When confronting a social issue, people mobilize around gender. The transvaginal ultrasound bill, domestic violence and sexual assault are presented as women's issues. Child custody injustices are men's.
In this column, I will argue that gender has no place in our thought, and so cannot serve as a proper ground for activism.
Imagine that you are a theoretical physicist. As a good physicist, you believe that there are subatomic particles zipping around, doing their thing. One day Kooky Casey comes to you with zer new theory.
According to Casey's theory, in addition to the usual properties like mass and charge, subatomic particles also have fayfolk. The fayfolk love to ride subatomic particles. They have little cowboy hats and spurs and go "Yeehaw" as they fly around.
But, a particle's fayfolk has no relationship to any of its other properties. A particle's being a muon, electron or whatever is consistent with its having or lacking fayfolk. Fayfolk have no causal powers. A particle's fayfolk cannot explain anything. There are no interesting generalizations involving them.
This is the position we find ourselves in with respect to gender. Suppose a female with feminine dispositions wakes up one day and thinks to zerself, "No, this is all wrong. I am a man!" Nothing about this person has changed except for zer gender. Ze can still think burps are gross and have two X chromosomes while being a man.
Two people can be identical in all physical and behavioral respects except that one is a man, and one is a woman. This is because all it takes to be a certain gender is to identify as that gender.
Just as fayfolk are irrelevant to what a particle is like, gender is irrelevant to who we are.
To be clear, the claim is not that gender does not exist. It is that gender is not worth using to describe another or oneself. When you say "Alex is a (wo)man," all you are saying is "Alex is in a group whose members are Alex, Jesse, Pat and so on." This is true, but a waste of breath.
Nor is it that gender is "just" a social construct. Money is a social construct, but a person's wealth has effects on zer life. Gender has no effects and so is irrelevant to anything we might be interested in.
I will respond to objections and then draw out the consequences.
"Gender tracks societal expectations. (Wo)men are people that are expected to act a certain way." Reply: This is simply incorrect. Many people expect transsexual men to play the role of women. They are not thereby women.
"People have strong beliefs about gender. These beliefs are worth talking about, so gender is, too." Reply: A mythologist can be interested in people's beliefs about all kinds of fantastic creatures. However, ze will never use these to describe the world, only people's false beliefs.
Similarly, we need never use gender to describe a person, only false beliefs about that person - maybe even the person's beliefs about zerself. People's beliefs about witches have had effects on the world, but witches have not. We do not use witches to describe the world.
"Women are usually female-bodied, act feminine, and are subject to certain expectations. This makes gender worth talking about." Reply: We can stipulate that fayfolk tend to prefer leptons. They are still explanatorily impotent and have no proper place in our thought.
"Biological sex and femininity-masculinity are not interesting categories. We should talk about chromosomes and primary and secondary sex characteristics on the one hand and dispositions such as empathy or outspokenness on the other."
Reply: This is a more radical version of my own position and is in its spirit. Depending on what biologists and psychologists say, we may accept this.
"This position invalidates the experience of trans* people." Reply: My position says that anybody who identifies strongly with a gender is making a mistake. The position does not say that it is illegitimate to present oneself a certain way, want to be identified with a certain set of traits or desire a certain kind of body.
"The end of gendered terms requires a substantial and difficult change in language." Reply: Damn straight it does! Refusing to change for this reason is sloth.
"Easy for you to say!" Reply: As a privileged person, I have never had to deal with many of the hardships my peers have. I am certainly missing something crucial about the experiences of others, and I do need to learn more about your experiences. If you come from a position of privilege and have found my argument convincing, these considerations should undermine your confidence.
However, this is not enough on its own to challenge the conclusion. A proper objection would establish that calling someone a (wo)man relays some information.
If we abandon gender, we cannot identify social ills as gendered. The issues identified above are not men's or women's, but whoever's affected. This does not reduce our obligation to help them.
Gender can serve as a focal point for activism, but only if we lie.
David Hefer '12 realizes that the issue - specifically the effectivity of genderless activism - is more subtle than 800 words allows. Please write to zer at
david_hefer@brown.edu before publishing your devastating objections.
