Gender is not binary

 I know that I am gooing to get in so much trouble for this, but I would stand by the title. Gender is not binary. People are a mix of male and female, and people exhibit characteristics of their gender identities.

And, yes, some people do not feel comfortable with the gender they are assigned and so should have the chance to change it.

And whenever people say this, the respons is always: "Oh, so you want men to be able to identify as women and invade womens safe spaces?"

And - to me - that just buys into the binary division again. It shouldn't be "womens safe spaces" (Not even getting into the question of what sort of society requires safe spaces for half the population) - maybe cis-womens spaces? Maybe vulnerable females spaces? Defining purely by gender is not what these should be about. And yes, I know that many women feel that they need places where there are no men because of their past experiences, and I support that. But they need defining more clearly - gender is not a good way of specifying these.

"Oh what about toilets then?" Sigh. Well, I think our odd human-created binary division of toilets is itself rather peculiar. I have never quite worked out why we feel a need for shared spaces there anyway. And yes, I do think that some places do need safe spaces as well, for vulnerable people. I think we are confusing messages when we amalgamate these.

 

And then we get to the biblical arguments. Gen 5:2 "Male and female He created them". Well, there are all sorts of issues with this, and I might translate it differently: The (ungendered) divine created humans as (both) male and female. In other words, in each of us is both male and female. 

Now I am not claiming that this is the "right" interpretation - although it does seem to make viable sense. All I am saying is that the traditional understanding is not the only way to understand it. Claiming that there is a "Biblical justification" for a binary gender divide does not hold water.

And there are implications of this in other areas. Complimentarianism is one area: the idea that men and women are "equal but complimentary" which is a teaching very common in some evangelical circles. The thing is, if gender is not binary, the ideas of complimentarianism are invalidated. There are not "assigned roles" to each gender, becasue the genders are not so clearly divided. 

If not binary - if trans people are vallid in terms of who they are - what do I understand? I think - in broad terms - that someone who is born male but understands themselves to be female is not then simply able to define themselves as female. They are then "trans", somewhere on their way to female. They are simply exploring their more female aspects. Like we all should be. Refusing to divide into binary classifications is not a negative thing. It is a positive. It is about acknowledging that we - none of us - are not stereotypes.

I think that is a positive.