"Is He, Y'Know...Gay?" Gender As Sex...ual Activity
This question was often followed up (or preceded by) the implication that homosexual activity meant someone wasn't "a real man." I write this in past tense, but this idea is still alive, to my chagrin, though it isn't as widespread. Gay, or lezzie, or any other terms that refer to homosexual activity and are used as insults, often get paired with this idea that someone isn't "a real man" or "a real woman." Or more to the point, "not a real human."
There are a few interesting views of gender here....when the dehumanization isn't the main course. The concept that there's real gender and less-than-real gender has a lot going on behind it, for example. In this view, we've constructed a system where real genders refer to people that are socially acceptable in some way (sexual activity, yes, but also anything from manner of speech, to recreation and/or job, to appearance, to dynamics in interpersonal relationships, to reproductive capacity, and so on), while those with a less-than-real gender have failed in some aspect. Gender functions then as a way to police behaviors, private and public alike.
It's shitty that our first steps beyond a gender binary would be in something like this. Yes, we have four potential genders someone could be, but two of them exist for the sole purpose of marking social outcasts--not just folks that were queer, mind you, but anyone that reeked of social difference--that could at various times be beaten, and lose jobs, housing, access to education, friendships, and family, not to mention having to face the inherent humiliation of being so far removed from the social norm it becomes remarkable.
But until very recently, you could safely assume that anyone walking around without a strictly binary view on gender (at least in my country) had experienced a similar flavor of dehumanization.
Fucked up as it is, I could not start this any other way when this has been our reality.
While the idea of "real" woman/man and "fake" woman/man is brought up in practice as a way to mark people as being acceptable and unacceptable, the concept that sexual activity and gender are connected is one that resonates with a number of queer folks, though not as popular today as the alternatives. For example, some Fags and Dykes use Fag and Dyke as their gender signifier rather than man or woman. Instead of being shameful, the realities of being queer are meant to be celebrated. Note that while our "real woman/man" system was centered on signifying social acceptability/ostracization, this system is centered on the relation between gender and sexual activity/sexuality. While it does get overshadowed by sex as in biology, sex as in the action(s) plays a large part of how many viewpoints conceptualize gender, so it makes sense that a variation in sexual activity that's already connected with a society's constructs of gender would spawn more gender fuckery.
This also has connections with my favorite crock of shit and something very close to my heart: Inversion Theory.
Popularized by the queer novel The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall in 1928 but originating in of sexology some forty years earlier, inversion theory sought to explain the existence of homosexual folks that shared characteristics with the opposite gender. This was thought of as the "inversion" of the normal, where someone shared characteristics with the same gender and felt attraction towards the opposite. The explanation? Inverts were born with a higher level of inherent masculinity/femininity than peers of the same sex, and this higher level of inherent masculinity/femininity is what attracted them to the inherent femininity/masculinity of their peer gender group. Bisexual activity was similarly connected with androgyny, though I believe that was a later addition, along with some fringe theories about asexuality.
Inversion theory was of course complete bullshit. Inherent masculinity and femininity could refer to hormones like testosterone and estrogen, but then we would expect hormone levels to be connected with sexual attraction and activity, and variable to things like hormone replacement therapy or natural changes with aging. And since gramps doesn't suddenly like taking it up the ass after he got off the viagra--and because there isn't actually anything Inherently Masculine or Feminine on our blue little planet--inversion theory got dumped and left to be a relic of the past.
But it still remains a pet favorite of mine. Irrespective of its accuracy as a theory in sexology, the idea that gender and sexuality are so closely linked that they become the same thing is so completely counter to the popular mindsets that it feels alien. Which is exactly why I wanted to start with a few viewpoints centered on a connection between gender and sexuality! I wrote before about how binary social construct theory will cover all the different things that can be included in womanhood/manhood, but stops before it can ask whether gender itself could be constructed differently. Keep that in mind.
In the meantime though, we've been dancing around a very specific term for this past section, and I think it's high time we actually dig into it.
Gender Non-Conformity (GNC)
Gender non-conforming folks are exactly what they sound like: folks that do not conform to gender expectations. Whose expectations, and what gender, is a different question. And if a social group has no expectations of gender nor hang-ups with conformity, then GNC or similar terms might instead refer to being a statistical outlier. And because it gets us asking these questions, gender non-conformity can be a fun angle to explore gender through. But I'm getting ahead of myself!
Classic examples of GNC include tomboys, metrosexuals (which have a strong connection to the previous section), the old favorite of masculine women and feminine men, women in suits and ties, men in dresses, drag queens and kings, and the older instances of female impersonators like Tampa Red. Notice that as expectations change, what non-conformity is changes as well. What's revolutionary today might one day be stuck in your parents' stack of records and old sears catalogs, or about as banal as a lady wearing sneakers.
To gender non-conformity, there are no "real" or "fake" genders. Nothing you do, no matter how outlandishly contradicting, can remove your membership from your gender. Conformity is denied the ability to dictate whether you are treated as a person or not. Everyone is a person, GNC says. Everyone has a right to be themselves, even if it goes against every expecatation of what your gender should look like. And again, GNC reveals something about the dominant views of gender it's coexisting with: the idea of Should, or Ought. Someone, somewhere, has Expectations, and wants them to be met. Failure to meet these expectations is not consequence free, either. The severity of consequences will also change from social group to social group, and therefore color any corresponding GNC folks. If the punishment for non-conformity is bodily harm or death, that will reflect on both the people that remain GNC in spite of the threat, and folks living out the dominant views of gender in perfect conformity. Even if the punishment is a more gentle form of complete social ostracization and verbal abuse, we will see the waves from that not only in GNC folks within that social group, but in folks that fit in with the "normal". So yes, when we talk about gender we do, inevtably, have to talk about power in a very real, visceral way.
It's not surprising then that feminism and other gender rights movements have historically had a large element of gender non-conformity to them.
When politics is a man's world, indepednence is a man's thing, education is a man's past, property is something that men can have, certain jobs and pay are things men can earn, and voting is something that (white) men do, feminism must by necessity be gender non-conforming. You could argue further that ennacting any change to what's constructed as a part of a gender (or even how gender is constructed) must include some kind of non-conformity. This isn't how GNC is usually approached. Butch women in the 60s and 70s were certainly more GNC than Mary Tyler Moore wearing pants on TV, let alone the first women in science or attending colleges in their poofy gowns and long hair, right? But this seems to me to be coming from a very different angle than we've been taking so far. Gender becomes a kind of contest, with the field having lines of femininity and masculinity on either end, the goal of which is to get as far over the line as possible while remaining still one's own gender.
I'm not too fond of the contest myself. It becomes all too easy to take this field and these lines we've painted as The Truth On Gender, rather than just another viewpoint and another system to live around. And when the Group All About Non-Conformity starts getting ideas about the Right Way to go about non-conformity, outside of which you will be excluded or socially punished for failure to conform, well....the irony doesn't make it hurt less, but at least it's funny.
Gender non-conformity, while not necessitating leaving a binary view of gender behind, can help us in taking these first few steps beyond our binary systems. We're already blurring the lines between genders. So what happens if we ramp that up to 11?
What happens if, instead of being a woman no matter how non-womanish someone is, or a man no matter how non-mannish someone is, a person blurs gender lines in a different way? Can we imagine someone balanced perfectly between manhood and womanhood, no matter how those are conceptualized? Someone completely in the grey?
And then, can we imagine someone leaving those two boxes of manhood and womanhood behind entirely?
A Third Gender
Again, binary social construct theory covers all the various things that can be included in womanhood/manhood (or whatever the names for our two genders are), but stops before it can ask whether gender itself could be constructed differently.
It isn't surprising then that a first step beyond the binary would be to try constructing a third box.
Nonbinary as a third gender has it's own Roles, Social Cues, and Expectations, in exactly the same ways Men and Women do, varying of course between viewpoints. My inside sources tell me that Young Folks are conceptualizing Nonbinary as Third Gender to be basically full of Weird But Conventionally Hot People, with flavors ranging from skateboard gremlin with a cigarette to bearded maid listening to EDM. Me being out of touch aside, the details aren't the point here--the construction is. Even outside of young folks, you will time and time again see the assumption made that nonbinary folks as a whole must conceptualize themselves (and gender) in about the same way, same as someone would assume the average man or woman would view their own gender. Men are he/him/his, suits, and fatherhood; Women are she/her/hers, dresses, and motherhood; Nonbinary or third gender folks must therefore be they/them/theirs, something with insane patterns, and no children.
Not only is it a little disappointing--we've already seen all these variations in views of gender already, and having a third catchall category provides significantly less experimentation than we might've first assumed--the few things this viewpoint brings on its own merits are....not my favorite.
For example, under current third gender views, gender non-conformity functionally ceases to exist. GNC men and women have to deal with correcting folks on their gender still (sometimes even more), while anyone that's Third Gender and GNC has to deal with similar assumptions that they're just a man or woman and confused, attention seeking, or lying. Congrats! We created something that falls to the exact same pitfalls as before, except the few changes we made creates even more opportunities for falling into pits!
This view has also fallen prey to the same thing binary social construct theory does: it covers all the various things that can be included in our three categories of Womanhood, Manhood, and Nonbinary folks, but it stops before it ask whether gender itself could be constructed any differently....outside of adding more genders. Because a Fourth Gender might help, and by the time we get to a Fifth, Sixth, or Seventh gender we might start asking some interesting questions, but we still aren't playing around with what gender is.
Nevertheless, this is where a lot of people end up when first confronted with the existence of nonbinary folks, and while I might not like it, it is a common view of gender.
Quickfire Round:
Some of the first steps we've been taking beyond our binary views of gender have been a little rough, some have barely been steps at all, and some have just added nuance without requiring us to think beyond binaries. But you better hold onto your hats, folks, because we're about to go into the quickfire round and start to stretch out those ideas of gender with some structural changes. Let's go!
Both (or all)
So far we've been assuming that any one person belongs to a single gender category at a time. Some folks may have gone through mulitple categories over the course of their life, such as in being trans. But even in viewpoints that make room for trans folks, Men, Women, and Third Gender (etc) people tend to belong to their categories and nothing more.
To a number of views though, a single gender isn't the only option.
Gender systems that include bisexed/dualsex or bigender individuals, or people that are more than one gender, referred to from here as multi-gendered systems, require a conceptualization of gender with a few more facets. Humans are complex, nuanced, and contain multitudes, so why wouldn't gender be the same? Multi-gender systems like to dig into the complexities of human experience, and it just so happens that the scope of gender works great. Everyone is different. If we agree as a culture to label these things masculine and those things feminine (and so on, if we have more genders), then why wouldn't at least a handful of people experience enough of both (or many) to be multi-gendered?
In a similar way to GNC, multi-gendered systems reveal something about the non-multi-gendered systems they coexist with. A viewpoint of gender that doesn't allow for someone to be multiple genders at once will by necessity have very broad conceptualizations of genders, or maybe put such an effort and focus onto conformity that variety between indivudals will be minimized, making it easier for people to concieve of themselves as one or the other (or the other-other), but never both or all. Meanwhile, a multi-gendered viewpoint of gender may become hyperspecific in what each gender is or holds, as anyone can be as many genders as is fitting. The focus in multi-gendered systems therefore tends to shift purely to the self and individual experience, rather than the self in relation to others, or the groups that the self is alike. Regardless of your feelings on that trend or its real life examples, it isn't surprising that US folks online are pretty good at this particular style of gender fuckery.
But if we're willing to cover the complexities of human experience, why stop at the single note variation of being multiple genders?
Fluid and Flux
Most viewpoints of gender that accept the existence of trans people and multi-gendered folks can readily concieve of the idea of genderfluidity, though genderfluidity can also exist in systems that don't allow for multiple genders at once. As the name suggests, someone that's genderfluid has a fluid relationship with gender, and can go from one gender to another, sometimes day to day, sometimes hour to hour, sometimes year to year. Genderfluidity requires a similarly fluid view of gender. Not only can gender change on the macro scales we usually think of when we talk about trans people, but it's something that can be impacted by the mundane, day to day happenings of life. Or maybe it's connected to some sort of internal shifting of the self. A view of gender that includes genderfluidity might view the experience of gender throughout life as something that fidgits about.
Genderflux is the connected idea that the intensity that someone feels any gender may change over time, be it again hour to hour or year to year. In a relieving turn of events, the idea of being "less of a man/woman/whathaveyou" isn't a concept being used to harm others, but rather to communicate change within the self.
Similar to genderfluidity, genderflux may or may not be paired with multi-gendered views. But while genderfluidity could arguably exist within a binary system of gender, genderflux brings up the existence of something we haven't touched on, something that would arguably break any binary system of gender on its own.
No Gender
Usually referred to as agender, the complete lack of a gender might describe a sense of the self, a disconnect between the self and cultural expectations of gender as a whole, a disconnect between the self and other gender groups, a sense of discomfort towards gender, and/or a complete lack of fucks given about gender. And so on!
And....
Well, there's a lot of questions we've been side stepping this entire page, and this just adds another wave of Big Fucking Questions. If we concieve that there can be a complete lack of gender in someone, then that implies an awful lot, doesn't it? Gender is something that you can Lack. It is not a constant within all people. But why? What does that lack of gender imply for systems that don't include it? What happens fucnitonally when we assumed that gender is always had by all peoples? At what point does something like agender and inflated multi-gender experiences overlap, infinity becoming nothing and nothing becoming infinite?
And while we're at it....