Gender as a map
Let’s start with a summary of the point I want to make:
- The way we talk about the world is a specific attempt at reducing the complexity of all the details around us. This is similar to how a map simplifies the material reality of a city into something humans are able to navigate.
- Once we’ve settled on a particular way of looking at things, it is hard to break out of it, even if the map is misleading or becoming outdated, because the map allows us to make sense of what’s around us, and without the map, there is just a whole lot of meaningless noise.
- Changing our way of thinking and talking about gender is exactly as justified and necessary as updating a map when certain details of a city change.
Analogy time: let’s construct a map of Berlin
This is what Berlin looks like from above.
Based on this particular view, Berlin seems to be a gray-brown patch of land with a few green and blue spots here and there. Other than that, there is no discernible structure. It would be very hard for me to point at the picture and show you where I live, or where some of my friends live, where I work, where my favorite restaurants are, where the good clubs are, and so on. It would also be hard to tell how to get from one place to another. For all those purposes, that map is basically useless.
So let’s start over and create a new map, from scratch!
I am going to tell you a few facts about Berlin, and you will see a map grow along with those facts as we go.
Fact number one: there is a train running through Berlin in a circle, called “The Ring”.
Fact two: there is a way to go across The Ring from west to east and back, and from north to south and back. There are specific points on The Ring where you can get off The Ring and get on those other lines. The points are called Westkreuz (“west crossing”), Ostkreuz (“east…”), Südkreuz (“south…”), and … Gesundbrunnen (“health fountain”? I prefer to call it Nordkreuz—“north crossing”—but let’s not talk about that for now).
On the next map, the points are marked as W, O, S, and N.
A lot of my friends live inside the area circumscribed by The Ring, and a lot of places we regularly go to are inside that area as well. This divides the city into two parts: “inside The Ring” and “outside of The Ring”.
Let’s test our map and see how useful it already is.
I live at Gesundbrunnen and sometimes I go to a park near Ostkreuz. Without a map, those words would be meaningless. Mea. Ning. Less. All you could guess is that there are different points that have names, but you wouldn’t know how they relate to each other spatially and how to get from one point to the other, or whether that was even possible.
By using the map, you can see that I am talking about specific points on the map—the one marked as “N” and the one marked as “O”—and you can also see that there are many different ways to get from N to O. You could get on The Ring and go straight there, or you could get on the line from N to S, switch at that point in the center, whatever that is, and then switch to the line that goes from W to O. Easy.
Even though the map is very simple, it allows you to do various things much more easily than a satellite picture.
In summary, so far:
- A map is a collection of interconnected points.
- A map gives names to points, lines, and areas.
- A map gives meaning to points.
- A map allows you to navigate between points.
There is one more thing that maps do. Maps give significance to certain aspects they describe over aspects they don’t describe.
Here is an example:
Let’s say I asked you to meet me at Hauptbahnhof (“main station”). How would you know what that means and how to get there using only the map that we have constructed (see below)?
It wouldn’t be possible without putting a point called “Hauptbahnhof” in relation to other points on the map. So you might ask, “Is Hauptbahnhof near S, W, O, N, or that unnamed point in the center?”, and I would say, “Yes, it is close to that point in the center”.
The point in the center has significance to you because it is on the map. It doesn’t even need a fancy name in order for it to have significance. The mere fact that it is on the map, and other points aren’t, makes it important to you, because you can’t make sense of any other points without relating them to existing points.
The map not only describes aspects of Berlin, it is also the lens through which you see the city, or even more precise: it is what you see Berlin as.
Now imagine I tried to convince you that Hauptbahnhof (“main station”) is actually, in many ways, a more significant point than that point in the center of your map, I would probably have a hard time convincing you of that, because everything I can tell you only has meaning in relation to existing points and areas on the map.
What if I tried to convince you that there is a concept of “neighborhoods” in Berlin and that some of them are more interesting than others in certain regards? It would also be very hard to do that without adding points and connecting them to existing significant points, which would give those new concepts meaning in relation to other concepts.
Meaning arises from how one thing relates to other things
Maps are an analogy for a more general thing called a “mental model”. A mental model is a collection of concepts in your mind that you use to understand the meaning of things around you and the way people talk about them. Just like a map helps you understand where places are and how to go from one place to another.
The main difference is that mental models are invisible, because they are just ways of thinking and not something on paper. However, if you try really hard, you can draw a map of a mental model. And they don’t have to be about cities, they can be about literally anything.
The main commonality between maps and mental models is that both give significance to points, and they tell you how they are related to each other. For example, you could say that Westkreuz (W) is on the “opposite end” of The Ring as Ostkreuz (O). The Ring is what separates and connects them. It puts them in relation to each other in a particular way. You could say that points, or concepts in general, receive their meaning from the way they are connected to each other.
Let’s leave the land of analogies for now and move to the topic of gender.
Mental models of gender
Here is a map-like depiction of a mental model of gender the way many people in the Western world see it:
There is a point, or concept, called “man” on one end and another point called “woman” on the other end, and there is a line between those two whose main purpose is to make it clear that they are separate. You are either one or the other. You can certainly not be both (according to the model). And you are not supposed to go from one end to the other.
It’s a very simple model. In fact, it is so simple that it makes it very hard to understand and think about and talk about the experiences of many many people. The most obvious example might be trans people.
The model doesn’t provide a meaning for a concept called “trans”. Here is how people commonly add that concept to their existing map:
Let’s test the model by applying it to the following sentence: my friend is a trans woman.
Given the model above, how would you know what the meaning of “trans woman” is? It is kind of hard to know, because there is no one point labeled “trans woman”—there is only an arrow. Two, actually. There are two arrows and it is not clear which one is meant, if any.
Someone using this model is quite likely to ask questions such as, “is the person a woman now, or were they a woman before?”. They know, or at least think they know what a woman is, and they know, or at least think they know what a man is, and they know, or at least think they know that “trans” has something to do with moving from one to the other. And despite the impression of knowing, they find it hard to understand what a “trans woman” is. They are, however, super comfortable with terms like “MtF” (“male-to-female”) and would have no problem understanding what it means. (What they would not understand is why that term might not be a good way to think and talk about the topic.)
What do people do when they realize that they find it hard to understand and think about and talk about such things? A typical thing to do is to leave the model as it is and minimize your exposure to the topic. As long as you can avoid the topic it makes no difference whether it is a good model or not—at least not to you. (This is part of what is called “cis privilege”.)
But sometimes it is unavoidable and people feel like they have to improve their ability to think about gender. The next thing they often do is add more labels to the existing model. Since right now, there is nothing labeled “trans woman” in the picture, they might add a label like so:
If you have some basic grasp of gender theory, this is the point at which you should cringe. A lot. Even more than before. Because this model is not getting any better. It is merely getting more complicated while maintaining the fundamentals of its rigid, misleading structure.
A person using this model is quite likely to be obsessed with the concept of “transitioning”. Those green arrows are such an essential part of what it means to be trans, at least to them, because of the model they are using. They are likely to be obsessed with the start and end point of the arrow, and the path from one end to the other, all of which has only very little to do with what it means to be trans.
They are also likely to see a meaningful distinction between “women” and “trans women” as distinct concepts. And of course they wouldn’t be able to make sense of anything that’s not represented on the map at all, such as non-binary identities.
The more they get confronted with aspects that are hard for them to understand, situations where they are told that their view is wrong and oppressive, situations where they don’t feel comfortable talking about gender because apparently they can’t get anything right, the more they… the more they what? What follows from that? What should follow from it? Here is what I think should follow from it: what they should consider is that their precious, precious map is wrong. It is not a useful map. They should throw it out the window and build up a new map.
We’ve done it before. We have created a map of Berlin, from scratch! It wasn’t so hard, was it. We could do it again, and this time, we could start with points and connections that actually allow us to make sense of the actual diversity of ways people and their personal experiences relate to each other, and relate to other realities. Societal structures that gender is embedded in, that give gender its meaning through the way individuals respond to them.
What could such a map look like?
I encourage you to try to answer that question by talking to people about their experiences, and by reading what has been written about it over many decades. And be prepared to make mistakes in constructing a better model. Every time something doesn’t make sense to you, or you find it hard to think and talk about it, every time you hear a new term (“AMAB”, “CAFAB”, “gender-fluid”, …) that you can’t place into your model, consider that there might be something wrong with your model.
And one last thing: Berlin should really rename “Gesundbrunnen” to “Nordkreuz”, because it reflects the meaning of the station much better. And isn’t that what distinguishes names that are just names from good names?
