Part 2: What do we mean by gender?

Part 2: What do we mean by gender

As always in discussions making sure we all know what we’re talking about before going further is key to us understanding more.

I often see people getting themselves tied in knots about what exactly do we mean by gender? It’s discussed as some form of societal concept that is constructed purely by our observation and expression rather than something internal to be considered and reflected on.

Much greater minds than me have tackled this question in depth but I think it's helpful to try and break gender down so we're clear about what I will be talking about in this blog.

I think what most people are talking about when defining gender as a societal construct is gender expression. The expected stereotypes and roles that we as a society place on people depending on the sex that they appear to be. Women should perform femininity and men masculinity. A key concept of feminism has always been to try and move away from these gender stereotypes, there is no performance of 'women' or 'men' and people should not be confined to those roles as a consequence of their birth.

As such gender non-conformity is an important part of breaking those societal (and often patriarchal) standards. It's important that men can behave in traditionally feminine ways and vice versa. That is the strive for equality.

If this were the only aspect of gender then it would look like trans people were trying to reinforce those stereotypes not break them. Too uncomfortable to be a masculine woman they must strive to convince people that they are in fact a man.

However there are plenty of gender non-conforming trans people, that is trans women who express their gender in traditionally more masculine ways and vice versa. So if people are willing to perform gender non-conformity but still say they are trans then surely there must be more to gender than purely the stereotypes we culturally impose.

Another aspect of gender you'll often hear talked about is gender Identity. This is our internal sense of self as male, female or neither. To most people this is not a concept that has much additional value as it will aligned with their apparently sexed body. However, for gender diverse people our sense of self in relation to gender does not match the sexed body we see and our brain struggles to resolve that.

Does a brain have an expectation of what it is meant to perceive when it comes to gender? just as it has an expectation that it will have a hand, foot or lips?

This is where gender critical people would step in and say this is ' gender woo-woo' there is no such thing as gender identity, just sexed bodies and as such you can not have an incongruence between gender and sex just a desire to escape societal expectations of gender performance.

This is why it’s so important in the discussion around being trans that we have some foundation for the existence of gender identity