You Can't Transcend Gender by Negating It

The fake gender revolution

Gender negation is not gender transcendence.

The gender status quo is not “men do X and women do Y” but “sex determines behavior.” Proclaiming, “Actually, women do X too and men are capable of Y,” reinforces the status quo by negating it.

Negation implicitly reinforces the relationship between the objects whose connection is being denied. Much of the queer movement today is culturally regressive and sexist because it refuses to acknowledge this.

Here's an illustration that doesn't pertain to gender: Some people loudly praise the intellect of a handicapped friend with average intelligence. This is usually a well-intentioned effort to mitigate others' potential sense that the friend is somehow lesser. However, this act reinforces the implicit connection between ability and worth and therefore perpetuates an insidious ableism.

The praise implicitly communicates, "She's handicapped, but she's smart and therefore worth your respect." The abelist social connection will only dwindle if it is transcended, not negated. Political language games – like condemning the use of the term “handicapped” – only serve as temporary and counterproductive denials of unspoken conceptual connections. They negate rather than transcend to the detriment of the population they allegedly benefit.

Similarly, the way to create a society in which people are judged as individuals and not as representatives of their sex is to transcend gender. Rather than using “gender neutral” language, which implicitly reinforces the status quo, we should neutralize unjustified conceptual associations between sex and behavior.

Transcendence is a far better long term strategy than negation because there are conceptual associations which may look like sexist gender stereotypes to some but are actually statistical patterns which derive from biological realities. These patterns are either unalterable or only suppressible through authoritarian measures that stigmatize bodies like genital mutilation.

We can not, for instance, erase the statistical connection between womanhood and pregnancy because sex determines whether a person is capable of becoming pregnant. The negative approach to gender derealization cannot work long term unless this connection is undermined, but it can't be undermined since it is physically impossible for men to get pregnant.

The transcendent approach also beats the alternative because it is relatively less harmful and therefore more sociopolitically feasible and ethical. If justified statistical connections between biology and capability (e.g., pregnancy, menstruation, ejaculation) can’t be culturally recognized, male and female only spaces and activities will lose their political protections. Teenage boys will roam locker rooms full of teenage girls, women will successfully prosecute organizations designed to help men form meaningful and beneficial connections with other men, men will mock and assault women in female only spaces. If you glibly cast aside these concerns as tired talking points, you’ve desensitized yourself to the suffering of other human beings.

It is often suggested that opposing sex-specific spaces is “inclusive.” The key question is, “Inclusive to whom?” Clearly, such efforts aim to exclude those who want access to sex-specific spaces. This population outnumbers the population who want access to such spaces but are currently denied entrance due their sex. So in what sense are these measures “inclusive”? “Inclusive” in this context simply means “good according to me” and nothing more.

Obsessing over gender expression, identifying as “a gender,” and engaging in pronoun rituals and language games is not revolutionary. It is not subversive or liberating or loving or useful.

It is regressive. It casts the connection between sex and behavior as so strong, so fundamental, that it requires explicit and prolonged suppression.

True gender revolution is attained through transcendence. Instead of asking “What gender am I?” true gender revolutionaries ask themselves “What is worth doing?” and then act without attempting to locate their behavior within a gender paradigm.

If you’re looking away from a thing, that thing controls where you’re looking. In order to really look where you want, you must face the thing and take away its power.

It’s time to face the thing.