The Gender Binary

What Is It?

A binary is a “social [construct] composed of two parts framed as absolute and unchanging opposites” (Kang et al., 2017). The gender binary of male and female is one such binary, in which each group is exaggerated with the various opposing stereotypes attached to them until they are rendered so different they might as well be different species.

Pop culture as well as our architecture and our laws and bureaucracies reflect a binary thinking: men and women’s separate restrooms, the “M” and “F” boxes on government forms, etc. But the existence of trans and nonbinary people defy the logic of the gender binary. If men and women are complete opposites with nothing in common, then how can nonbinary people exist? How can people transition from one gender to the other?

Even more progressive organizations may concede that there are more than two genders, but still subscribe to a binary view of sex - but this isn’t accurate either. Intersex is another socially constructed term that refers to the “variation in sex characteristics” that arise within the human population - bodies that are neither “male” or “female” with regard to their anatomy, biology, or genetic makeup (Kang et al., 2017).

In short, binaries collapse the beauty of human diversity into a finite number of boxes. They are oppressive in that they force people into categories and erase those who fall outside of them (Kang et al., 2017).

The Gender Spectrum

So how do we move beyond binaries? To start, we can conceptualize gender, sex, and sexuality not as the checkboxes on a government form but as a spectrum. There are dozens of diagrams out there, but the simplest depictions of the gender spectrum look something like this:

As you can see, “male” is placed on one side and “female” on the other, with various identities in-between. Take a moment to reflect on the positions of each identity on the line - what do their positions imply about their relation to each other?

Diagrams like these address the principle issue of cisnormativity - the existence of other ways of being besides cisgender. However, they still fall into the trap of portraying “male” and “female” as opposite.

Let’s try thinking of the gender spectrum like a color wheel.

Unlike a line, there is no “start” or “end” to the color wheel, and you can select a theoretically infinite number of color values by moving through the wheel. This wheel only controls hue (color), but more advanced wheels can also change the luminosity (brightness) and saturation (vividness), creating even more possible colors.

Regardless of where you label “male” or “female” on this wheel, they will bleed into the adjacent colors (genders). Even if they are placed on opposite sides of the wheel, you are not confined to only one mode of movement (such as along the x-axis of the line diagram) - you can move in any direction you choose, take whatever path you want, the only boundary being the circle itself.

For further reading on nuanced, holistic ways of conceptualizing gender, check out The Gender Wheel page!

References

Kang, M., Heston, L., Lessard, D., & Nordmarken, S. (2017). Challenging binary systems and constructions of difference. Introduction to women, gender, and sexuality studies. University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. Retrieved from: https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Gender_Studies/Book%3A_Introduction_to_Women_Gender_Sexuality_Studies_(Kang_Lessard_and_Heston)/02%3A_Challenging_Binary_Systems_and_Constructions_of_Difference