How the Gender Binary Fails Everyone

image from unsplash edited by Max Kuzma

Gender is both more and less important than I thought it was.

Growing up living in the wrong gender role, as I did, makes you keenly aware of the pressure society puts on people to adhere and conform to expectations. It’s little things, like how long men and women are expected to wear their hair, but it’s also big things, like who’s expected to be the leader or who’s voice is more readily listened to. On these matters, the feminists know what they’re talking about. Research clearly shows sexism and patriarchy deeply imbedded in our society. The pay gap speaks to this, as does the rise of the #metoo movement—and our ability to talk about these issues shows great progress in beginning the work of addressing them. The truth is that we all face some form of social inequality, whether that be from the color of our skin, from something we believe, or the fact that we don’t make as much money as someone else. 

What I didn’t realize when I first started transitioning was how something that totally dominated my mind and my thoughts (gender) was something that other people don’t think about consciously at all. People simply meet someone, assume they know what gender that person is based on clothing, presentation, and observable secondary sex characteristics (height, pitch of voice), and that’s it. A split second impression informs their entire understanding of a stranger’s gender. 

And if they are going to talk about the trans experience at all, it’s going to be in terminology and thought processes that are so broken that any conclusions they arrive at are extremely impaired by a lack of coherency or truth. Rarely if ever do the loudest voices debating “transgender issues” even care about the actual experience of being trans. Rather, the cisgender experience is centered... and when that is done, it makes it impossible for any fruitful dialogue to occur. 

At the beginning of my transition, I was caught up listening to the people who didn’t understand or respect me. I wanted to debate them, or at least correct them. Why was it so hard to respect my name and pronoun change? From my view it was no different to someone getting married and changing their last name—a common and daily experience in the United States of America. 

It didn’t (and doesn’t) help that so much discourse in actual trans spaces is around the concept of passing. To pass means to blend in as your true gender, for strangers to “guess” your gender correctly. Ultimately this does eventually happen for most binary trans people, as the social transition progresses and we become comfortable in affirming clothing and fashions, and the hormones and surgeries make us more comfortable in our bodies. Strangers notice those external markers and make their split second decision... and now, they’re right. 

For me, the issue becomes obsessing over passing and making it the goal. Fixating on passing without deconstructing what gender is can cause serious issues in my view. Moving into a role that makes you more comfortable is not about playing a part so well that you convince or trick other people. And while it feels great to have strangers use the right pronouns or honorifics, I don’t want my experience of gender in society to be about the anxiety of getting “caught.” My gender is valid even when no one sees it. It’s valid even when I have to correct someone. And here’s the thing. Even if someone is “right” and sees me as the man that I am, I still want to push society for better men. For equality, equity, justice, and for positive masculinity to replace what is toxic. 

For me, it is not enough to simply disappear into a broken system. The existence of the gender binary does not serve me, even with my passing privilege. My ability to blend in and be cis-assumed does not serve my non-binary friends, who still struggle constantly for their pronouns to be respected. It doesn’t serve my girlfriend, who still faces sexist comments any time she enters a conversation, space, or field that is considered male-dominant. And it doesn’t serve transgender people who either don’t fit normative expectations of gender by choice or by lack of access to the medical care they need. 

So when I say that gender is both more and less important than I expected, what I mean is that based on the information I had, I was not expecting to ask the kinds of questions I’m asking now. Questions like, why is it considered strange and borderline creepy for a man to be emotionally open and vulnerable with new friends? 

If there’s one thing that’s true about me, it’s that I won’t give up thinking over or talking about any issue until I understand it. I have a feeling gender is going to be a life long topic of inquiry.

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