Kamangar 1

Nina Kamangar

Professor Mason

Senior Thesis Seminar

April 27, 2019

What’s left of gender?: The Metaphysics of Woman, Man, and Non-Binary Identities

1. Introduction

Gender is no longer what we once thought it was. Those who we once thought were

indisputably women can now be men, those we once thought were men can now be women, and some

others are coming out as neither. Although in certain cultures these concepts are nothing new, in

societies such as the US, gender as we know it and enforce it is undergoing a revolution. LGBTQIA+

movements are urging the acceptance of transgender and non-binary gender identities in which one can

identify as something other than the male or female designation they were assigned at birth. With this

uncoupling of assigned sex at birth from one’s gender identity, it seems that the very basis for what

makes someone of a gender is no longer clear. Many wonder if genders have hence become empty

categories, ungrounded in any particular material membership requirements. In the social justice

interest of accepting trans and non-binary people, some propose we ought of revise our understanding

of what gender is, while others think that perhaps it would make more sense just to just ditch the

concept of gender altogether. Is gender becoming obsolete, or can something be salvaged? Post-gender

revolution, what’s left of gender?

I argue that gender as a concept does not need to be abandoned in the interest of trans and non-

binary liberation, and in fact, ought to be retained and revised to accommodate the full diversity of

gender identities. This paper offers a pro-revolutionary theory of gender that is inclusive and accepting

of trans and non-binary identities in addition to the traditional man and woman categories of gender,

while still remaining coherent. To do so, I will first present my guiding desiderata for a proper theory of
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gender, as informed by my alignment with one of three sociologically-observed attitudes towards

gender. Next I will evaluate other theories of gender against these desiderata, before I present my own

positive view falling within in the gender identity grouping of theories about gender. I posit that the

meaning of gender has to do with gender identity, and that what it means to identify with a gender is to

carry an ideal which at least partially structures one’s own self-understanding and informs how one

moves through the world in a way that I analogize to the function of a spiritual totem. Finally, I will

respond to potential criticisms of my theory and conclude with takeaways.

2. Three social attitudes towards gender, and how they’ve shaped my desiderata

On the sociological level, I’ve observed three general groupings of attitudes towards gender

amongst people in the midst of this conceptual revolution. The most basic is what I’ll call the

reactionary, or gender bigot view, which takes issue with movements towards accepting trans and non-

binary identities. They believe that a coherent theory of gender is impossible if we are to accept that

people can be a gender other than the male or female they were assigned at birth, and hence we retain

the traditional binary, biological view of gender rather than eliminate gender as a concept or revise it.

This view insists that gender is a straightforward matter directly determined by biological sex assigned

at birth and not personal self-identification. Under this view, biological sex is a stable and unambiguous

fact of the matter, something that is typically easily and obviously determined by one look at a person.

Gender under this view is not only biological, but also binary, meaning everyone is either a man or a

woman with no other options of something in-between or other-than. However, the supposedly

biological basis of this generally held viewpoint is challenged.

In her book Sexing the Body, Anne Fausto-Sterling challenges the category of biological sex by

arguing that it is a constructed concept rather than a natural and obvious distinction. Biological sex

apart from gender is actually a fairly recent rather than primordial concept, emerging from Western

science only around the turn of the 20th Century (Fausto-Sterling 107). Often science is thought of as a
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“pure” matter of understanding the natural world as it is, free of projected cultural ideas, but the reality

is is that science is a field infused with social politics and historical biases. When in fact, culturally-

inherited ideas about gender have shaped how scientific experiments are theoretically framed and how

results are interpreted to fit preconceived notions. This is especially true in the case of scientific studies

seeking to understand the difference between men and women. Various biological elements such as the

hormones estrogen and testosterone, gonads (testes and ovaries), and XX and XY chromosomes are

commonly viewed as the essential markers of biological sex that give rise to the various secondary

feminine and masculine characteristics such as beard growth and trends in weight distribution that we

are socially conditioned to use in our radars for determining a person’s gender upon seeing them.

However, countless cases demonstrate there is no central biological marker that can consistently

indicate which gender a person will socially be perceived as based on their appearance given by the

secondary traits. For example, there are people with androgen-insensitivity who appear according to

our societal standards to be indisputably female down to every characteristic from the wide hips to the

female genitals to the feminine facial features, but they in fact have the characteristically male XY

chromosomes and hidden testes (Fausto-Sterling 53). Culturally, we are inclined to assign this person to

be “female” and hence a woman, yet no core determining characteristic can be found across all people

we socially perceive as women in this way.

I explained how there is no essential biological marker that determines whether one is male or

female, and from this follows that the secondary sex differences cannot be considered feminine or

masculine consistently either except in a socially-informed rather than the assumed biologically-

determined sense. Traits such as softer facial features and more curvaceous figures for example are

considered feminine and attributable primarily to females, whereas prominent jawlines and broad

shoulders relative to narrow hips are masculine traits seen mostly in males. However, any secondary

characteristic can be seen in either sex. Even characteristics like the tendency for those assigned male
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at birth to have larger thyroid cartilages, Adam’s apples, than females is never consistent. The smallest

thyroid cartilage in a male is smaller than the largest female one (Urbanova). If sex were truly a neat

binary, all the males’ cartilage would be larger than all the females’. Instead the standard deviation

when trying to discern data for sex differences is only trivial (Fausto-Sterling 138). This wide sex

variance and overlap of traits commonly attributed to males versus females is true of countless

characteristics labeled masculine or feminine, both on the physical and psychological levels (Fausto-

Sterling 143). These traits we socially take to be indicators of biological sex upon sizing up someone’s

appearance are never a sure sign of what someone’s gonads, chromosomes, or hormonal makeup are.

And even those supposedly sex-determining, primary factors don’t always align with the expected

secondary feminine and masculine characteristics. No consistent biological rule seems to hold up when

determining sex.

These kinds of biological pairs from the vagina versus penis to the prominent versus minimal

thyroid cartilage were assumed to diametrically correspond to femininity and masculinity before the

collection of empirical evidence and the construction of this evidence into theories of binary biological

sex. This fact is contrary to the widely-held misconception that the raw facts from scientific inquiry

formed the basis of our societal concepts of binary gender as given by sex. Over and over, continually

conflicting evidence from different studies over history have continued to complicate this simple binary

to suggest a need for a spectrum or simply non-gendered biological framework. And yet, many

scientists over history have continued to hold onto these associations of parts to gender in attempts to

find some biological grounds for our social radars of determining if someone is male or female (Fausto-

Sterling 191). Biology has only provided the evidence to challenge the societal “common sense” of

male and female sex rather than confirm its supposed obviousness.

The tragic result of attachment to socially constructed concepts of binary gender being carried

into science is that biological sex is also being literally constructed by the widespread practice of
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corrective surgeries on intersex infants born with ambiguous genitals that do not fit either the male or

female standard. Physicians in the US to this day are operating on newborn children’s genitals so as to

“correct” them to conform to societally-accepted ideas about gender rather than motivated by any

genuine medical need for health and survival. What is especially disturbing about this practice is that

the full information about why these procedures are being done is often withheld from parents or lied to

them about, again to reinforce the notion that their child fits either of the two male or female sex

categories and they simply have some abnormalities that need to be fixed, rather than acknowledge that

their child’s sex is somewhere in between. This makes being intersex a pathology, and the “corrective”

procedures effectively erase sex variance. Intersexuality is also not as uncommon as one might think,

with an estimated 1.7% of all births falling into this category before “correction” (Fausto-Sterling 51).

Considering how there are billions of people on this Earth, this seeming minority cannot be thought of

as insignificant. And yet, their existence is marginalized and segregated off as rare special cases, only

kept from jeopardizing the entire binary system due to their erasure through unconsenting “corrective”

procedures at birth. For cases of intersexuality that lean more towards what is typed as one binary sex

or the other, procedures are usually done to conform to that closest option, and the result is a

reinforcement of a biological framework that continues to prioritize social norms of conformity to an

idea of normality over respect for humankind’s naturally vast diversity. There is no health related

necessity for these surgeries, and they are continued only so as to enforce a societal notion of normality

upon otherwise healthy babies (Fausto-Sterling 95).

The bigot reactionary view rests upon this view that the nature of biological sex is factual and a

black or white matter simply determined by genitals or chromosomes, when upon closer inspection

biological sex is revealed to be a category arising out of societal ideas about gender rather than the

gender arising out of sex. The entire reactionary argument that trans and non-binary identities are

counterfactual hence falls apart and becomes completely hypocritical. All understandings of gender,
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whether they be the mainstream binary view or one expanded to include identities outside the binary,

are social concepts rather than extensions of some indisputable biological distinction. Gender is not a

biological category as the reactionaries posit, but a social one.

Beyond the reactionary view, there are two more progressive or gender-revolutionary views

seen in communities inclusive of trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming identities. One is the

gender abolitionists, who are in line with the progressive politics around gender and reject the view that

gender is determined by biological sex, and instead view gender as a social construct. This view is

accepting of norm-deviating expressions of gender and sexuality, but views gender identity as

something of a nuissance that is currently politically necessarily but will inevitably or hopefully fall

away with further societal progress. Like the reactionary view, they believe that deviating from binary

gender norms and roles associated with biological sex leads the entire concept of gender to become

incoherent. Unlike the reactionary view, however, they do believe in freedom of gender expression

rather than enforcement of adherence to binary genders as determined by biological sex. Gender

abolitionists see gender as an entire concept in itself to be an unnecessary, convoluted, and oppressive

hindrance to the progressive, liberated vision of free expression of gender through appearance and

other physical and lifestyle components that we typically think of as gendered.

The second progressive view of gender is the gender revisionists, who don’t think gender as a

concept is unilaterally oppressive, but rather, something to be revised in our theoretical understanding

and practical usage so as to be more inclusive and less oppressive. I endorse the gender revisionist view

for several reasons. One reason is that demonstrably gender identity and gender in general as a concept

are not always a bad thing, but can be a good or neutral thing as a way to communicate or understand

oneself. Another reason is that gender abolitionists may inadvertently trivialize trans and non-binary

issues by erasing the experiences of trans people who do not physically transition but who still feel

strongly about having an identity they’d like to be understood and respect. By over prioritizing freedom
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of gender expression and deviation from gender norms in their liberative agenda, they do not

acknowledge these people as valid. They only recognize cases of externally-recognizable, physical

gender norm deviation as politically relevant, rather than also seeing there is also an important internal

component to gender. Abolitionists may phase out gender as a concept, while there may still be

lingering issues surrounding gender, and hence this creates a blinding effect where the conceptual

framework to understand forms of oppression is no longer available. This is analogous to the issue of a

lack of language to speak about racism in countries with a liberal rhetoric of color blindness. If gender

is eventually not considered real and existent, its social effects become difficult to acknowledge or

communicate.

Informed by my alignment with the gender revisionist perspective, especially in light of the

politics surrounding queer gender identity and expression, I have arrived at a list of desiderata for the

most accurate theory of gender. My requirements of a proper theory of gender are:

D1) It must understand gender as real, because it has real social effects

D2) It must understand gender as a potentially good or neutral thing, because this is

demonstrably true

D3) It must accommodate trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming identities, because to

not do so is counter to the progressive political agenda of gender liberation

Gender abolitionists want to eliminate the concept of gender so as to liberate trans and non-

binary people oppressed by binary gender systems, and some abolitionists even go to the extreme of

having an eliminativist view of gender. They argue that gender is an entirely false concept that is not

really tracking anything, and that society needs to abolish this useless and non-functional concept

before it does more harm. However, I argue that the eliminativist-abolitionist view is in contradiction

with their intended progressive and liberating aim, succumbing to a similar pitfall as the general

abolitionists as I described earlier. D1 must be taken as a foundational given, because an eliminativist

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view of gender wherein gender is not accepted to be real in any sense risks jeopardizing progressive

political agendas. Eliminativism about gender depletes us of the necessary explanatory resources for

understanding oppressive realities as they presently are and bridging that present to a more liberating

reality (Haslanger 1995, 116). Theories such as my own aim to provide this sort of explanatory

resource by acknowledging gender is real and able to be understood. All the competing theories I will

be evaluating also accept D1.

D2 is taken on so as to reflect the lived experience of gender, across both trans and cisgender

communities. In the literature on the metaphysics of gender, this desideratum is frequently unprioritized

by feminist philosophers who define gender as a social class so as to speak to many cisgender women’s

experience of being oppressed on the basis of their gender. The most famous of these is Sally

Haslanger, who argues that being subordinated on the basis of one’s presumed female biological role in

reproduction is definitional of being a woman, and being privileged due to having the presumed male

role is definition of being a man (Haslanger 2000, 228). However, this does not make sense of

transwomen, who are born into the priveleged man gender class, yet who willingly choose to identify

with womanhood. By her view, this person would nonsensically want to be oppressed. Furthermore, it

seems demonstrably true that there are not only transwomen, but also cisgender women or trans people

other than transwomen as well who may experience oppression on the basis of their gender yet who

still view their gender as part of their identity that they are proud of and hence something that is not

unilaterally negative.

D3, requiring a theory of gender to accommodate cisgender as well as trans, non-binary, and

gender non-conforming identities, is crucial to retain in the interest of social justice. These identities are

frequently trivialized by the gender bigots who think non-mainstream ways of understanding gender

are simply fictional make-believe not to be accepted or respected. Since 2013 there have been at least

128 hate-motivated murders of trans people in the US, and the year 2018 saw 26 of these (Human
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Rights Campaign). This disproportional amount of violence trans and gender non-conforming people

face is nothing short of a human rights crisis, and is likely tied to the common perception of trans

perspectives as incorrect, unnatural, or marginal, and hence trivial. A theory that is complicit in this

marginalization of trans perspectives are hence also complicit in these targeted hate trends. In response,

a proper theory of gender must take on D3 to explain how being transgender or identifying with a non-

binary gender is valid and not incoherent, and hence not something to be attacked.

3. Evaluation of gender-critical theories

There are many theories of gender, but most do not satisfy all these desiderata. One common

grouping of well-known theories I call gender-critical, referred to as such due to their being primarily

guided by the feminist political aim of dismissing the mainstream biologically-determined view of

gender in order to couch a critique of societal sexism. These theories are characterized by analyzing the

ways in which gender is societally inherited rather than something essential to a person’s innate nature.

Sally Haslanger’s theory is one of the most well known of these. As I’ve previously described,

Haslanger takes gender to be a social class. To be a woman is to be oppressed on the basis of one’s

biological sex or the observer’s assumed imagination of it and its relation to reproductive roles

(Haslanger 2000, 42). On the other hand, to be a man is to be on the privileged end of this power scale.

Gender identity under this view is merely an internalization of norms for proper feminine or masculine

behavior according to society (Haslanger 2000, 28).

Haslanger’s theoryfails to fulfill D2 and D3 because it does not explain the case of the trans

woman, someone who is born into the privileged gender class as a man but wants to transition to the

lower class of woman. Because to be a woman is to be oppressed, the woman gender is considered

definitionally negative rather than neutral with potential for being positive as D2 requires. It follows

that this theory does not make sense of trans women’s identities as D3 requires, because if what it

means to be a woman is to be oppressed, trans women who do not “pass” as women are hence not
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oppressed on the basis of their perceived biologically female sex, and hence are not counted as women

even though they identify as such. The theory also does not go outside the binary of man and woman to

acknowledge other identities that exist and explain gender in those terms either. In these ways,

Haslanger’s view prioritizes the perspectives of cisgender women and their experience with societal

oppression, and in doing so leaves a lot more to be explained about those who identify with a gender of

their own accord.

Like Haslanger, Judith Butler is another major figure in feminist philosophy with a gender-

critical theory. Her theory of gender takes gender as a performance, emphasizing that gender is not an

intrinsic or innate characteristic of a person that then manifests externally. For Butler, gender is not

something one is, but rather something one does. She writes that “there is no gender identity behind the

expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said

to be its results” (Butler 1990, 25). For example, what it is to be a woman is to act like a woman by

exhibiting certain gendered behavior as encouraged by societal norms. These gendered qualities are not

stemming from some inner identity or biological essence, but rather, the gender identity is comprised of

the behavior that is gendered (Butler 1990, 133). The external informs the internal, not vice versa.

Butler’s theory does satisfy all my desiderata. D1, gender is real because it influences

behaviors, though as a concept is highly constructed and not grounded in anything other than the social.

D2, gender is not necessitated to be negative as with Haslanger. Even though society enforces

performance of the gender we are assigned at birth by incentivizing certain behaviors and discouraging

others through norms, this does not entail that one feel disturbed that their behavior is being societally

influenced in this way, though some may be. D3, this understanding of gender does not outright

exclude trans or non-binary genders, because one can perform those just the same as the traditional

binary genders associated with their sex assigned at birth.

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Though this theory satisfies the desiderata, it is not without issues. Butler’s view is that our

desires to behave in gendered ways come from the unconscious influence of the matrix of social norms

rather than from a conscious understanding of who we are originating internally. This can make sense

of this case and hence does not violate D3, yet still does not seem fitting to the internal experience of

trans and non-binary people. In the case of trans people who choose their gender identity rather than

automatically assume the gender society expects them to, it seems this decision to identify as a different

gender clicked together internally rather than being determined by an external origination. Plenty of

environmental and social factors may have influenced how this person came to make that decision, but

that decision was still made in that person’s own mind. These people come out as a gender after much

internal reflection and inquires into who they authentically are or desire to be. Hence the trans and non-

binary identities in general seem more aptly described by having the being of that gender precede the

doing or performing / expressing of it.

We should also consider a case in which someone only minimally performs their gender. For

example, someone may internally identify as a man though they were assigned female at birth, and they

choose not to perform any masculine-gendered acts beyond just declaring that they are a man. Even so,

they feel strongly about their identity. This kind of minimally-performing trans person still holds

internally an idea of why they feel more drawn to the gender that they do, which is an inner dimension

of gender left unexplained by Butler’s gender as performance view. Butler’s theory claims repeatedly

performing gendered behavior makes for the being of that gender, yet the case of the minimally-

performing trans man shows that there must be something internal that is being left out of the picture.

If gender identity itself were constituted of performing to convey that gender, many people’s gender

identity would seem thinly justified by this view, especially if they appear to perform more things

associated with a different gender.

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Haslanger’s gender-critical theory frames genders as kinds of social classes, which is inadequate

because it can only adequately explain the perspective of a cisgender people whose sole relationships

with their genders are comprised of the privilege or oppression which they afford and leaves no room

for womanhood to be a potentially positive thing. Though Butler provides a theory that satisfies all my

desiderata, it seems that her theory is too focused on gender’s external component relating to behavior

to fully explain what gender means to those who do not perform their gender. It does not reflect how

highly personal, individualized, and self-reflective many trans and non-binary people’s relationship to

gender can be. For this reason, an identity theory of gender is needed in order to more aptly convey this

internal component of gender. A merely gender-critical theory can help us to understand the ways in

which societally imposed notions of gender may influence behavior and the dynamics of sexism, but it

cannot adequately explain how gender is phenomenologically experienced by someone personally

identifying with a gender. For this, a turn back to the internal, though without need of identifying

anything innate, is necessary.

4. Gender as a Social Identity

Other than these theories, there are also a grouping of theories I’ll refer to as gender identity

theories that accommodate D1 and D2, and all attempt to satisfy D3 of ascribing validity to trans, non-

binary, and gender non-conforming gender identities, though I demonstrate that each does not

completely accomplish this aim in a way that encapsulates every experience of identifying with a

gender. My own view aligns with this camp generally by offering my own gender identity theory of

gender. For gender identity theories, what makes you of a particular gender is to sincerely self-identify

as that gender, though each theory varies on what identifying with a gender consists of.

Katharine Jenkins gives a norm-relevancy view, which states that what it means to identify with

a gender is to view certain gender-specific societal norms as relevant to oneself, though not necessarily

following them all (Jenkins 410). For Jenkins, to be of a gender is to carry a particular internal map that
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helps one navigate societally gendered norms, either conforming to them or rejecting them as they go

about their life (Jenkins 421). This theory is in part influenced by Haslanger’s, because gender identity

is the internal mechanism providing one with a protocol for how to navigate different contexts where

gender functions as a class (Jenkins 419). This theory corrects Haslanger’s pitfall by explaining that the

trans woman feels that society’s norms of womanhood are relevant to her and that’s what makes her

woman, even if she is not societally recognized as a woman because she does not pass (Jenkins 411).

The trans woman who does not shave and hence may not pass as a woman according to the societal

mainstream, for example, is still recognized as a woman because she is rejecting the norm she sees as

relevant to her of women needing to shave their legs and to not have facial hair. This update to

Haslanger’s view also avoids the issue of why a trans woman would want to be oppressed, because in

this case, by identifying with womanhood one is not signing up for oppression, but rather a set of

norms which one may cherry pick which they would like to follow and which they would not.

My criticism of Jenkins’ norm-relevancy view is that it is too narrow to speak to the full

diversity of experiences of gender identity. Jenkins’ norm-relevancy view acknowledges that many

people, whether cisgender or transgender, feel that the societal gender norms which correspond to their

gender identity are still relevant to them even if they reject those norms in their own life. However, this

does not explain cases such as a trans man who still is often read as a woman when moving through the

world and hence finds that norms intended for women are still relevant to him. This is a case where the

norms relevant to an individual are norms which do not correspond to their chosen gender identity, and

so norm-relevancy cannot be taken as definitional of identification with a gender.

Another issue with Jenkins’ theory of gender is that it creates difficulty in distinguishing

between different non-binary genders. Jenkins’ theory can only differentiate between non-binary and

binary genders, but not between them, because presently there are less robust, societally recognized

norms for these newer non-binary identities and hence many of them share norms though they remain
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distinct identities. Non-binary identities are defined by Jenkins as a rejection of binary norms, and so

that renders all the various non-binary identities essentially the same, giving no reason within the

theoretical framework to see a definitional difference between them when in fact there are significant

differences. The latest gender identities may not have societally recognized or even subculturally

recognized norms yet, but are still fully formed identities.

For example, some people have very recently begun to identify with inanimate objects or

animals on a gender level. These identities fall into the categories of genders called otherkin, which

include people identifying with stars as stargender people, or with wolves as wolfkin. Very few people

have ever even heard about these genders, and iterations of this type of gender are constantly being

newly innovated, and so even within alternative gender subcultures there are few if any established

norms associated with these genders currently. Even as time passes and the norms for each non-binary

identity become more fleshed out, defined, and distinguished from eachother both within a subculture

or within the whole of society, as Jenkins suggests, a norm-relevancy theory of gender identity cannot

explain what newly emerging genders are in the present except in a negative way contrasted to pre-

existing genders. From this we see that utilizing a norm-relevancy view in defining gender is too

narrow, highlighting just one part of the experience of being a non-binary gender which is navigating

norms which some extremely new genders have not even yet developed yet. On Jenkins’ view, these

genders do not fully exist until they have an associated set of norms, but this cannot be the case if

people are already identifying with them. In light of these cases, what it means to identify with a gender

cannot be solely indicated by finding certain gender norms relevant to oneself.

McKitreck offers a dispositional view of gender identity. McKitrick argues that what it means

to identify with a gender is to be disposed to exhibiting certain gendered characteristics or adhering to

certain gendered norms such that the relevant social group in the present context at hand can recognize

one’s gender (McKitrick 2578). This disposition is multi-tracked, meaning there is no singular way or
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essential requirements to expressing that gendered disposition (McKitrick 2580). One may be disposed

to state they are X gender, wear clothes typically associated with their gender, and so on, and all of

these choices form the manifestation flowing from the disposition. On this view, a trans person may not

be recognized as the gender they are disposed to fulfill in contexts where the relevant social group is a

bunch of gender bigots who take different physical attributes or behaviors to be the cues for gender,

whereas in a different context the gender disposition may become manifest. The gendered behaviors

one is disposed to perform may not manifest in every situation, but this does not need to occur for that

disposition to exist internally within oneself. Hence, the trans person still remains their chosen identity

even in social situations where their identity is not recognized because even if one is misgendered in a

certain situation due to their internal gender not becoming manifest, their gender is still the one which

they are internally disposed to convey.

Even with these advantages on D3 however, this view is too narrow to encapsulate all

experiences of gender identity. McKitreck claims that on her account, gender is a matter of degrees

(McKitreck 2586). For example, if someone identifying as a man begins to tip the scales of how many

feminine things they are disposed to fulfill, they veer into the feminine side of the spectrum. McKitreck

ambiguously describes that if a man displays “sufficiently many sufficiently strong dispositions’’ to

behave in ways that are considered womanly by the enough relevant social groups, then he becomes a

woman (McKitreck 2586). However, a person’s gender identity is not always given by the number or

strength of their dispositions. This man in question may be disposed to fulfill very few masculine

qualities and very many feminine qualities, yet still remain a man. In a case like this, the strength of the

attachment to the identity label itself is more important than the various other dispositions to convey

that identity in the conventional ways relevant to any social group outside oneself. Also, one might be

strongly and frequently disposed to behave in certain gendered ways contrary to the gender they

identify with, due to conditioning by society and habit growing up having lived as a different gender
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for most of their lives before identifying as something else. An agender person who was assigned

female at birth, for example, who does not identify with any gender, may still live and potentially be

annoyed by their subconscious reflex to speak on the higher end of their voice register or to act

femininely in many other ways, yet they are still not a woman. They may have more dispositions to

behave femininely than they do to behave in non-gendered ways, but they are still no more a woman

than they are agender. For these reasons, a dispositional view of gender does not adequately

encapsulate all experiences of gender identity. Dispositions towards exhibiting certain behaviors can

only be part of the picture of what it means to identify with a gender.

A third gender identity theory is Talia Bettcher’s speech-act view, where what it means to

identify with a gender is to feel inclined to declare “I am X gender.” To be a woman is to declare

oneself as such (Bettcher 238). This protects against insincere claims of gender identity, however,

excluding a gender bigot for example who may facetiously claim he’s a woman just to mock the

concept of transgenderism. Only sincere speech-acts coming from an authentic place count as being

indicative of one’s gender. Another feature of this theory is its multiple-meanings view of gender,

wherein subcultural LGBTQIA+ contexts are validated as having their own definition and usage of

gender terms that cannot be regarded as simply an incorrect view of gender when compared to the

mainstream binary biological view. Importantly, this means “trans women count as women and do so

paradigmatically not marginally...as ‘difficult cases’ but owing to the metaphysical facts that accord

with the very meaning of the word ‘man’ and ‘woman’ as deployed in trans subcultures” (Bettcher 242-

243).

Bettcher’s speech-act view has the advantage over Jenkins’ and McKitrick’s views in that it

encapsulates a broader range of experiences of gender identity. Bettcher attempts to satisfy D3 by

arguing that what it means to be a gender is to declare oneself as such (Bettcher 396). However, the

trade off is that in doing so the theory is too “thin.” Jenkins critiques Bettcher’s view for this exact
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reason, pointing out that a mere assertion of one’s identity still begs the question of what is it that

motivates that assertion (Jenkins 727)? Unlike Jenkins’ internal map and McKitrick’s internal

dispositions towards behavior, Betcher’s theory doesn’t refer to any internal or mental mechanism that

accounts for the claim to be of a gender identity. Jenkins argues such a thin view leads the gender bigot

reactionaries to question why we ought to respect gender identity in the political realm, because this

view cannot explain why gender identity is significant given that it is merely an inclination to utter a

phrase.

5. My positive view: Gender as an Abstract Ideal

My own theory of gender presents a fourth option within the gender identity grouping of gender

theories which retains the broad inclusivity of experience afforded by Betcher’s view while being

explanitorily “thicker,” explaining what motivates speech-acts declaring one’s gender. I argue that to

identify with a gender could involve various behaviors, especially ones identified by other theorists on

gender which I’ve surveyed. These could include finding certain gendered norms relevant to you,

aligning oneself with a community of other people of that gender, or drawing inspiration from or

modeling oneself after previous or existing examples of people who are of your gender. However, none

of these can be identified as the defining factor that makes you a person of that gender, and hence what

makes that gender what it is itself as well. The defining factor is the requirement of having the mental

component of carrying an abstract ideal bearing some authentic connection or relationship to the

history, community, or culture of the gender in question, and to view oneself as a particular

instantiation of this ideal. One does not necessarily have to wholly embody this ideal, nor is this

abstract ideal is not some notion of “the” abstract ideal or a universally shared ideal of the gender.

Rather the gender-ideal is a personalized take on what that means for oneself. As I will now elaborate,

this ideal is much like a spiritual totem without the spiritual component of communication with it and

asking for protection as if it were a separate entity with a life beyond yourself.
 Kamangar 18

An ideal is an abstracted concept or conglomeration of ideas about a subject that are considered

emblematic of what it means to be that thing or what that thing involves. It is a conception of

perfection, completeness, excellence, or a standard of something, or the person or thing embodying this

perfection or completeness. As such, gender can be understood as an ideal of the self held in the mind

which through behavior and appearance choices one partakes in instantiating, though not usually in its

full completeness as it exists in the mind.

Gender ideals are functionally similar to spiritual totems. A totem is a feature common to many

Indigenous religions and cultures, especially amongst African, Native American, and Aboriginal

peoples.1 A totem can be defined as an plant or animal species, natural force or element, or spiritual

being with a special relationship with either a group such as a family, tribe, clan, people, or an

individual in other cultures (Bani 151). A group or individual may have one totem, or multiple. The

totem carries characteristics that the associated group or individual identify with, and often is seen as

representing them or being a symbol of who they are (Levi-Strauss 4-5). Coming to know what one’s

totem is can be through inheritance or membership of a group like a tribe or family, or can become

realized by an intuitive or initiatory discovery of being innately drawn to the totem and having it speak

to you on a deep level (Magesa 42). Totems are often understood to be literal spirits or entities that can

be called upon or communicated with, though these more spiritual elements are typically not retained in

the analogy to gender (Magesa 43). Totems also frequently come with their own norms, expectations,

or specific taboos that are to be observed.

The personalized gender ideal is like many kinds of totems in that it is an idea of a way of being

that is held as an abstract ideal in the mind, and which emblemizes certain qualities one instantiates,

1In the anthropological and Religious Studies literature on totems, the feasibility of finding a definition
of totems and totemism across all cultures has been highly debated. I provide my own generality not to
make a claim in this debate about there being some definitional universality to the phenomenon of
totemism, but rather just to give an overview of the various ways totems have been used and
understood in different contexts so as to make my point of analogy.
 Kamangar 19

aspires to instantiate, or otherwise interprets oneself in relation to. The formation of a gender ideal, like

a totem, may begin with a strong inclination or feeling of being drawn to an entity one identifies

outside oneself. For totems this is typically something found in nature, whereas for genders this is

typically informed by pre-existing societal concepts of gender and the communities, culture, and

histories surrounding that gender. For a totem this could be a tiger, but for gender it could be man,

woman, or other gender. This inclination towards a gender and the pool of characteristics, histories,

aesthetics, ideas, and so on associated with it then prompts the formation of an idea of that gender. One

identifies and dissects elements of this pool that the person is particularly drawn, and loosely and

flexibly groups them together to form a picture of who that what that gender means to them as an

instantiation of that gender ideal. Like a totem, the gender-ideal is carried with a person and informs

how they make choices in the world and how they then interpret those actions. This may include

decisions such as clothing preferences, mannerisms, or feelings about various norms they are inclined

to reject or take on. Gender identity understood in this way is an endeavor of imaginative self-

understanding through the lens of a personally created ideal, collaged together by the individual.

Gender identity is something that first snaps together into being internally, but which then goes on to

inform external expression. This in turn informs identity once again, but key is gender identity’s inner

origination. Anything before the official inner formation of a gender ideal is just proto-gender, because

it only becomes a gender identity in the mind once it’s been claimed as such by identifying. Questions

of how the identity came to be in the first place, involving what causes lead up to that identification

moment, are not in my field as they are an empirical question.

A gender-ideal one carries as a member of that gender is not entirely identical to who that

person is. Though genders are often a large and pervasive part of who we are that colors many facets of

our lives, gender is still only one part of us. Also, typically we don’t wholly instantiate our own ideals.

With totems, in some sense you are a tiger but you clearly don’t instantiate the majority of what it
 Kamangar 20

means to be a tiger, just some core qualities. However, that identity is still so strongly identified with

that it is seen as a part of the person such that they feel inclined to say “I am a tiger person.” The same

is the case for gender identities. What makes the gender-ideal take hold in one’s identity is not about

how many qualities one fulfills that is encapsulated by their ideal, but rather it’s the level of

authenticity of one’s association with it. For instance, some women, both transwomen and cisgender

women alike, have the desire to conform more to feminine beauty standards or other ideas of

femininity that they hold in their ideal, by medically transitioning or going after cosmetic procedures or

other enhancements. Other women don’t go out of my way to actualize all those attributes of femininity

contained in their ideal because they don’t feel inclined to fully actualize the ideal they carry, or they

simply have a different ideal of “woman” that excludes those elements like makeup contained in other

people’s ideals.

Particular genders commonly seen in society are merely trends in these individual ideals. A

gender does not represent any one unified idea, only a cluster of them with a shared history, culture,

and community of members who instantiate ideals that share certain political interests. There is no

unitary, universal standard of “woman” or any other gender, though many believe this falsity. Rather

there exists a plurality of genders, as many genders as there are people who instantiate them, and

groupings over and above these individual ideals are never tracking anything essential to each of them.

6. Potential criticisms and my response

One criticism of my theory is that not everyone has a well-defined ideal. This is frequently the

case for cisgender people, who accepted the gender they were assigned at birth and have not given

gender much more thought beyond that, whereas typically those who have struggled with dysphoria

before arriving at an understanding of what their gender is have an especially well developed ideal

because they’ve put more thought into it in the pursuit of figuring out their own identity. To this I argue

that even the apathetic gender-identifying person is operating on some ideal of gender that informs how
 Kamangar 21

they move through the world to some degree, albeit for many cisgender people this ideal is inherited

from societal understandings and operating subconcsiously. Even the cisgender person who feels

apathetic rather than prideful about their gender has some concept of gender which they feel tethered

to. This is evidenced by if you ask these people what does it mean to be that gender, they will provide

some answer, whether or not they feel that answer defines them or informs their life choices much.

Though I ultimately disagree with the cisgender-centric feminist theories of gender, they introduce an

important ethos reflecting this point I’m trying to make, wherein we must acknowledge that when

living in a gendered society, concepts of gender influence our behavior and impact how we interact

whether we fully realize it or not. Gender structures society to some degree.

Another potential issue with my theory is that with accepting pluralism of ideals of gender

comes the danger of losing an explanation for the unity to one gender that seems to exist across all

these individual ideals, which would call into question the coherence of the theory. If everyone has

different personalized ideals and different definitions of what it means to be a gender such as woman,

how then is it possible for there to be any unified concept of woman in the general sense? It seems that

if each person has their own ideal of their gender such as woman, and there is no universally shared

notion of woman, then there is no need for a commonly shared term “woman” across all these

individuals. In virtue of what makes all those who identify as a woman, a woman? In light of these

questions, one may wonder if my theory does in fact succeed in protecting against the bigots’ original

criticism of incoherence and the abolitionists’ push for gender to become an obsolete now that the

revolution in liberating expression of gender has seemingly made genders into empty categories.

I respond that coherence is not lost to pluralism. This seeming tension between individual

genders and their overall gender category is structurally similar to pluralism of religion. Many scholars

of religion specialize in one religious tradition, yet try to avoid making sweeping claims about the

religion as a whole. They may specialize in studying Judaism, for example, though they recognize it’s
 Kamangar 22

more apt to refer to various “Judaisms” rather than to one unified “Judaism.” There are many ways to

be a member of a particular religion, with many interpretations of what that looks like. Even so, an

umbrella term of that religion can still apply to all its practitioners, even without any shared core

determiner, because being a practitioner of a religion is more about one’s allegiance to its history and

community than fulfilling any essential elements. As a member of that religion, one picks and chooses

the parts they apply to their own life, and those others who do the same, though in their own personal

way, are also practitioners of that religion just as one is. Gender functions similarly in this way.

To this criticism I also reference Alison Stone’s argument that there is no unitary meaning of

womanhood (or other genders), but using the term is still intelligible because who is considered a

woman is indicated by a genealogical chain (Stone 150). The contemporary understandings of what it

means to be a woman and the ways in which those ideals are instantiated in women’s lived lifestyles

and identities evolved out of earlier ideas of womanhood that when compared look radically different,

but still what we call women today are still just as much women as the past conceptions due to their

shared genealogical link. And since there is no one concept of woman or any other gender per

generation, it must be understood that these genealogical lineages are multiple, branching, and

overlapping. Other new gender categories have evolved out of the same genealogical chains as well,

other than just newer versions of man and woman, but they are their own categories as soon as they are

identified as such with a new word marking their departure. Even the more radically departing gender

categories such as the non-binary ones are part of this evolutionary chain, as they simply stand in a

rejecting relation but an originary relation no less. George and Briggs refers to these as symbiotic

genders, and could include non-binary identities such as demi-boy and gender fluid (George 30). The

various contemporary individualized ideals of woman or other gender categories evolved out of

reinterpretations and reworkings of previous versions throughout history, though there is no unitary

essence of what it means to be a woman or any other gender. The existence of gender categories over
 Kamangar 23

and above all the individual gender ideals people are still important to retain for the purpose of

organizing around shared political purposes or simply out of noticing trends amongst the individual

self-conceptions.

Another concern is the question of what makes a gender category a gender category rather than

some other category? What makes a kind a gender kind? This becomes especially confusing when one

considers many newly innovated genders such as “other kin” who identify with inanimate objects or

animals on a gender level. If other-kin are considered genders, then it seems difficult to explain why

being punk is not a gender, when both these categories encapsulate a widely pervasive lifestyle and

orienting self conception that don’t seem to do much with a misconceived relationship to biological sex

and reproductive roles, yet are somehow different. My response is that the category of punk as a

subcultural identity did not arise from the evolutionary lineage tracing back to society’s earlier gender

conceptions, while other social identities like the other-kin genders do. Here I again reference George

and Briggs, who argue for a theory of gender kinds as identities which are linked in origin to biological

sex, though not becoming reduced to it. They write, “the genders woman and man are individuated not

by their contemporary connections to sex biology, but by their historical continuity with classes that

were originally closely connected to sex biology” (George 2).

Another potential objection is that many people carry ideals about genders other than their own,

and if the carrying of a gender ideal is what makes one of a gender, then problematically virtually

everyone becomes a member of multiple genders they do not actually identify with. For example, a

man may have a concept of his ideal girlfriend who he believes to embody the essence of womanhood,

but this is certainly not an indication that he is a woman himself. To this point I remind the objector that

my definition of what it means to identify with a gender is to not only carry an ideal of their gender, but

to view themselves as being an instantiation of it. The man with an ideal of womanhood does not view
 Kamangar 24

himself as a woman because though he carries a woman gender ideal, he does not relate to it in such a

way that that ideal informs his own behavior and conception of self.

A final objection to my theory of gender is that if being of a gender requires that one has a

mental ideal informed at least somewhat by an awareness of how that gender has manifested itself in

others or in the past, does this exclude people with severe mental disabilities from having a gender? I

have argued that gender identity must begin with a choice from within, and hence first person authority

must be granted when determining who is of what gender. The tools or material input for the formation

of a gender ideal come from the external world, but its coming together into the gender of a person

happens inside the mind of the individual. The identification, the point where all the pieces come

together, begins within and then moves outwards to inform how the person acts, and then back inwards

to inform how the person interprets the actions, all reinforcing their chosen gender ideal. So a person

who does not have this mental ability does not have the agency to consent to a gender, and any

gendering projected onto them is the unethical action of non-consensual misgendering. Likewise with

the case of children, they cannot be said to have a gender until they have formulated their own

understanding of what it means to be of that gender, otherwise it is projected gendering once again.

Research has shown that young kids up until the age of two have no working concept of gender, and so

I argue it is important not to force them to take on one before they can decide for themselves (Fausto-

Sterling 247). The attribute of my gender theory necessitating first person authority of gender

identification follows through to the necessity of consent of the individual in question.

7. Conclusion

Like any revolution, the revolution in gender is inciting a radical change, but it’s important to

understand the level on which this paradigm shift is occurring merely on the level of conscious,

theoretical understanding of gender more so than our actual usage. This may come as a surprise,
 Kamangar 25

especially to the gender bigots, but binary biological sex is a farce and gender has always functioned as

an ideal of the mind rather than a characteristic of the body.

The gender reactionaries thought there was a unitary definition of woman and man, but there

never was, as we all had our own definitions all along. This prompts us to wonder, is the gender

revolution truly marking a paradigm shift in our usage of the term gender, or just a refining of that

usage to more accurately understand gender beyond the confusion of biological sex, and creating a

better theory that reflects that? The gender revolution is really about clearing away the confused

delusion we were previously operating under, of thinking we were tracking biological sex and that that

lends way to gender in a clear if this then that way, when really, we could never reliably do that in the

first place. Previously we’ve taken society’s Barbie and Ken ideals as the models of man and woman

gender as arising from male and female biological sex, when ironically they don’t even have genitals!

Really our common sense gender radars were primarily paying attention to feminine and masculine

presentation, in the form of body language, voice inflection, mannerisms, clothing and appearance,

conforming to norms of gender, and fulfillment of gendered beauty standards, which from a young age

we were conditioned to take on. Our radars for biology could only notice secondary sex characteristics,

which have no necessary tie to a definitive marker of sex like chromosomes or genitals, and even those

have been debunked to be not definitive clues about biological sex after all. Then when we notice

perceived misalignments between assumed biological sex and gender, we become confused or upset at

the deviance. Once we finally accept that gender concepts were historically infused into the

construction of biological sex, rather than biological sex being the material indicator of gender,

seeming misalignments between gender and sex are no longer interpreted as such and we release the

shackles to this misconception.

Those who have already awakened from this false consciousness began to genuinely ask

themselves is my gender actually me, or do I feel more at home with another identity, and so they
 Kamangar 26

realized their own authenticity. This is the real revolution, the freedom to understand who we really are,

in the recognition that gender resides in the mind rather than the genitals. Many will still argue that we

can still track biological sex, that we’re being made to quiet our common sense radars by accepting

trans people so that we can shift our perception to see them for as something so different and intuitively

challenging to the everyday person. But this skill of shifting our perception is not actually a skill totally

new and alien to us, but rather a refining of that same radar. We already know how to shift our

perceptions, when we see a man in convincing drag who then says reveals they’re actually a dude and

the straight men recoil at this discovery. We already know how to shift our perceptions when we

encounter an androgynous person and they let us know they’re a girl not a boy. What if we just believe

people when they say they’re the gender they say they are, that they carry that ideal through which they

interpret themselves and would like others to take on to regard them as as well, rather than taking

genitalia to be the thing that prompts that perceptual shift? We already have the skills to perceive

gender at this more nuanced level, our radars already able to notice gender as something other than just

a conflation with biological sex. Now we just need to refine them, and shift the sure determiner of

gender from what the doctors say to what the person themselves says about which ideal they are

carrying. We can begin to learn to arrive at better intuitive guesses at what gender ideal a person may

hold, but ultimately how they express is never gives a sure answer as to what’s inside, due to the golden

rule of first person authority.

We’re at a place now where we can choose to open up the gates to a creative and free

exploration of gender, or continue to feel trapped by unnecessary norms of gender, something we

completely constructed as a society from now obsolete reproductive roles. Gender can be something

that we use to understand ourselves and communicate that to the world, or it can be something we use

to trap ourselves and corral people into with no consciousness as to why we’re doing it and what

purpose it really serves other than to limit the full potential of who we can be. The gender revolution
 Kamangar 27

calls for us to refine our radars, and shift the trump card in identifying who’s what gender from the

assigned gender at birth to the personal identification, instating new norm of not assuming gender but

asking for them.

I have argued that being a member of a gender has to do with having a gender identity. To

identify with a gender is to carry an individually formed ideal of a gender, and to view oneself as a

particular instantiation of that ideal. This ideal of gender originates internally, though may inform

external expression and behavior. Understanding gender in this way allows virtually every form of

gender from the basic cisgender identities to the transgender identities to the new and creative non-

binary identities to be validated, and provides enough room for their experience of gender to be

recognized without the general theory becoming too thin, incoherent, or empty.

Like Renee Margrite’s painting of what looks like a pipe captioned by “this is not a pipe,”

likewise individuals can look however they please while still being whatever they sincerely claim to be.

The pipe could be a man, carrying the connotative tinge of an ideal tied to a word with an entire history,

culture, and community of manhood. Even though the image defies our every expectation of the name

it bears, its identity colors the meaning of the physical in a meaningful way. Just as art can be just as

much about the ideas accompanying the physical depiction as it is about the depiction itself, gender

identities frequently take on this kind of fluid metaphysics that morphs into a kind of aesthetics. Rather

than being empty, such a view of gender actually becomes deeply poetic. People are more than just

matter, just like works of art are more than just the work itself, but also the meaning and interpretations

weaved into it. Just as artworks’ titles and descriptions give us hints about how to interpret the work,

gender identity labels give us a window into understanding how a person conceives of themselves, and

hence how they’d like us to regard them.

Trans and non-binary poet and activist Alok Vaid-Menon encapsulates this vision, writing “I

dream of a world without gender – or rather with so many genders that genders become irrelevant. I
 Kamangar 28

dream of a world where people are able to experiment, mess up, try again. I believe in a world where

we don’t have to compromise our creativity in order to be taken seriously- a world where people are

given permission and resources to make art out of their bodies and their canvasses (whatever they may

be)” (Vaid-Menon). Trans activist Jacob Tobia also echoes: “The future I want to live in is not some

future where there's no gender and everyone wears gray hoodies and sweatshirts and...shaves their

head. That’s not the world I want to live in. I want to live in a world where gender is this playful thing

where there's no patriarchy, no misogyny, none of the things which make gender suck, and only the

things that make gender great” (Noah). Let us be gender artists, seeing the realist as no less valid than

the avant garde. We are all a work of art, and though some may try, hardly anyone will ever be the

perfect Barbie or Ken, Adam and Eve which some try to enforce. Instead of being art nazis and gender

gatekeepers, why not be visionaries, revolutionaries, or just ourselves, instead?

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