What is a ‘Gender’?

The consultation into the reform of the Gender Recognition Act closes tomorrow. One thing that puzzles me is how little discussion is taking place about what a ‘gender’ is and how to recognise one. I would have though this was a central question of the process.

Much confusion is happening because of the many layers of conflation that appear to exist around terms like sex and gender. The Act wants a person’s declared gender to be recognised but is actually and practically going to change the registration of their sex on their birth certificate.

This might not matter if sex and gender were synonyms (as my dictionary describes them) but people do not talk about them as if they are.

Let’s start with what a ‘sex’ is. Defining sex based on the material reality of biology does not in principle appear too hard. Yes, biology can be the messiest of subjects and there will be some fuzzy edges, but biologists are happy with the framework that a sex is a class of individuals that share a distinct family of common features of genetics, development and anatomy around that class’s reproductive role. Individuals in the class may have specific histories so that they do not share all features of the class because of disease, developmental conditions or surgery. Nonetheless, in humans, and other animals, we can recognise and enumerate two distinct sex classes — male and female — each with clear reproductive functions at the class level. In short, one class produces small mobile gametes (sperm) and the other, large immobile gametes (eggs). Each sex invests different amounts in gamete production and subsequent nurturing of offspring. In humans and most vertebrates, an individual cannot change sex.

But what about gender? How do we recognise what a gender is? How do we enumerate genders? How do individuals know what gender they are? And crucially, how do you change gender?

In the past year, I have asked many people in this debate what a ‘gender’ is. I think it fair to say, I have not come even close to getting a coherent answer.

Typically, someone might start off with describing gender as based around the idea of it being the ‘self-identity and/or social representation of an individual’. But this does not define what a gender is. How would I recognise a gender when I see one? How many genders are there? If I am a Bristol Rovers supporter, I may include that in my self-identity and in wearing the pirate blue and white adopt a social representation of that identity. But “Rovers Supporter” is not a gender. Gender makes no sense unless it is tightly coupled to social norms, expectations and presentations around each sex. But when pressed on this, people start to squirm away for a number of reasons. Not least because it is difficult to think of what these gender presentations mean unless it is in terms of rather regressive and sexist notions of what it is to be a man and woman. Men do not carry the baby while shopping, do they Piers? Women wear flowery dresses and make up.

Often, there is then a retreat into some neural flapdoodle. Gender is some inner brain-originating and innate sense of who you are. And it is possible for that inner sense to be mismatched with your physical self. This switch from a social construction to a biological foundation is done without blushing. But the insistence that science shows that trans people have different brains that correspond to that typical of the opposite sex is not founded in good research.

The idea that humans have some sort of innate gender that is somehow distinct from their sex is fraught with metaphysical, philosophical and scientific issues. Whilst there are indeed average differences between male and female brains, there are no diagnostic differences. We cannot put people in a scanner and tell what gender they are, or even be certain what sex they are. If we could, the whole concept of self-ID for gender recognition would be redundant. Of course, if presented with the idea that self-ID could be replaced with an objective, painless and quick physical scan, retreat from this position is rather fast. It is almost as if subjective, unfalsifiable declarations of gender are desired rather than objective tests.

But in any case, brains have a mosaic of features, with no unique male and female features and, importantly, very plastic though our experiences. Brain scans show London Taxi Drivers have different brains from you and me — no-one would argue ‘The Knowledge’ is innate. We can find brains in males that are ‘female-like’ but that does not mean the male is actually a female.

We are at a loss to pin down what a gender is.

This morning, my facebook feed came up from a friend an article that said, “Before European Christians Forced Gender Roles, Native Americans Acknowledged 5 Genders”. It’s a click-baity article, but struck me as everything that is wrong here. Firstly there are obvious anthropological problems in understanding what historical cultures meant be certain concepts and that researchers are not just projecting Western expectations onto them. There are issues around the fallacy that we are experiencing some sort of ancient or exotic wisdom that is truthful because of its provenance. What is most likely is that we are seeing some concept of hierarchical sex-based roles. We are not seeing a liberating philosophy. We are not seeing Native American denial of sex-based classes as the whole description in the article is dependent on describing these gender roles in terms of the underlying sex classes. (Try rewriting key passages without using male or female etc)

Is this article right there are five genders? And that, as was argued on Facebook, having five is more liberating than squeezing people into a binary? That is difficult to argue. We are still boxing people into categories — defining them by some arbitrary criteria. We might just be seeing finer granularity in discrimination rather than a liberation.

And on Facebook itself, it appears to think there are 71 genders. The names of genders go beyond male and female to include neutrois, genderqueer, “other” and agender. Yet, still it is not clear what a ‘gender’ is or how to recognise one, and how one might come up with a definitive list like this. It is difficult to come to any other conclusion that here gender just is describing some aspect of personality, relating to sex and sexuality, with all the nuance of an emoji.

At the heart of all of this is the idea that we should be abandoning the ‘gender binary’. Without an idea of what a gender is it is difficult to see how we might start to abandon it. What many think we are seeing is a straightforward conceptual error. Most in this debate (with the exception of a few prominent bad actors), are concerned about making society fairer, more equal, safer and more tolerant for all. We witness many being marginalised in society and women in particular have been subject to huge injustice. The response of many of those who see injustice is to abandon sex as meaningful and instead embrace this fuzzy concept of gender. For the gender critical, the opposite is true — gender conformity, expectations and roles are the enemy. Trying to create more gender boxes just appears to amplify this problem. The problem is better solved by accepting sex is a material reality and that we should reject the ‘gender’ descriptions of roles and representations based around sex. This, for me, is the only approach that has any coherence and descriptive power. Since gender is such a nebulous concept if provides us with no concrete tools to tackle the power structures that create injustices.

And that is the problem with the Gender Recognition Act. It is trying to recognise something we cannot coherently define. We should not be recognising gender but instead the ideas associated with it should be consigned to the bin.

Worse, the GRA betrays itself in the end with its ultimate goal. It does not in itself recognise gender, but instead seeks to create a legal lie by putting a false statement of sex on a birth certificate. It is creating a deeming requirement on us all — that despite the reality that we might observe, we must deem by law not to see that. Karen White is a woman. No-one will be allowed to say otherwise. No-one is protected in a world of enforced lies.

All the talk of gender appears to be nothing more than a smokescreen. It’s a huge bait and switch swindle. It tempts us with the supposedly progressive concept of gender, but actually attacks the integrity of the concept of material sex — the concept that fundamental protections for women rely upon. This is more than just about where transgender people should use public toilets — it is erasing the very existence of the material reality of people. No progressive outcomes are possible when reality is denied.

Its biggest impact is to allow men to arbitrarily hide the fact they are men from the law and so gain access to previously restricted spaces. Men with malicious intent, like Karen White, will have freedoms to attack, abuse and assault women who ought to be protected from men.

The Gender Recognition Act is incoherent law and the proposed changes look like it will make it dangerous, incoherent law. It is time for the government to step back and reconsider its whole approach to protecting women and given appropriate protections and rights to people who identify as transgender.