Gender: how about ditching it?

Our society seems to value more and more gender as an identity, yet conflates it with sex more often than not.

You certainly heard someone say that in a meeting, there were x women and y men. They didn’t ask people how they self-defined – it is just an assumption based on how they appear and sound. It seems obvious that Michelle, wearing a flowery dress, is a woman, while Paul (beard, checked shirt and pants) is a man. This is probably also at play in the violence towards transgender people, who dare transgress the clearly established stereotypes and get rage in return .

I am less easy to classify than Michelle. I have short hair, don’t use make up anymore, and I wear mostly black, gender-neutral clothes. Although I sometimes get called “Sir” in the street (almost always by older people), the common guess is that I was born with a vagina. And this might be true but says nothing - nothing - about who I am as a person, what I need or desire. What is the point of labelling me as "woman", then?

What does it mean, to identify as a woman, beyond sex? I must say I don’t know. Of course, I know full well what it used to mean, until recently, and still does, in some parts of the world - pre-defined sex-based roles, centered, for women, around rearing kids and taking care of the house. It might work for some people, especially if the social formatting machine works well, and would be hell for those who don’t see themselves defined by their anatomy.

Today, the consensus in the milieus in which I navigate is that one can be a woman or a man on their own terms. Very good. But then what does it mean, to identify with a gender? That’s what I don’t know.

I observe that even in the most progressive circles, we talk for instance about women in the city, noting difficulties related to having more complicated and local trip patterns (bringing kids to school?), having a lower income, or relying more on walking and public transport. It’s all relics of the old paradigm, which still applies to some extent (well, the stats are there to support it). But one would hope that the sex-based role split is on the way out. Yes, there is value in considering the needs of those who make complicated trips, rely on walking or public transport, and/or have lower incomes. But these people are not necessarily women. Gender is here a proxy for those other characteristics that matter. In some cases, gender is also utterly irrelevant. When I ride my bike, I don’t ride like a woman, or like a man, for that matter – it just doesn’t matter. I am a person on a bike. Period.

My logical conclusion, given that (a) I don’t know what it is, to identify as a woman, (b) I think that it mostly doesn’t matter, and (c) science tells us that on a neuronal level, gender is all except a binary , I identify as non-binary. I am neither a woman nor a man - I am far more complicated.

I hope our world evolves to be a place where we don’t (mis)categorise people based on their assumed sex, look down on them (or worse) for not conforming to stereotypes, or assume their needs and desires. I'd like a world where we do what matters – e.g., making it easy for anyone to travel with kids, or to walk, or to use public transport, regardless of their sex or gender.

#gender #identity #transgender #transrightsarehumanrights