The curious case for gender: a conflation of sex and personality.

One of my friends posted an interesting article about sex, gender, pronouns use: Article on Gender and Pronouns (In another blog I actually break down this article into examinable pieces, but for the purpose of this blog, we'll be examining the subjects of sex and gender primarily.)While interesting, I found the article very imprecise, even harmful in it's assumptions about the relation of gender and sex, where they meet and where they separate. There's a lack of clarity in the text I'd like tease out and hopefully elucidate to others and myself.

To clarify briefly, my stance on sex and gender is this: there are two sexes, end of story. To me this undeniable, and a very simple argument. There are boys and girls. Regardless of identity, sex is immutable. What is not immutable, what can be fluid and dynamic is gender. Sex and gender may be related, but they are not the same.

Now, what does this mean? The very statement that there are two sexes might send some people into a fevered hysteria of righteous indignation. The claim that gender is fluid and malleable might cause the same reaction to others. So lets define these terms more, and try to work through this together with a common perspective. Whether you agree or not, let's at least try to understand.

The first time my oldest child told me that gender existed on a spectrum, we were parked in the driveway, sitting in our old Honda minivan with the engine idling and the radio off. Miriam had just returned from a youth group weekend and we were catching up.

“No, sweetheart,” I said to my precocious 14-year-old. “Sexuality is on a spectrum; you can be straight, gay or lots of things in between. Gender is either male or female.”
Miriam corrected me. “No, Mom. Gender is on a spectrum, too.”
I thought about this a great deal, and I realized that, by one understanding of gender, she was right. Although after more consideration, I came to the conclusion that gender was not was she was assuming it was. To begin, there had to be clear distinctions in meaning for each of the terms being used. Sex, gender, personality, and so on, each had to be unpacked in their own way before I could go any further.

Sex:

Sex is biology. Males and females copulate to create offspring. This has been a biological constant since life began. While many life forms reproduce asexually, like aphids, humans reproduce sexually. Regardless of identity, or personality, or belief, sex is a reality.

Gender:

Gender is far more complex. Originally, gender was identified along sexual traits, meaning masculine and feminine. While these were typically tied to sex, their meaning was different. They were the personality traits typically associated with a particular sex. Men tended towards masculine traits, women tended towards feminine traits, and eventually, we started to conflate the terms gender and sex. I don't know if it was anyone's fault in particular, but it happened.

Let's look at a few examples historically. Artemis, the Greek god of hunting, among other things, was portrayed as a woman. However, she was described in masculine terms. This wasn't to denigrate women, or femininity, nor was it to elevate or promote men or masculinity. It was just who she was. We could say something similar of the amazons: strong women, women with many masculine traits, who were still, nevertheless, women.

If we can separate gender and sex at least as far as them being separate ideas, we can begin to discuss them intelligently, and accurately. When we combine them into the same term, and make them interchangeable, the discussion becomes impotent. We lose the ability to actually discuss them because we have lost the ability to make distinctions. When having these conversations, it's important to distinguish: are we talking about 'sex,' or are we talking about 'gender,' because they are different concepts with different implications.

Perspectives on Gender and Sex:

I think a lot of confusion has arisen around these terms. Ascribing gender to sex can be considered sexist, and I would actually agree. While gender has common trends related to sex, it is not absolute. In my own life, I have seen that my mother is a masculine woman. She is aggressive, competitive, goal oriented, she's active and athletic, with some blatantly ruthless qualities. This has nothing to do with her sex. She is still a female, and she still has many admirable and wonderful feminine traits. However, she gets along better with most men. She enjoys their personalities more, because they fit hers better. She is still a woman, she's heterosexual, and comfortable with her life and her self.

Personally, as a man, I have many masculine qualities typically associated with the male sex. I also have a strong feminine aspect to myself. This was nurtured and explored firstly because my family allowed it, and because I met wonderful people through my life that allowed me to explore that side of myself. I went to school to be a massage therapist, and cultivated my gentler instincts. I tempered my energy, and in many ways became more feminine. I'm still a man. I'm still heterosexual. But I have a spectrum of masculine and feminine traits that make gender harder to define.

All men are not equally masculine, nor feminine, and the same can be said of women. However, all men are men, and all women are women. As a final example, we are all human, but each one of us is unique in an infinite number of capacities and qualities. Regardless of how we identify, we are still human. That is immutable and unchangeable. The same can be said of sex. However, the same can not be said of gender.

These are the distinctions we need to be making. One of the reasons masculine gender is tied to male sex, and feminine gender is tied to female sex is because of the hormonal variance that inspires some behaviors. Higher testosterone is related to male sex and masculine behaviors. Lower testosterone and higher estrogen is related to female sex and feminine behaviors. These hormones are not the same in each person, thus leading to variations in personality and ones gender behavior. Still, men tend to have much higher testosterone, and women tend to have less while having more estrogen, which leads to generalizations between sex and gender.

I would argue that gender is behavior and personality, not sex. While gender can be related to sex which typically determines hormones levels and therefore certain behaviors, gender is not definitive of one's sex, or ones hormones. It is related, but not synonymous with ones sex.

Personality and Gender: A troubling conflation.

Now is the point we have to make another distinction. The conversation between sex and traditional genders of masculine and feminine can be elaborated or explained with differences in hormones and upbringing which have huge impacts on ones behaviors. However, the discussion on gender has fractured into hundreds of identities, all separate from each other. Here is a web page that describes some of the more popular gender identities: http://genderfluidsupport.tumblr.com/gender

Upon reading it, I had the realization of what had happened. People had begun to conflate personality and gender. While gender has always been undeniably tied with sex, it has also be tied to personality, but that is the flow. Personality is influenced by gender, which is influenced by sex and hormones. Gender has always been a dichotomy of masculine and feminine, but the conversation has devolved unfortunately, and we have begun discussing personality as if it is the same as gender and sex.

Lets look at a few:
Demifluid: the feeling your gender being fluid throughout all the demigenders; the feeling of having multiple genders, some static and some fluid
Demiflux: the feeling of having multiple genders, some static and some fluctuating
Demigender: a gender that is partially one gender and partially another
Domgender: having more than one gender yet one being more dominant than the others

To me, these are just describing normal people. Like myself and my mother, and really everyone else I know. We all have aspects of both feminine and masculine gender. This new literature though is trying to create distinctions that don't need to be created. The above genders, to me, aren't genders, and they aren't actually different. Really they are just personalities, and similar ones at that.
Condigender: a gender that is only felt during certain circumstances
This one reminds me a how people behave differently in different situations, how our personalities change to meet the needs of our environment. Or when we act differently, to achieve a particular goal, like when you go to a job interview. The problem I have isn't the existence of this, but rather the language used to describe it. I identify with may of the 'genders' in the list, I just think calling them genders is silly and inaccurate.
Genderpunk: a gender identity that actively resists gender norms
To me this is most children with rebellious natures.
Molligender: a gender that is soft, subtle, and subdued
To me this is my girlfriend and my grandma's personalities.
Oneirogender: coined by anonymous, “being agender, but having recurring fantasies or daydreams of being a certain gender without the dysphoria or desire to actually be that gender day-to-day”
Like daydreaming, or using your imagination? I've done this myself, and it doesn't even seem like a personality quirk, let alone a gender. Having a fantasy doesn't seem to me to be the same as having a gender.
Biogender: a gender that feels connected to nature in some way
Like people who hike? I'm sorry, I'm getting a little cheeky as we go through these, I know. After making the distinction between sex and gender, gender and personality, I grow more dissatisfied with the language being used. I don't consider these genders. They're preferences, they're quirks, they're personality traits, they are separate and different in kind from gender and sex. They might be related in some way, but they are different, and using the same word to describe them all is problematic.

At the end of the day, gender and personality are basically behavior and how we act in the world. From the time we are children to the day we die, they are both in flux, and can change. Regardless of your attraction, your sex, or identity, your personality evolves and changes over time.

While this is america, and we are free to say what we want, we should strive for specificity, and try to make distinctions intelligently.

Back to the article in question:

This article really provoked me, not in an offensive way so to speak, but in a thoughtful way that made me consider how I used language. It also made me think of the assumptions within us that are reinforced by the way we use language and the way we talk about certain things.
For the first 18 years of Miriam’s life, I was sure I was raising a daughter. And I was. Until that daughter told me they were neither female or male, and that I should switch to “they/them/their” pronouns when referring to them in the third person.
This assumes several things. Firstly, that sex is fluid. I don't think it is. While people can be born intersex, and hormone imbalances as well as environment can change behaviors, in general I would put sex in a different category than gender or personality. I would say that gender, personality, identity, all can change and evolve, but I can't see how sex falls in the same category without some kind of 'event.'

Now, the article mentions the importance of using pronouns for people who identify as a different gender. I think that calling someone a different pronoun because their personality or even their gender doesn't make a lot of sense. Regardless of how you feel, you are a man or a woman, a him or a her. You can a feminine man, or a masculine woman, but you are still a man or a woman. I guess I would argue that pronouns are tied to sex, not gender. We call male animals and people 'him' or 'he,' we call female animals or people 'her' or 'she,' and it has nothing to do with gender. It has everything to do with sex. Again, you can identify however you want, people can request to be called whatever they want. This is america, and you are free to do so. I'm simply making the argument that altering ones pronouns is inaccurate and confusing. I'm not saying it's immoral.

However, I would make the argument that while people should be free to call themselves whatever they choose, we should also encourage people not to do so in a reasonable way. I shouldn't ask to be referred to as a woman, no more than I should ask to be referred to as a rabbit, or popsicle, or anything else that isn't myself. Unless I'm a child, in which case indulging in fantasy and play can be valuable tools to learn about the world. They always can be, but it's important to be able to ground oneself in reality.

Some humans might identify as asexual. I've read stories of people identifying as another species, as extraterrestrial beings, just to name a few. Regardless of how they identify, and they can identify however they want, their observable actuality or their sexual capacity, their biology is. It just is. That is the foundation of science and observation, and moving away from that is a very dangerous thing to do.

Identity is subjective, biology is objective.