, but rather, as a spectrum that includes the following:

• Full-size penis
• Small penis
• Micro-penis
• Clitoromegaly, also called a “Pseudopenis”
• Enlarged clitoris
• Standard-sized clitoris

2) Intersex People Exist

Intersex means that a person was born with variations in their sex characteristics, such as the biological markers described above. These can include: internal genitals, external genitals, gonads, chromosomes, gene expression, hormone levels, receptor sensitivity, and brain structure.

Current research estimates that intersex people compose 1.7% of the population , which makes being intersex about as common as having red hair.

However, this metric is understated for the following reasons:

• Most doctors, parents, or individuals don’t release this confidential medical information.
• There are subtle forms of sex variations that do not show up until later in life which go undocumented.
• Definitions of what intersex is have not reached consensus.
• There are at least 10 biologically relevant markers of sex (described below), and all but one (external genitals) are not routinely assessed.

The following examples explain this lack of consensus:

• How small does a penis have to be before it counts as intersex?
• Do you count sex chromosome variations if there’s no external sexual ambiguity?
• Do unusually high or low sex hormone levels (estrogen, progesterone, testosterone) make someone intersex?
• If so, how high or low must these hormones levels be and where is the “cut-off?” (The Olympic Committee has struggled mightily with this question.)
• How do you classify someone whose secondary sex characteristics (body hair, facial hair, or muscle mass, for example) don’t match their genitals?

As these questions illuminate, sex may present as a spectrum for people who have not been classified as intersex, as well as those who have.

What about Chromosomes?

While chromosomes are another biological trait that some people try to use to explain the sex binary (male/female), chromosomes are also varied and diverse across the human species. On average, most people assigned male at birth have XY chromosomes, while most people assigned female at birth have XX chromosomes.

However, other sex chromosomal variations frequently exist as a result of the loss, damage, or addition of one or both of the sex chromosomes.

In humans, the following sex chromosome variations are naturally occurring:

• 45, X, also called Turner syndrome
• 45,X/46, also called XY mosaicism
• 47, XXX, also called Trisomy X
• 47, XXY, also called Klinefelter syndrome
• 47, XYY with normal phenotype
• XX Male Syndrome
• XX Gonadal Dysgenesis
• XY Gonadal Dysgenesis

Where Gonadal Dysgenesis is listed above, it refers to reproductive tissue (gonads) being replaced by non-reproductive fibrous tissue during prenatal development.

Furthermore, even a newborn born with “binary” sex chromosomes (XY or XX) can present with intersex characteristics .

For example, either the fetus or the mother’s adrenal glands can produce elevated levels of androgens. When this happens, an XX (“female”) child can be born with a phallus (small penis). In some cases, these newborns may will appear to have a scrotum, due to the labia fusing together.

Similarly, an XY (“male”) child can be born with an enzyme deficiency, such as 5-alpha deficiency and 17-beta dehydrogenase deficiency. When this happens, that “male” infant can be born without a penis and labelled “female” at birth.

Other biological conditions can create similar incongruities between chromosomes and genitals. This is why it’s unfortunate that federal and state-issued documents use external genitalia to make a sex assignments.

The 10 Biological Markers of Sex

Often, you will hear people say things like, “Gender is determined by what is in your pants. If you have a penis you are a man. If you have a vagina, you are a woman.”

As we’ve already addressed, gender incorporates personal identity, so it is unquestionably a spectrum. Biological sex is also complex, and across all species, exists as a spectrum. With regard to this specific statement, external genitals are highly variable, may be ambiguous, and both male and female sex organs can be present.

More importantly, this statement is incomplete from a biological perspective.

While sex has traditionally been assigned based on external genitalia, this approach neglects that there are at least 10 biologically relevant markers of sex (and likely more).

Biological markers of sex include:

• Chromosomes – Types of chromosomal expression.
• Gonads – Organs that produce gametes (testes or ovaries).
• Hormones –Types and level of hormone secretion, which vary within and across the sexes.
• Secondary Sex Characteristics – Features that appear during puberty, but are not involved with reproduction.
• External Genitalia – Genitals visible outside the body.
• Internal Genitalia – Genitals present within the body.
• Skeletal Structure – Sex differences may be seen in the pelvis, jaw bone, brow, and limb length and thickness.
• Gene Expression –Levels and types of gene expression. Genes dictate the proteins made by the body. Known genes that impact sex include DMRT1, SRY (produces Testis-Determining Factor), and Foxl 2.
• Brain Structure – Brain structure characteristics (including the ratio of white matter to grey matter) and brain activation patterns vary by sex.
• Hormone Receptor Sensitivity – The response to sex hormones can vary, depending on receptor sensitivity. Some individuals may be partially or completely insensitive to hormones, negating their effect.

Given that there are 10 biologically relevant markers of human sex, using external genitalia is at best, a partial assessment . In some cases, it is wholly incorrect.

For example, it would be easy to identify a person with a vagina as female, but this person could also present with “male” gene expression or androgen insensitivity or an intersex brain structure. The same is true for someone who presents with a penis.

If you want to assess gender instead of sex , then you also have to add an 11th marker, which is personal identity. Personal identity is how a person self-identifies. This is often a result of many of the other factors interacting, making it a valuable scientific marker as well.

Gender and the Brain

The brain is another biological marker of both sex and gender that presents with great diversity, further supporting the concept of a sex (and gender) spectrum.

In a fascinating study published May 2018 by the European Society of Endocrinology researchers discovered, “Brain activity and structure in transgender adolescents more closely resembles the typical activation patterns of their desired gender.”

When MRI scans of 160 transgender youths were analyzed using a technique called diffusion tensor imaging, the brains of transgender boys’ resembled that of cisgender boys’, while the brains of transgender girls’ brains resembled the brains of cisgender girls’.

Put simply, transgender kids’ brains resemble their gender identity and not their biological sex.

Cisgender means that a person’s gender identity aligns with the sex assigned to them at birth, while transgender means a person’s gender identity does not align with the sex assigned to them at birth.

As stated by Julie Bakker, lead researcher from the University of Liege, “We now have evidence that sexual differentiation of the brain differs in young people with [gender dysphoria], as they show functional brain characteristics that are typical of their desired gender.”

This study explored the brains of cis girls, cis boys, trans girls and trans boys. The next step is for more sexes and genders to become integrated within this neuroscience research.

The Role of the Mind versus the Brain

Of course, the brain and the mind are also two different things.

The brain is the physical structure in your head that is composed of grey and white matter. It has neurons firing within it and uses neurotransmitters as chemicals messengers.

The brain can be thought of as your central processor, because it integrates and facilitates all of the functions within your body.

As noted by Julie Bakker (lead researcher in the MRI study above) and others, brain structure and activation patterns present along a spectrum.

The mind, on the other hand, is the conscious product of that biological activity that creates emotions, ideas, memories, and creative thought. It determines your personality and impacts how you interact with the world.

The mind plays a central role in your gender identity.

Sex and Gender Identification at Birth

As described above, external genitals are not an accurate marker of sex to use at birth, because they are one of at least 10 biologically relevant markers of sex. External genitals are also highly variable, may be ambiguous, and can have both male and female sex organs present.

Furthermore, performing this gender assignment at birth based on external genitals does allow a physician to integrate information about the child’s internal genitals, gonads, chromosomes, gene expression, skeletal structure, brain structure, hormone receptivity, and most importantly, how the child will grow up and express themselves within society.

While I am not opposed to the option to note sex on a child’s birth certificate, I am opposed to:

• The requirement that parents select a sex for their child. Parents should be allowed not to indicate a sex for their child if this is their preference.
• Binary options for sex , when it is clear that sex exists along a spectrum and intersex people exist. At the very least, there should be the option to choose Female (F), Male (M), or Other (X).
• That sex being a permanent identification marker , when that child’s other biological markers of sex (described above) are yet unknown.

Sex versus Gender

Although it has been useful to consider sex and gender separately for the sake of this analysis, it should be mentioned that they are not fully separate from each other. This is because a physical organ (the brain) directly impact gender identity, a phenomenon which is culturally experienced.

Across many cultures, both biological sex and gender are intertwined. Examples of this include:

• Two-Spirited People for Native American/First Nations people
• Hijra for South Asian people (also known as Kinnar or Kinner)
• Māhū for Kanaka Maoli (Hawaiian) and Maohi (Tahitian) cultures
• Fakaleiti for Tongans
• Ffa’afafine for Samoans
• And many others

Gender diversity has existed across all time periods and cultures, with evidence of it being documented as long as 4,500 – 9,000 years ago across Sumerian, Mediterranean, Greece, Phrygia, and Roman cultures. Hijras within Indian and kathoeys in Thailand have existed since ancient times, with the presence of trans male individuals also described within texts that are thousands of years old. Today, it is estimated that more than a half a million hijras live in India and another half million live in Bangladesh, legally recognized as a third gender .

Given that gender is personally and societally expressed, every culture has gender diverse individuals represented within its population.

Gender Diversity Across the Animal Kingdom

Finally, gender diversity is widely present across the animal kingdom. For example, seahorses , pipefish, and sea dragons all have pregnancy as a male reproductive process. In these species, the male fertilizes eggs that are deposited within a pouch in his belly and then he carries his developing embryos until they are ready to be birthed.

In another example, female spotted hyenas have a pseudo-penis that is capable of erection and can be as much as 90% the size of a male hyena’s penis. They have two fleshy masses at the base of their pseudopenis that contain fat and connective tissue which appear analogous to a scrotum. Where you’d expect there to be a vagina, spotted hyena females have fused labia. Female spotted hyenas also dominate males behaviorally.

Chickens can also naturally undergo gender changes. This is because female chickens only use one functional ovary on their left side. However, they have two sex organs that are present from their embryonic stage onward through their lifespan. If the left ovary shrinks within a hen, then its right gonad may start secreting androgens, turning the hen into a rooster.

In short, sex and gender exist as a spectrum for humans and animals (and in fact, plants too). We might as well embrace it, because after all, natural variation has caused the rise of our species to 7.8 billion strong!

Do you have questions about the gender spectrum? Ask them in the comments below. View the Portuguese translation here.

Interested to learn more join nearly two million other readers who are learning from cade., are we connected on social media if not, let’s do it so i can share in your world too: instagram | twitter | facebook | pinterest | tiktok | linkedin | podcast, *this article is part of a  biological sex and gender diversity series  published by cade hildreth, b.a., m.s. you can read the other articles here:, sex isn’t binary: olympic committee confirms sex to be a spectrum, biology rejects a sex binary: gametes (egg/sperm) aren’t binary, after all, 4 ways that biologists define biological sex, does the y chromosome create a sex binary science says no..

AUTHOR BIO: Cade Hildreth attended Dartmouth College & Smith College for Undergraduate Studies in Biology and then acquired a Master’s Degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with Specialization in Biotechnology & Bioinformatics from Georgetown University, where Cade was Valedictorian. Cade is the Founder/President of BioInformant.com , the world’s largest stem cell industry news site that attracts nearly one million views per year and serves all-star clients that include GE Healthcare, Pfizer, and Goldman Sachs. Cade has authored over one-thousand articles about the stem cells, interviewed hundreds of executives from across the industry, and presented at stem cell conferences worldwide. As a media expert on stem cells, Cade has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Business Journal, Xconomy, and Vogue Magazine, as well as quoted in Tony Robbin’s his best selling book, Life Force .  

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Reader Interactions

Melissa Murphy says

May 28, 2023 at 8:47 pm

Internally, in the deepest pit of my gut, I have ALWAYS believed this to be true. To read a scientifically-backed, beautifully-written article that validates what I’ve always somehow known, will allow me to share with as many people as I can in a way I may not have been able to articulate before reading this. This has been an enormous reinforcement of my support of my 9-yr old grandson in his journey of navigating this world with so many who simply do not understand. Thank you, Cade. You are amazing:)

Gina Logan says

May 13, 2023 at 2:06 pm

My understanding is that at birth, the newborn’s having a very large clitoris or a very small (micro) penis might impact how the infant’s gender is assigned. The former might be incorrectly assigned as male; the latter might be incorrectly assigned as female. There are cases in medical literature that illustrate this potential problem, including cases of babies whose genitalia were surgically altered to coincide with what the medical folks THOUGHT was the correct choice, only to discover later that the baby with the micro penis had ovaries and a uterus, for one example.

Joanne says

December 21, 2022 at 11:02 am

What an amazing article. As an Intersex person with Klinefelters Syndrome (XXY chromosomes) I have so many traits that are female and many that are male, with a brain with sits somewhere in the middle toward the female side. I hope that one day, everyone will understand the non-binary natural of sex and gender and we can all just be accepted.

September 9, 2022 at 5:14 pm

Thank you Cade for this very informative article! It’s now part of the course reading in my class, Women’s Health and Global Issues, where I emphasize the importance of recognizing that bimodal sex variation is the biologically accurate descriptor. We’re already having meaningful, thoughtful, and scientifically accurate discussions around the topic of bimodal sex and gender…we’re starting the year off well and wanted to you to know you’ve helped make that happen.

December 4, 2021 at 1:43 am

There is a blood test than can check your chromosomes. I found that I am mosaic turner’s by complete accident while looking for something else all together at the age of 29. It made so much of my existence make sense. So I have an incomplete x and several pieces of Y. This article touches on my chromosome abnormality and so much more, and I felt seen and understood reading this. Thank you, Cade.

Helen Silvis says

November 2, 2021 at 11:13 am

Thank you Cade I now feel confident about explaining why bio sex is a spectrum and my feelings about self ID have changed

September 28, 2021 at 3:50 am

I followed everything besides how the size of a penis or an enlarged clit is relevant. Only part I didn’t quite understand, but I would love to hear why.

August 28, 2021 at 7:51 pm

Holy crap this article is amazing!! Thank you for writing it so I could learn this! I came in with the private opinion that your genitals “make you” one sex or the other and that people that become trans must do so as a response to some kind of trauma in their lives to emotionally survive. But wow this is such compelling information to the contrary! I can see there are many biological (not environmental) reasons why someone could be trans now. And the existence of 10 sex indicators and the intersex spectrum completely (and rightly) dissolves that inner theory of mine. So thank you for teaching me. I’m so glad I was directed to look up the existence of other sexes besides male and female and found your article. Thanks for taking the time to write it so people with opinions like mine can learn this information and update their understanding accordingly. 🙏🏼 Sorry I held the view I did before.

Tj Gundling says

July 17, 2021 at 4:30 pm

I teach an Introduction to Transgender Studies course at my university, and as an anthropologist I take an approach that is intentionally and intensively biocultural. This is to say that it is a fool’s errand to try and tease out the biological from the cultural, and vice-versa, especially as pertains to Homo sapiens. The distinction of bimodal vs. binary is very useful, and I will incorporate this into my Unit on Intersex/DSD. If students can be persuaded, BY THE EVIDENCE, that biosex exists in clusters yet along a continuum, resistance to conceptualizing gender in an analogous manner will be greatly reduced. Thanks!

Natalie Baker says

June 4, 2021 at 2:43 pm

This article is excellent.

May 15, 2021 at 8:43 pm

Extremely helpful! I’m writing an essay for school about gender identity, and this helped me a lot! Also, as a non-binary person, it was very validating and enlightening. Thank you for writing this!

February 25, 2021 at 5:16 pm

Absolutely best and most helpful explanation I have ever read. Thank you.

December 27, 2020 at 5:36 pm

Wonderful article, Cade! This is a fascinating and important topic which needs to be thoroughly examined – as you are doing – in order for society to evolve and find ways to help all people feel welcome and accepted. I have long believed gender and sex are on a continuum and I was pleased to see your explanation of the bimodal reality of both these attributes. A point of confusion arose for me when you mentioned you are non-binary. How can this be possible if there isn’t a binary? Shouldn’t one say non-bimodal or intersex…or intergender? I feel the non-binary term assumes a binary which, as you point out, doesn’t exist. How can one be non-binary if there isn’t a binary? And, in a sense, those who don’t wish to be known as non-binary but also don’t identify as “typical male” or “typical female” – but believe in the continuum – are a bit “imprisoned” by a term that assumes a binary. I would love your thoughts here if you have the chance to respond. Many thanks for your thoughtfully written and super informative article.

marlene says

January 31, 2021 at 8:16 pm

non-binary is a necessary term for a society that widely believes in a binary gender system / functions with a binary gender system, even if that system doesnt make sense. so as long as this is the dominant perception of gender, people who dont identify as men or women have the non-binary label to describe that

Gerardo Heredia says

June 29, 2020 at 12:33 pm

Fascinating article. What I don’t have clear now is about those who identify as nongender. Is it possible no to have a gender? Does that mean they have not developed their identity?. I also was reading about the brain plasticity and how it is not a proof that gender is binary as it evolves according to our experiences and what we learn that happens to be determined by boys do this and girls do that. So that would also mean that the brain differences and changes would be irrelevant for gender identity as well if boys or girls start having experiences out of the social role assigned to their sex. I’d like to know your point of view on this.

June 21, 2020 at 2:46 pm

I like that this article takes a more neutral approach than other LGBTQ+ claims supposed to be “based on scientific facts” (or is it just because the article itself is too vague and thus does not touch the bottom of the sex =/= gender issue?).

This article shows that non-binary+trans genders exist naturally (as opposed to artificially). However, this leads to the ever-debated question of “Do parents have to let their child take hormonal treatment/surgery if their child identify more to a certain gender? And if yes, starting at what age?”, which is basically one of the two core gender issues of society today, the other one being the recognition of sex/gender differentiation by governements + “normal” population + LGBTQ+ population (yes, even the LGBTQ+ population has issues identifying and separating both!).

Unfortunately, these issues are sociological and not biological, so they can only be solved by the continuing effort of communication to the “normal” population and governments by the LGBTQ+ population, in order to make society evolve toward a model where they will be recognized and accepted.

However, this is truly a good and short enough article to refute all the ever-so-present arguments about non-binary genders being mind constructs!

Jordan Lundenburg says

December 10, 2020 at 3:50 am

Hello! It’s important to be mindful of what a child says. If your kid’s sex is female and they begin to experiment with the idea of being more of something else, then acknowledge that. Personally, If my kid were to be having these thoughts around 5, I’d brush it off and see where it goes. If they’re still having these thoughts a year or two later, I would take them out to the store and get them clothes they’d be more comfortable in, start using the pronouns they want. See how they feel. If it ends up not being for them, that’s fine. If it is then I’d wait till puberty to get hormone blockers. If they want surgery, It would be at a time where I feel they’re mature enough to make the decision. Like 16. They can always do it themself at 18 anyway.

Simon B says

January 17, 2020 at 10:36 am

A very well written piece on sex and gender, which I intend to share with all my friends. I’m just a cishet guy, and my mum gave me this observation way back in the 1960s. She said, “Everybody’s different, but we are all human beings”, she really was an intelligent woman.

January 16, 2020 at 6:48 pm

well done! thank you!

Erica Pelz says

January 15, 2020 at 3:16 pm

Thank you for an exceptionally well written piece on the spectrums of gender and sex. I’ll add this to my list of reference material, and look up the studies you referenced. By chance would you be willing to share the bibliography? I’m sure I can find it but would save me some digging. Thabks again!

Allison Kasper says

January 21, 2021 at 10:56 pm

Hey, please let me know if you found that bibliography! I am a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I would love to read more into this. Thanks!

Ali Su says

January 15, 2020 at 7:10 am

How does one find out their sex genes? Is there somewhere to get tested. I identify as gender queer not transgender. Born female but always felt neutral about gender. Was wondering if maybe I have more than two X

January 14, 2020 at 11:15 pm

Great breakdown of a topic that comes up a lot with some religious/transphobic people in my life. I find this info extremely helpful!

Jason Masters says

January 6, 2020 at 5:26 pm

Excellent summary

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Non-binary and genderqueer: An overview of the field

Surya monro.

Centre for Citizenship, Conflict, Identity and Diversity, School of Human and Health Sciences, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK

The existence of gender variance is widely documented both historically and cross-culturally (Herdt, 1994 ; Matsuno & Budge, 2017 ). The term “genderqueer” emerged in the 1990s (see Whittle, 1996 ). It can be defined as “any type of trans identity that is not always male or female. It is [also] where people feel they are a mixture of male and female” (Monro, 2005 , p. 13). Genderqueer identities are diverse but share dis-identification with rigid gender binaries and in some cases, a direct challenge to the social institutions that perpetuate binaries (see Bradford et al., 2018 ; Davy, 2018 ; Yeadon-Lee, 2016 ). “Non-binary” is an umbrella term that includes those whose identity falls outside of or between male and female identities; as a person who can experience both male and female, at different times, or someone who does not experience or want to have a gender identity at all (Matsuno & Budge, 2017 ). Like genderqueer, non-binary can be traced to the work of transgender and transsexual authors who resisted or transcended gender binaries, for example Bornstein, who stated that ‘Gender fluidity recognizes no borders or rules of gender.’ (1994, p. 52). The earliest use of terms referring directly to non-binary seems to be around 2000, for example Haynes and McKenna’s ( 2001 ) collection Unseen Genders: Beyond the Binaries.

Estimates of the numbers of non-binary people vary. In a survey in the United Kingdom (UK) with 14,320 responses from trans people, almost 52% identified as non-binary (Government Equalities Office, 2018 ). However, Nieder, T’Sjoen, Bouman, and Motmans ( 2018 ) conducted a comprehensive literature analysis that indicated that approximately 80% of trans people identify as exclusively male or female, which leaves 20% to individuals with a gender falling outside of or between male and female identities. There are generational differences; typically a higher proportion of young people identify as non-binary. For instance, in a Canadian study, authors note the growing population of non-binary youth, with 41% of a sample of 839 of trans young people identifying as such (Clark, Veale, Townsend, Frohard-Dourlent, & Saewyc, 2018 ; Yeadon-Lee, 2016 ).

The last few years have witnessed a shift in the possibilities afforded for gender expression in some countries, however fragile and contingent this development might be. For instance, Bragg, Renold, Ringrose, and Jackson ( 2018 ) in a UK study found “expanded vocabularies of gender identity/expression…” (2018, p. 1). “Non-binary” is now an increasingly recognized social identity in the UK, which has led to some changes in institutional norms and structures, for example the civil service adopting a non-binary identity option (see Monro, Crocetti, Yeadon-Lee, Garland, & Travis, 2017 ). Likewise, Nieder et al. ( 2018 ) discuss the increased visibility of non-binary and genderqueer (NBGQ) people in clinical settings.

Despite some increases in the social acceptance of non-binary, the literature highlights difficulties regarding visibility (Taylor, Zalewska, Gates, & Millon, 2018 ). This is evident at the level of individual subjectivity, for example 76% of non-binary people in the 2018 UK survey avoided expressing their gender identity due to fear of negative reactions (Government Equalities Office, 2018 ). The issue of invisibility is also pertinent to policy making and practice settings. For instance, where health monitoring systems use gender binary categories, NBGQ people are rendered invisible (see Jaspal, Nambiar, Delpech, & Tariq, 2018 ).

A small but growing literature exists about health care and NBGQ people (see for example Vincent & Lorimer, 2018 ). The UK Government Equalities Office ( 2018 ) found that non-binary people had substantially lower quality of life scores, as compared to cisgender and heterosexual people. High levels of minority stress and of social discrimination were reported in studies such as Taylor et al. ( 2018 ). The research shows that NBGQ people’s mental health is worse than that of cisgender populations, and it also seems that non-binary people may be at higher risk of mental health problems than binary trans people (Matsuno & Budge, 2017 ). Motmans and Burgwal ( 2018 ) conducted a survey in five countries which demonstrated that non-binary people assessed their health in more negative terms, as compared to the binary trans respondents. They showed significantly higher rates of have a chronic problem, disability, or illness and also of experiences of depression. Their study supported earlier research that demonstrated poorer health amongst NBGQ people as compared with binary identified trans people (Harrison, Grant, & Herman, 2012 ). However, Rimes, Goodship, Ussher, Baker, and West ( 2017 ) who (in a survey of 677 young people from the UK) found that non binary young people were less likely than other groups to report suicidality and previous help-seeking for anxiety and depression, and also reported higher levels of life satisfaction than young binary trans people. Overall, therefore, the findings about NBGQ people and health are inconclusive; both practice and the social environment are evolving.

The editorial

This Special Edition about non-binary and genderqueer is very much to be welcomed. The increased prominence of non-binary as an identity is somewhat reflected in scholarship, for example Richards, Bouman, and Barker ( 2017 ), but in comparison to the binaried trans literature there is a paucity of research (Matsuno & Budge, 2017 ). Overall, academic production has not kept pace with the growth of non-binary identities, and there are difficulties with erasure of non-binary within the broader transgender category (Fiani & Han, 2018 ). The Special Edition, with its contributions in areas as varied as healthcare, romance, identity measurement and identity work, will provide an important and timely contribution to the field. It will form a good foundation for the further expansion of NBGQ studies. This expansion is needed, as little research exists in areas such as education (though see Bragg et al., 2018 ) and a dearth of knowledge in such policing and community safety, asylum and refugee rights, and social care.

This editorial will summarize key areas of relevant theory and will attempt to indicate some possible directions for future research. Its focus is on the global anglophone north. The editorial aims to be thought-provoking rather than directly informing of practice. Some excellent discussions of clinical issues are provided elsewhere, including Taylor et al. ( 2018 ).

Theorizing genderqueer and non-binary

I conducted research with a range of UK-based trans-identified and intersex individuals in the 1990s, focusing on those with non-normative gender identities, including genderqueer. Based on this, I developed an approach to theorizing what is now known as NBGQ (Monro, 2000 ; 2005 ), building on the earlier work of authors such as Bornstein ( 1994 ) and Halberstam ( 2002 ). I explored three approaches: [i] the expansion of male and female categories, which enables the inclusion of non-normative genders. I noted that “this interpretation of gender problematically erases non-binaried trans identities [because all gender identities are subsumed within an expanded model of male and female]” (Monro, 2005 , p. 36); [ii] Moving beyond gender, or degendering; this has a difficulty in that “…once fluidity is named, it becomes a space which people can inhabit…and is therefore arguably no longer a non-category.” (2005, p. 37). Non-binary illustrates the way in which what was (in the 1990s) a non-category has become a category that people do inhabit, and in doing so may fuel social change. [iii] The third approach, which has had the most purchase subsequently (see for instance Hines, 2010 ) is Gender Pluralism. This entails “…conceptualising gender as plural, as a spectrum, a field, or intersecting spectra or continua” (2005, p. 37), as a means of moving beyond flawed ontologies that entrench gender binaries. The notion of a gender spectrum is evident in later work on genderqueer (Bradford et al., 2018 ) and on non-binary, for example Richards et al. ( 2016 ) discuss diversifying gender in terms of a spectrum model. Matsuno and Budge state that “The term non-binary typically defines a comprehensive scope of gender experiences (sometimes discussed as the “gender spectrum”)” (2017, p. 117, see also Fiani & Han, 2018 ). The spectrum approach is very useful for understanding NBGQ identities, especially when expanded using intersectional approaches, which I discuss briefly below. However, the notion of gender pluralism did marginalize physiological sex, which is problematic as it elides intersex and variations of sex characteristics. I therefore propose here a complementary notion of Sex Pluralism, which encompasses sex characteristic variance as a separate spectrum which overlaps, intertwines with and influences gender pluralism in diverse ways.

As I argued in 2001 “The social structuring of trans quite clearly affects the levels of fluidity and the gender permutations that are possible” (p. 163). Hines ( 2010 ) subsequently developed a materialist analysis of transgender that addresses social structures and inequalities, “mapping the formations of power within and through gender and sexual categories” (p. 13). This type of approach, where attention moves from the individual toward social structures and processes, is crucial. In seeking to understand NBGQ, we need to ask questions about the conditions in which NBGQ identities can emerge and become socially viable, and the ways in which non-binarism is constrained, shaped, or crushed. Arguably, the emergence of NBGQ in some northern anglophone countries is possible because of what is broadly termed “homonationalism”; the deployment of LGBT-friendly policies as part of the dominant national identities of countries (Puar, 2007 ) 1 . In contrast, contemporary political mobilization supports the reinforcement of gender binaries in a number of states and regions (see for example Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017 ), making the external expression of NBGQ identities dangerous for individuals in these places. A materialist structural analysis enables understanding of the ways in which gender – including the social erasure or emergence of NBGQ people – is shaped, in the global north and internationally.

Taking NBGQ theory forwards

Arguably, it would be useful for NBGQ theorists to renovate feminist approaches to gender diversity. Whittle stated in 1996 that “Feminist theory is now faced with the need to address the dichotomy of biological imperativism and social structure, the differences of sex and gender, which are no longer recognized as synonymous” (p. 203). Sadly, few cisgender feminists rose to the challenge of sex and gender variances 2 , which destabilize simplistic notions of unitary male/female categories, and instead a reactionary “feminism” developed that is deeply gender binaried and prejudiced against gender diverse people (see Hines, 2017 ). The difficulties that anti-trans bigotry raises for NBGQ people require criminological, medical, and sociological attention, but that is beyond the scope of this short piece. Let me turn instead to providing a snapshot of how social forces can shape NBGQ lives. In doing so, I build again on the work of early transgender authors (Bornstein, 1994 ; Feinberg, 1996 ).

The patriarchal and heterosexist underpinnings of gender binarism were discussed by Feinberg in 1996. Bornstein ( 1994 ) also analyzed heteropatriarchal systems of “gender defence.” In a nutshell, the gender binaried system is intertwined with institutionalized heterosexism (the assumption that male–female sexual relationships are the norm and the ideal), making it difficult to live in alternative ways. As recently as 2010, there were assertions that “…in mainstream society, living openly beyond the two-sexes/two-genders system would still not appear to constitute a socially viable option” (Davidman, 2010 , p. 187). Practices of binarism continue, for example the social erasure of third and other sex pronouns such as “ze” (Nicolazzo, 2016 ) and the existence of gender binaried toilets and uniforms within schools (Bragg et al., 2018 ). Monro and Van der Ros ( 2017 ) demonstrate the way in which state apparatus and the medical establishment can operate to perpetuate a socially marginal position for non-binary people. Gender binarism may be compounded by trans* 3 -normativity – “the belief that there is only one way for trans* people to practice their gender…[it] suggests that all trans* people should transition from one socially knowable sex to another” (Nicolazzo, 2016 , p. 1175). These forces, which operate at cultural, institutional, policy, and legal levels, combine to perpetuate narrow models of sex, gender, and sexual identity.

Gender binarism also affects intersex people negatively (see Monro, 2005 ). Whilst this short piece does not address the issues specific to intersex people (intersex is known as DSD in medical settings), it is salient that some intersex people may feel themselves to be non-binary. In the UK survey of LGBTI people, 24% of a population of 1980 intersex respondents identified as non-binary (Government Equalities Office, 2018 ). This is a different phenomenon to that of trans non-binary people because intersex people have congenital sex variances that are pathologized and they are usually subject to medical interventions as infants/children to force their conformity to gender binaries, whereas endosex 4 trans people seek to transition later in life. There are a few indications in the literature (for example Taylor et al., 2018 ) that non-binary individuals born without congenital sex variance may seek to identify as “intersex,” because they wish to have non-normatively sexed bodies. This is problematic, as it arguably “colonizes” an identity that others have no choice about experiencing. Intersex people face profound difficulties that people born with non-intersex bodies avoid, in particular, fetal termination (Jeon, Chen, & Goodson, 2011 ), and medical interventions carried out on babies and children which are typically reported as having poor and/or damaging outcomes (see for example Creighton, Minto, & Steele, 2001 ; Diamond & Garland, 2014 ). Intersex organizations are clear that the term “intersex” only pertains to those born with atypical sex characteristics (see Monro et al., 2017 ). Research is needed about the specific identities and needs of intersex non-binary people.

NBGQ cannot be theorized without considering the other social forces that shape identity and what becomes socially possible in any given context. I therefore conclude this short piece by recommending more intersectional research concerning NBGQ, which could build on Nicolazzo’s ( 2016 ) study of black non-binary Americans. Intersectionality concerns the ways in which multiple social forces interact or interlock, so that these forces combine to forge particular social positions (see Crenshaw, 1989 ). According to McCall ( 2005 ), there are different methodological approaches to intersectionality studies. The first of her three approaches: anticategorical complexity, deconstructs identity categories. Anticategorical approaches can be used to dismantle gender (and sex) binarism, as well as enabling examination of the classed, racialized ways in which binarism is constructed. McCall discusses another approach to intersectionality, termed intracategorical because authors working in this vein tend to focus on particular social groups at neglected points of intersection (McCall, 2005 , p. 1771). This approach is useful for understanding the experiences of NBGQ people who are also poor, or of color, or disabled, or very young or very old (for example). McCall termed a further approach to intersectionality “ intercategorical. ” For McCall, “ intercategorical complexity …requires that scholars provisionally adopt existing analytical categories to document relationships of inequality among social groups and changing configurations of inequality along multiple and conflicting dimensions” (2005, p. 1771). She also notes that identity categories can be used strategically by individuals, in an agentic way. The possibility of exercising agency is important for understanding NBGQ. There is increasing evidence that NBGQ people can feel a sense of pride, empowerment, and positive individuality (Taylor et al., 2018 ), and any future theory-building needs to embrace and support this.

1 These states may not support the human rights of other social groups.

2 Monro ( 2005 ) and Hines ( 2010 , 2017 ) are amongst the trans-affirmative feminists.

3 This author used an asterisk – trans*- to emphasise the inclusion of non-binary, and other non-normative gender, identities and practices. In this editorial, I use the term ‘trans’ in the same way; it includes non-normative gender variations and binaried transgender.

4 Endosex is a term used by Intersex activists and allies to indicate a person born with sex characteristics that are seen as typically male or female at birth, therefore not medicalized as intersex. See https://anunnakiray.com/2017/01/21/intersex-vs-intergender-do-intersex-transexuals-exist/

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Beyond the Binary: Essays on Gender Kindle Edition

The increase in the number of non-binary children and adults in our society raises important treatment questions as well as much controversy. It seems essential that analysts and candidates grapple with the challenges this change in society presents. As we struggle in our psychoanalytic societies to diversify our membership and broaden our understanding of difference, this collection offers an opportunity for further discussion and study of one of the most important issues of our time.

The opening essay by editor Shari Thurer provides a clear overview of recent cultural changes and the evolution of thinking about gender identification by the American Psychoanalytic Association. Next is an autobiographical essay by long-term non-binary individual Robin Haas plus a clinical reflection on Haas’ contribution by Rita Teusch. A recent account of an individual becoming non-binary from Francesca Spence is followed by the reactions of their parents, L. Harry Spence and Robin Ely. After that are psychoanalytic thoughts about the body and gender by Malkah Notman and reflections on gender from Dan Jacobs. The book ends with an extensive bibliography on the subjects of transsexuality and non-binary gender by Oren Gozlan.

Beyond the Binary: Essays on Gender introduces readers to current ideas about gender fluidity and choice, as well as giving voice to those who are non-binary. This is a must-read for all practising clinicians that will help broaden their perspective on this growing issue.

This is the fourth publication sponsored by the Library Committee of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and the first published by Phoenix.

• Print length 127 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publication date January 19, 2023
• File size 2805 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BS18PR7Z
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Phoenix Publishing House (January 19, 2023)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 19, 2023
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 2805 KB
• Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 127 pages
• #534 in Counseling & Psychology eBooks on Human Sexuality
• #539 in Clinical Psychology (Kindle Store)
• #949 in Medical Psychology of Sexuality

About the author

Shari thurer.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

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