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The Three-Gender Problem
Piling a problem higher and deeper doesn't work
First, a Foundational Issue
Few things in life are simple, but this one is. Sex is not gender. Gender is not sex. If the conversation doesn’t start from the reality of that difference, we can never get to a place where we respect individuals for who they are.
Sex is the product of chromosomes, bodily organs, and hormones. These traits are biological realities, but they vary by individual person.
Gender is a socially dependent designation. Genders vary by time and place because they are defined differently in different societies at different times. A “man” in 2020s America is different than a “man” in 1920s America, much less a“man” in any time in any other society. What’s more, within a particular society’s amorphous designations of genders, there are wide variations among individuals. There aren’t only two immutable, concrete genders.
What Gender Is
A gender is a set of attitudes and actions that is defined for us. You don't get to decide what attributes make a "man" or "woman." The definitions were set before you got here. How you are and how you act will be in the context of those social definitions.
