The Dangerous Philosophy of 63 Genders
Too often it is easy to mistake disagreement about someone’s worldview as an attack on the person. When I said in my last essay that using Intersectionality is like “identify[ing] two large piles of feces before dropping trow and making them intersect with a cylinder of [your] own shit.” it was the kind of statement that speaks for itself. It is clear that I am talking about a problem-solving approach and not a person. My contempt for the suggestion that there are 63 genders is something that I feel needs further elaboration though. As someone who is a cisgendered masculine heterosexual man I am about to go charging into a minefield here, so I will keep this firmly set within my own identity group to cut down on the potential for misunderstanding. That identity group is men.
A heterosexual male is a man. A homosexual male is a man. Neither is anything more, less or different than a man. Sure, we are attracted to different people, but that isn’t an unusual thing. As a heterosexual man, I am attracted to women that another straight man isn’t and he is attracted to women that I am not. It’s a spectrum of attraction based on more factors than could ever be counted. A gay man also has a spectrum of people he is attracted to, but they are men. A bisexual man has a spectrum of people he is attracted to that includes both men and women. No one should be forcibly relocated to separate genders because of any of this.
As outrageous as it is to divide men into three genders based on who we enjoy having sex with, the assault on our manhood does not stop there. Men are further divided by gender based on whether we are masculine or effeminate. What is masculine and what is feminine are arbitrary and change over time. Is a man feminine if he likes gardening or cooking? Wouldn’t that make Chef Gordon Ramsey the snarling face of the effeminate man? Are we maybe basing this on how we like having sex with our partners? If so, I’m afraid every man alive could probably be considered a little pangender. What if a man is a bit of a dandy and likes nice clothes? Is this supposed to be effeminate if the styles are for men? Even if he did go a little bohemian and wear something that is traditionally for women, styles are ever evolving. He might just be on the bleeding edge of men’s fashion. Labeling men in this manner is assigning gender to our personality quirks and aesthetic lifestyle choices. It is meaningless.
It might seem easy to divide gay men into either a masculine or a feminine camp, but only if you regard them as stereotypes instead of actual human beings. I have known many young flamboyantly effeminate gay men who have evolved into more somber masculine gay men with age. Did they swap genders? I think it would be fairer to say that their personalities changed over time and with age. Have the advocates of this bizarre way of looking at gender ever stopped to think about how disgusting and hurtful it is to throw up a gender wall between gay men and not one, but two gender walls between me and a so-called effeminate gay man? I have seen the hurt that is caused when it is suggested that an effeminate gay man is anything other than just a man the same as any other. I have also seen his wrath.
The idea of the effeminate heterosexual man seems silly on its face. Just the mechanics of what a straight man is doing when he has sex should be enough to throw the word effeminate right out the window! That leaves determining his femininity based on style and personality. Perhaps this effeminate heterosexual is channeling the look and vibe of bisexual and aesthetically gender-bending rock legend David Bowie. His heterosexuality is insatiable and unrelenting. With his effeminate style, he tastes the rainbow of all that womankind has to offer him in ever increasing, varied and outrageous acts of heterosexuality. A guy like that? He is not just merely a heterosexual man. He is not only just a man. He is our God Emperor and I’ll be damned if I’m letting you nincompoops drag Him away without a fight!
Over on the female side of things, there is a type of woman known as a Trans Exclusive Radical Feminist or TERF for short. She is adamant that trans women have no place in the women’s movement because they are men. To this I say, no ma’am, that is not a man. She is a woman, and I am offended that I have had to pause my discussion of men to address your shenanigans. You should be ashamed of yourself.
What is this divisive way of thinking about gender saying to trans men? It is acknowledging that they are a kind of man, I guess. Not a man like the rest of us are men though. They’re a trans man. It’s an entirely different gender. They are to remain walled off in their own little gender ghetto separate from the rest of manhood. There’s a word for that kind of attitude. It’s called bigotry.
There is still plenty of room to discuss things such as non-binary and what have you. Be who you are. The way you express who you are, however, should not involve regendering the rest of humanity based on our personality quirks and who we are having our orgasms with. Once part your self-expression involves labeling other people, it is no longer just about you. Imagine if I, the cisgendered masculine heterosexual man, were the one coming up with these labels. It would be a horrifying display of bigotry. It is a dangerous and hurtful exercise. It is so painfully obvious that one of the worst things in the world for the LGBT community would be for people like me to start thinking along these ridiculous gender lines.The harm of what you are doing doesn’t change just because you are doing it to express yourself. Your chosen method of self-expression is simply not important enough to allow it to harm other people. Find another way to express who you are.
Leave us to be men. Just men. All of us. Glorious toxicity and all. We can celebrate or fight over our differences, but each of us is still a man. That is what really matters.
Sing me out, Klaus! I think I’ve said all that needs to be said here.
Greg Ganues is just some dude. He has opinions and an asshole. He also wrote this vapid fluff piece about Generation X. He will happily argue with you on Twitter.
Klaus Nomi has been dead for 35 years. He is still fucking awesome.
