The Metaphysics of Gender Identity: A series of inquiries on gender, identity, behavior, and biology.

 

Hello everyone

This is yet another dry and serious piece about gender. A BDunicorn classic!

But like before we get into that. Let's talk about color theory. A common thing people say is that the Ancient Greeks did not have blue, or at least the concept of blue-ness. Did they literally not see blue or did they see blue as not a color in its own right. Does blue exist? 

Well of course it does, I am sure if you asked people if blue exists, they would say of course it fucking does, look at the sky you silly dingdong. Yet, that was the thing. The sky was just the sky, not blue, things were like the sky or like the ocean, but they were not blue. Some people would say Grue rather than blue, as blue and green are sub-colors of grue. This is actually a real linguistic concept called blue-green distinction, but don't worry about it for now.

Color seems so obvious. It's light and stuff. I am sure any physicists can smart-splain to me how it actually works It's all light, on a spectrum. Color–– is a spectrum.

But like many different cultures and language have different ideas of color and what is a color in its own right or something totally derivative. So, does blue exist?

Yes, if we believe in blue.

Color is just light, but it is pretty light.

You know what else is pretty? Gender.

Part I: Know thy gender

But Diana, I don't know her!

So, Socrates, what is Gender?  

Nah, that's a rip-off. Look, if you are an avid regular reader of the unicorn, you probably know all about gender, you probably minored in gender studies lol

But if you're a new and fresh first time viewer and you do not know gender. Then, I mean same. Jokes aside gender is a complex social identity that has many facets of the self. It's a super fucking complicated sociological and anthropological term that has many crossovers with other disciplines such as psychology and neurology. I generally lean towards the gender is a social construct camp, personally, though #notalltrans do the same. 

Gender is super fucking coconuts, gorg. Again, with the rip-offs, I mean homages.

I doubt a blog or video essay or article is going to fully deconstruct gender and its identity and roles and stuff. You can teach a few college courses solely focused on gender.

Gender is in your head, and sex is in your pants, right? Well. It's more complicated.

Or someone will say gender is in your pants lol

Though like gender has many components. 

Metaphysics is the philosophy of essence and existence— the fundamental nature of being, the abstract, after or behind or beyond the natural, and the study thereof. Metaphysical inquiry is asking what is there and how is it or what is it like.

Defining gender is really fucking hard

Like, people would ask you to define or they try to define certain genders, usually man or woman, to you. There are many ways one can define a gender, but they all miss the point.

Like you could make definitions, but they don't apply to absolutely everyone, at best most people, but not 100% of every individual in that gender. People who espouse biological essentialism for gender and identity end up moving the goal posts through the entire pitch.

The enforce and expect strict definitions on to and from people is to deny their own lived experiences. Gender does not make any sense. It is not rational, and how can the irrational be logically and consistently defined then? 

Some people just stick with one, that may be fine in very limited situations, but also like, the explanations are not always technically logical. 

What does it mean to be a man/woman/non-binary person? Well that is a loaded question. It is going to have a very binary and limited answer and it may help elucidate to few people, but it only speaks to people operating on the same levels.

Like, to paraphrase MacKinnon, it does not matter how a woman is, if anyone wants to be a woman, lives as a woman, considers herself a woman, believes herself to be a woman for any one reason, whether it is physical or metaphysical or just some transcendentally female feeling of sorts–– self perception is extremely complicated and differs from each individual. Like any reason that you justify your gender is valid, but with the caveat that is your own gender identity. 

Other people's identities do not need to be explained to you, they can explain should they choose to do so, and one should not speculate and extrapolate the reasons when not revealed. 

Gender is ultimately up to you. Any mean ascribed to gender is immaterial. You make your gender your own. You might share common threads with other people and therefore will use the same or similar terms to describe and label your gender.  

Part II: Sex vs Gender

My sex is female, or at least closer to female than male if anything. I am definitely not male or a man. Women are female, because they are semantically synonymous, however, transgender women are both women and female. My gender is also queer, agender, non-binary. I'm not exclusively a woman, and therefore I am also genderqueer or non-binary, but for the most part I transitioned to be more female, because having a so called female body is just better for me, it helped to relieve gender dysphoria and being more feminized in both physical and social ways, also helped to increase gender euphoria. My sex is female because it matches closer to cis women than cis women, especially for hormonal and endocrinological reasons, and pretty much any medical thing besides reproductive anatomy, however trans people often do report some changes to their genitals on HRT, and this is not getting into surgeries.

Also, biological sex is complicated and complex, especially when we talk about intersex people. Like, I do not know my chromosomes, and that does not matter, even some people can be surprised. I know people who were assigned male at birth but turned out to have two X chromosomes, either just that or something like XXY. Most intersex people I know are also transgender or non-binary as well, and have transitioned away from their assigned gender at birth.

Part III Gender Abolition

So what to do with gender?

For the most part, my thoughts are like that of Mx Jacob Tobia's thoughts on it, in a interview they did with Trevor Noah on the Daily Show, when promoting their new book Sissy (which I have a copy off, I bought it over two years ago)

They told Noah about their take on what to do about gender in society and they said that they are "genderchill" and that is something that has resonated with me for a while.

I think I do have tendencies towards gender abolition. I think we shouldn't have gender as a basis for social organization, especially with regards to hierarchies, i.e. patriarchy. 

Gender roles especially need to go away. I do not think gender is that useful, it makes no sense to me. I do know that my self-perception is best expressed using feminine and some queer or androgynous terminology.

 Even with expression, I definitely can be non-conforming at times, but like that is not the same as identity. I love being feminine, but I'm more like a masculine woman than a feminine man, even if I used to identify as a "femboy" at some point. Gender expression has always changed up depending on the time, styles, and even cultures*. 

 Like gender is not universal, it can be different and change over time too. Like, even my identity is based in western transsexuality, which is itself a response to the sex-gender system that exists in most places especially that are "western" or influenced by that, i.e European colonial influence.

So how do we abolish gender? Well that's a huge can of worms and probably too much for one transsexual to figure out herself. We have gender and it is here and so I think we should make the best of it. Gender is a fluid spectrum based on many socially constructed and psychological factors. It does not matter to me how someone realizes their gender. Good faith self-identification is paramount.

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Footnotes

*Some examples of cultural genders are the hijras of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, or two-spirit people in various North American indigenous nations, or the Māhu of Hawai'i, or the Fa'afafine of Samoa, or the Kathoey of Thailand, or the Sworn Virgins of Albania, or the Femminielli of Naples