
Gender is not a spectrum (2016) - Tomte
https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-that-gender-is-a-spectrum-is-a-new-gender-prison
======
ncmncm
This article is probably too nuanced to be perceptible to HN readers.

Ultimately, though, it comes down to a principled, "who are you calling cis?"
If your worldview depends on distinguishing yourself from two uniform "cis-
gendered" populations, you are doing the same violence to each cis person that
"they", collectively, are doing to you.

What makes it nuanced is that, collectively, "they" are, but you are not
collective enough to do it back, wholesale, and nobody, particularly, is one
of "them". Meanwhile, doing it back, individually, is just abuse for being a
more cissy than you.

The only person who can legitimately put someone in a box is that person,
whether the box is queer, female, male, or what-have-you. Even those so
deluded as to try to keep to a box deserve, anyway, as much respect as they
offer, and probably a little more because everybody has bad days.

But we don't know, for most people, how boxed they are, or how much respect
they accord others, without more context than we usually get.

~~~
Jemm
Numerous studies show that humans have the propensity to view other humans as
non humans and that this propensity happens with as little stimuli as seeing
someone riding a bicycle. You can imagine how people who do not conform to
gender norms are seen as less than human.

People who do not experience this dehumanization are fundamentally not
equipped to understand the situation.

Thus saying that 'cis' persons are experiencing 'violence' is stunningly
absurd.

If anything, cis people are the ones in boxes based on societies
discrimination against anything that does not conform.

~~~
ncmncm
Everyone experiences dehumanization at times -- as you note yourself, riding a
bicycle can suffice to provoke it. Either being treated as "other" is
violence, or it's not -- who you are does not determine whether you get to
complain of it.

Everyone acknowledges that many of the people you are calling "cis" tend to
keep to the same boxes as you have put them in with your own comment. Not all
do, though, including the author and me, and I doubt she would relish you
putting her in one any more than I do.

------
yuriko
[https://medium.com/the-establishment/anti-trans-feminists-
ar...](https://medium.com/the-establishment/anti-trans-feminists-are-more-
dangerous-than-religious-zealots-a4b955f3290f)

~~~
anon1000
This article is full of ad hominem, doesn't actually address the topic nor
article at hand.

------
goto11
Height is a bad analogy for gender, since most peoples height are somewhere
around the middle and fewer at the extremes.

Handedness is a better analogy. Few people are ambidextrous, most people are
at the extreme of the spectrum, _either_ left-handed _or_ right-handed. Since
handedness is not politicized, nobody is claiming that it is logically
impossible to be ambidextrous and that they have to "pick a side". Neither
does anybody really deny that the majority of people do have a dominant hand.

That said, a linear spectrum is obviously too simple for something as complex
as gender. Take people with AIS. They are unambiguously male (XY) at the level
of chromosomes, but in apperance unambiguously female, to the extent many
don't know they are XY unless they happen to seek fertility treatment. Many
probably never learn. So they are not really "in the middle", rather they are
at two extremes at the same time.

The article seem to suggest that "non-binary" people are just muddying the
definitions in order to seem interesting. But something like AIS objectivity
exists, and shows that a purely binary definition of gender is not sufficient
to describe reality. That does not mean that most people can't comfortably
consider themselves a single unambiguous gender.

~~~
zamadatix
The article seems to argue biological sex characteristics are not the definer
of gender rather society uses them to coerce certain personality norms during
development. I don't think AIS changes that argument.

I think it's important to note that the article is not arguing for binary
gender just because it is claiming gender is not a spectrum rather it is
arguing against the use of the concept of gender altogether.

------
belorn
_" If gender, like height, is to be understood as comparative or relative,
this would fly in the face of the insistence that individuals are the sole
arbiters of their gender. Your gender would be defined by reference to the
distribution of gender identities present in the group in which you find
yourself, and not by your own individual self-determination. It would thus not
be up to me to decide that I am non-binary."_

This is an interesting argument, but I wonder if we really are logically
forced to see it as such. If we see people sorting themselves into two social
status groups, one male group where males competes with other males, and one
female group where females compete with other females, then what we have is a
comparative definition that individuals choose. A non-binary would be
individuals that either competes in both groups or neither.

From looking at the animal kingdom, it is hard to not notice the relation
between social status and gender specific behavior. A male can be defined as a
individual competing with other males using male behavior as defined by that
male group. Between two groups, males of one could behave like females of the
other and they would still be defined as male behavior.

