Why do we think there are only 2 genders?

Question 1

Hi everyone, I’m Grace.

Answer 1

Firstly, I’d just like to wish you all a happy pride month. I thought I’d try and do something topical for my TED, so today, I’ll be discussing gender through the lens of 3 different scientific disciplines: sociology, physiology and anthropology.

Question 2

So, let’s dive right in with the sociology

Answer 2

and my theory of choice, social constructionism. At some point in your life you probably will have heard someone say: ‘gender is a social construct’, and understood the idea, but not necessarily the science behind it. As you might have figured, social constructionism examines the extent to which experiences can be defined as social constructs.

Question 3

Social constructs themselves

Answer 3

are a little harder to define, but I scoured some sources, smushed them together and came up with this: a social construct is a shared idea or perception that only exists because it has been created and accepted by the people in a society. Essentially, a social construct is not a representation of any objective or inherent reality – ‘the only meaning they have is the meaning given to them by people.’

Question 4

So, how, late at night

Answer 4

when we ponder the meaning of life, do we decide what is objectviely ‘real’, and what is socially constructed? Well, I’m hoping that, like me, we have some English literature eggheads in the crowd with a flair for the melodramatic – any fans of Cormac Mccarthy’s ‘The Road’ 1) well done, you have excellent taste, and 2) this activity will be right up your street.

Question 5

This is how I picture things:

Answer 5

imagine you are the protagonist of a post-apocalyptic narrative, abandoned by your parents on some foreboding craggy looking rock, you’ve never met or seen another human being in your life. In other words, you have no society. Now, would the concept you’re currently ruminating on still affect you?

Question 6

Having completed this exercise,

Answer 6

you might be surprised at how many things have been constructed around you. It is important at this point to note that a social construct is not inherently a bad thing. Picture yourself again, the sole survivor of the human race. Now, even at out most misanthropic I’d like to think I speak for the vast majority of us when I say that this image is not a particularly appealing one. As human beings, we place immense value on the idea of society. We hate to feel lonely and we love to belong. The people in our lives are, in most cases, what give us validation, what give us meaning.

Question 7

In order to survive

Answer 7

with any semblance of similarity to the humanity we know to today, human beings need society. Society necessitates social constructs. Thus, logically, they cannot be innately bad.

Question 8

However, neither logically are they

Answer 8

innately good. Social constructionism posits that humans construct in order to make sense of the objective world - we categorise and structure so that we can relate to one another in the society we have built. But, and this is crucial, the world that we as individuals understand it is not the world as a whole. The limits of our exposure are part of what make life interesting, they remind us that there is always something we have yet to discover and understand - it is the birth of the phrase ‘you learn something new every day’, and the infamous “Reigate bubble”.

Question 9

We construct socially to understand,

Answer 9

but that does not mean that we can enforce these constructs to control that which we have yet to understand. We must be aware of when social constructs we have built provide shelter, and when they have been outgrown – to become cages. That, I believe, is the crux of social constructionism.

Question 10

So, onto Section 2,

Answer 10

my favourite activity: we are going to learn some new words!

Question 11

Firstly, biological sex:

Answer 11

a person’s biological reproductive status. Now, as is also a motif in the English language, this definition contains words and ideas that we might also need help defining, so never fear if you’re not actually sure what ‘biological reproductive status’ means - I’ll be coming onto that later. Fundamentally, there are 3 examples of sex: male, female and intersex.

Question 12

Now, gender;

Answer 12

a parallel idea but with some crucial differences: the attitudes, behaviours, norms and roles that society or culture associates with an individual’s sex. For example, man, woman or genderqueer.

Question 13

Now, as promised, we’re going to explore

Answer 13

the disparity between sex and gender in a bit more detail. There are 7 facets of reproductive biological status, what we have previously defined as your ‘sex’. Crucially, each of these 7 facets has variation.

Question 14

Your chromosomes, commonly construed to either

Answer 14

be XX or XY with all of the “corresponding” biology, can actually be both present, or with extra Xs. XY we might know as the male chromosomes, but can also be present with the female genitalia, but male gonads and internal sex organs. Hormone production and response exhibit even more variation because they are, of course, continuous, rather than discrete, variables. For example, high hormone production testosterone levels but low reception, would result in the inexpression of any of the secondary sex characteristics attributed to that hormone; body hair for example.

Question 15

This example I’ve described is

Answer 15

actually that of Emily Quinn, an intersex woman who did her own TED talk, available on Youtube (it’s very good and you should definitely give it a watch if you get the chance!) She makes the compelling point that she ‘can’t think of a single human trait that there is only 2 options for’ – and I challenge you to try and do so now. One example that I think provides a certain, but not complete, degree of comparison, is hair colour.

Question 16

Now, your instinctive reaction might be

Answer 16

that hair colour can have no comparison to sex, but I ask you, why not? As we have just covered, there is immense diversity in biological reproductive status, just as there is in hair colour. Now, the more observant among you might have realised that this, in fact, is not my natural hair colour. I can categorically tell you that never once have I been told that dyeing my hair is ‘unnatural’. Biologically, I have light brown hair that grows out ginger at my roots. Personally, I feel much more ‘me’ with dark brown hair, because it matches my eyebrows.

Question 17

No-one has ever once questioned this preference in me as invalid.

Answer 17

Now, it is also important to note that this comparison can only be stretched so far before it becomes slightly ludicrous – my ginger roots, for example, have never caused me what I can only imagine must be the unbearable pain and discomfort of dysphoria. But I think there is a logical comparison here – what is about sex, and consequently gender transitions, that make people so uncomfortable, when we have no qualms socially editing other biological polygenic phenotypes?

Question 18

And, speaking of gender transitions,

Answer 18

that leads me neatly onto my next slide - an explanation of the simplified gender spectrum. Here we have some more definitions: a cisgender person is a person whose gender identity and gender expression align with sex assigned at birth – someone who is not genderqueer (a person whose gender identity does not align with gender binarism, who may redefine gender or decline to define themselves as gendered).

Question 19

Now, you will have heard me mention

Answer 19

gender dysphoria in the last slide – that is defined as discomfort or distress associated with a discrepancy between a person’s gender identity and their sex assigned at birth.

Question 20

Now, I realise, having gone through it myself,

Answer 20

that once we’ve learnt about cisnormativity and start to realise the validity of gender multiplicity, it can be a lot to wrap your head around. One of the easiest points to start, then, is pronouns. Specifically, they/them pronouns, not used in the plural sense as is often misconstrued, but because they are gender neutral (the linguistic term for this is ‘epicene’).

Question 21

It’s worth pointing out, too, at this point that the suggestion sometimes used

Answer 21

that they/them pronouns are a modern invention is fallacy; indeed the first record of singular they is by good ol’ Chaucer himself, in 1386. But you don’t need to know Chaucerian English to understand singular they, as I’ve tried to illustrate in my little ‘pronoun practice’ section above.

Question 22

Now, it may sound silly, phonologically I know

Answer 22

the alliteration can undercut it slightly, but I do genuinely believe the easiest way to adjust to someone’s new pronouns is to practice in your head – you’ll be surprised by how quickly you adapt!
To help, I’ve included a slide with a selection of genderqueer people.

Question 23

Section 3:

Answer 23

now I realise I’ve gone on a bit of an English tangent, as anyone in my biology class knows I am wont to do, so I guess I’d better complete my science quota, too. With this in mind, I’m going to speed you through one example of an anthropological perspective on gender, and how it can be used to counter arguments against the validity of gender multiplicity.

Question 24

A brief side note before we begin, I’ve noticed a trend in modern debating,

Answer 24

or that is, debating fueled by either willing or accidental ignorance, which I’ve desperately tried to avoid in this talk, and that is the technique I’ve labelled ridiculous extrapolation. A third gender they say, outraged; flabberghasted. And you know what comes next: ‘well then, I identify as an attack helicopter’, they sling at you and they smirk that smirk that tells you they’ve been planning that comeback for a while and just been itching to strike.

Question 25

Well, here’s an interesting fact to counter

Answer 25

that kind of mockery, and it’s that the maximum number of genders any studied society has institutionalized is seven. None of which, I can assure you, have been attack-helicopter related.

Question 26

Now, onto business -

Answer 26

studying the case of the Zapotec community that lives in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, population 100,000. It’s important to mention that this community is not alone with the institutionalisation and integration of a ‘third gender’ (which is a sociological concept generally understood to mean any gender ‘other’ than men and women). I was curious so I timed myself, and it took me less than 8 minutes to find at least 24 examples – imagine what we could uncover with some concentrated research!

Question 27

So, the ‘third gender’ in the Zapotec community

Answer 27

are the muxes – defined as ‘transgender people with characteristics sui generis (that’s just scientist speak for ‘unique’) in relationship to a concrete sociocultural environment’. Now, that all sounds very complex, and I actually much prefer the way the muxes choose to define themselves, which is, by the way, exactly what happens.

Question 28

Muxe status is entirely self-identified,

Answer 28

which is one of the few close comparisons to western transgenderism that can be made. Muxes identify as ‘neither man nor woman, but all the contrary’; perhaps what we might most closely align to agenderism.

Question 29

Now, there is a brief little side-note here that can split this slide into two,

Answer 29

and that is on the concept of ‘microlabelling’. Now, I’ve met a lot of people, both my age and older, that do not like the idea of ‘microlabelling’. Firstly, you can tell that we, socially, are not a fan of microlabelling, because of the name we have given it. You can probably tell that I am not a fan of the fact that society is not a fan of microlabelling, and the fact that that is the name that we have given it, because I keep going like ‘this’ every time I say it.

Question 30

The prefix ‘micro’ I think,

Answer 30

is a linguistic clue into the lack of importance we assign the validation and acceptance that these specific labels can provide people, and personally, I think that that is a very sad thing. But, I think we’ve gotten into enough lexicon for a 10 minute presentation, so I guess I’ll have to come back to that another time. To link, ‘agender’ might be considered a ‘microlabel’, that is, it is an identity that comes under the umbrella term of ‘genderqueer’.

Question 31

Juchitan, the language of the Zapotecs,

Answer 31

have approximately 23 terms for sub-classifications of muxes, as far as I could find out anyway. None of these are dismissed as lacking in importance or validity. The reason why I find this interesting, is the observation from the study that the Zapotec community ‘does not respond to binary, patriarchal and heteronormative logic’ - that is, their language has evolved alongside their culture so that it does not marginalise those who we would, should they choose to relocate to the ‘Reigate Bubble’. They have socially constructed to shelter those who we have chosen to shun.

Question 32

This celebration of diversity manifests

Answer 32

in the Velas festival, exclusively for muxes, which our initial instinct might be to compare to Pride. However, crucially, Velas does not hold the same symbolism as Pride, at all. Velas evolved as a celebration in its truest form, of the free and liberated beauty of diversity. Pride didn’t evolve at all – it was a revolution in the face of marginalisation and discrimination, the prejudice of which is still felt, and continues to underly, the marches to this very month.

Question 33

Finally, I’d like to address one argument

Answer 33

used to counter the sociological argument for the validity of gender multiplicity, and that is the classic insular view of Western supremacy that arrogantly asserts that we needn’t, indeed shouldn’t, wish to emulate any aspect of other, less world-dominating cultures, because they are not so very world-dominating is ours. It’s clear, we say, that that society is not as successful as ours – maybe it is this binary, patriarchal heteronormative logic that got us here after all!

Question 34

There are many ways to tackle this argument,

Answer 34

but there is something specific to the Zapotecs, indeed what made me choose them as an example in the first place, that help to undermine it. Fundamentally, we have to remember that the success of a society or civilisation is relative to their ideology. We live in a capitalist society, so our success will be considered with this as a scale.

Question 35

This is illustrated quite clearly

Answer 35

through the word ‘rich’ - a synonym that encompasses both material and spiritual wealth, because we don’t tend to form much of a distinction. However, the Zapotec ideology is summed up in this quote: ‘prestige is based on the one who gives the most, not the one who has the most’. It is clear to us, I think, that the Zapotecs are not intent on world-domination. Perhaps, we are both equally successful societies, simply with different aims at the outset.

Question 36

Section 4: so, what have we learnt?

Answer 36

Think back to a couple of slides ago, I showed you some photos of some gender non-conforming individuals. A few of you might have rightly noticed that all of them were born post 20th century - a valid observation.

Question 37

However, an easy and yet invalid conclusion

Answer 37

to make from that valid observation is that transgenderism, and gender multiplicity, is simply a ‘trend’. This, I hope my brief exploit into social anthropology, has illustrated. People are not ‘sheep’ for discovering a term which provides internal validation, which quietens the pain of dysphoria, and for celebrating that new-found self-love.

Question 38

Because here’s what I don’t understand -

Answer 38

humans are supposed to celebrate uniqueness, right? Maya Angelou famously said: in diversity there is beauty and there is strength’. It’s what we tell all the kids that stand out, so that they feel comfortable in their own skin. The world would be boring if we were all the same – we’ve probably all said it before, and I’m sure we probably all believe it – I certainly do.

Question 39

To me, then, the concepts of transgenderism and gender multiplicity

Answer 39

hold immense capacity for beauty. Surely, surely, I think, this should be their baseline. An opportunity for people to put a name to their discomfort (dysphoria), and to find a beautiful antidote in self-love and authentic self-expression. So why then, do I get the sense that the vast majority of people approach this conversation with suspicion, derision and doubt?

Question 40

Think about it, we all feel at our happiest,

Answer 40

when we are being loudly, proudly and unapologetically ourselves. This is really living, we think. Why would I want to live as anyone else? How could I, even? Nobody should be forced to live life hating the skin they’ve been dressed in. We don’t get a choice over our sex, we don’t get a choice over our gender identity - so how can we mock and condemn those whose simply don’t match?

Question 41

George Herbert Mead states that

Answer 41

‘social reconstruction is part of the process of human social evolution’. Now, I like the world ‘evolution’. Etymologically speaking, it literally means ‘an opening of what was rolled up’. I like to think, then, that an evolution is a discovery of that which already had the capacity to be there. The theme of these TEDxyouth talks is ‘what’ve we learned’. Now, with the classic Grace-Beglan chaos I wasn’t actually aware of that until a few days ago. However, I now realise just how neatly it fits into the topic I had already chosen to discuss.

Question 42

The realisation that gender is a socially constructed phenomenon,

Answer 42

and the ensuing acceptance of this idea, does not mean that we have to tear down the fabric of everything we understand about the roles we’ve played in our society for centuries, or anything so hyperbolic that some might have us believe. Absolutely, there is personal power is dismissing a construct, and liberating yourself from the control other might seek to exert over you with it as an excuse. But it also gives us the capacity to reconstruct what gender means, without the boundaries, the roles and the expectations.

Question 43

It gives our society a chance to continue its evolution

Answer 43

into what was already there, what is present in many current socities and has simply been hidden from our own. For as Emily Quinn denoted of the intersex population, but rings true for all queer people – we’re not new, or rare, we’re just invisible.’ I believe that a person cannot have an open heart with a closed mind. And closed our minds have been (statistics). We have the beautiful opportunity for a greater openness in the diversity of thinking, being and expression. And that, I think, can only be a good thing. Don’t let anybody tell you it’s not.