Expanding Our Understanding of Gender

Lisa Kenney, Executive Director, Gender Spectrum, USA

Our understanding of gender is changing, and rapidly so. A few years ago, the J. Walter Thompson Innovation Group, the in-house think tank of the global creative agency J. Walter Thompson, set out to see if this changing understanding was a fad. What they discovered was that the Generation Z youth aged 13–20 see gender in significantly different ways from previous generations, and that far from being a fad, these changes are emblematic of a global reimagining of gender. While millennials may be the first generation with a majority that sees gender as a spectrum rather than as binary, their understanding of gender seems quaint in comparison with those in their teens and twenties today.

The truth is that gender has always been more complex than we have acknowledged it to be. The binary, biology-based perspective we have been given has left us ill-equipped to effectively address the complexity of gender. The consequences of this deficiency are significant for all of us, particularly for those who do not conform to traditional gender expectations. For children to understand their own genders, engage in healthy relationships, identify and place media and social messages in context, and have agency in determining aspects of their genders now and in the future, we must provide them with a basic gender literacy.

Dimensions of Gender
How is the understanding of gender expanding for today’s youth? Let us start by discussing the dimensions of gender. Gender is a complex relationship between three distinct but interrelated dimensions: body, identity, and expression. Comfort within our gender is relative to the degree to which we experience gender congruence, which is harmony across these dimensions.

Body
Discussions about the body often begin and end with a person’s sex (female, male, or intersex). Beyond our sex, however, bodies are also gendered in the context of cultural expectations and norms. Masculinity and femininity are equated with certain physical attributes, labeling us as more or less a man or a woman based on the degree to which those attributes are present. For instance, how visibly muscular people are will likely be associated with how masculine they are assumed to be — when, in fact, a person’s physique does not make them more or less a man. This gendering of bodies affects how we feel about ourselves and how others perceive and interact with us.

Identity
Gender identity receives a lot of the attention in the public conversation about gender. Identity is essentially the label we use to communicate our internal experience of our genders. Individuals do not choose their genders, nor can they be made to change them. However, the words individuals use to communicate their identities may change over time. Because we are provided with limited language for gender, it may take us quite some time to discover, or even create, the language that best communicates our internal experiences. Likewise, as language evolves, individuals’ gender identities may also evolve. This does not mean their genders have changed but rather that the words to best describe their genders are shifting.

The two gender identities people are most familiar with are boy and girl (or man and woman) and, often, people think that these are the only two gender identities. The idea that there are only two, mutually exclusive genders is known as the ‘gender binary’. Throughout human history, however, many societies have seen, and continue to see, gender as a spectrum. Youths and young adults today no longer feel bound by the gender binary. Instead, they are establishing a growing vocabulary for gender. This shift in language is more than just a series of new words, however: it represents a far more nuanced understanding of the experience of gender itself. In particular, terms that communicate the broad range of experiences of non-binary people are growing in number. ‘Genderqueer’, a word that is used both as an identity and as an umbrella term for non-binary identities, is one example of a term for those who do not identify as exclusively a man or a woman.

Expression
Gender expression is how we present our gender in the world, and how society, culture, community, and family perceive, interact with, and try to shape our genders through gender roles and norms. Expression changes across societies and over time. While we may have been taught that we know people’s genders based on their expressions, the connections between gender expression and identity are far less rigid than they used to be. Ideas about what is ‘normal’ continue to be upended as younger generations no longer feel constrained to make traditionally gendered choices, and non-binary expression expands the spectrum of possibilities for everyone.

What Next?
It is time to cultivate a richer, more complex understanding of gender and encourage a world in which interests, styles, emotions, and careers are not limited by gender but are instead available to all. In order to bridge the generational divide regarding gender, those of us who were raised with a more limited view of it can take this as an opportunity to explore it with new eyes. As with any learning experience, we will discover more about the world around us and about ourselves in the process.

Here are a few suggestions that may help in your exploration:
1.Take 15 minutes to understand the key concepts and language of gender. One quick read is ‘Understanding Gender’, which can be found on the Gender Spectrum website.1
2.See the world around you through a ‘gender lens’ and interrogate what gender messages are being relayed by advertisements, TV shows, books, and films.
3.Understand your own gender. Ask yourself questions such as:
•Did you think of yourself as a boy, as a girl, as both, as neither, or in some other way when you were growing up? How did you come to that recognition? When?
•What messages did you receive from those around you about gender? Did those messages make sense to you?
•How were people who did not fit into societal expectations about gender treated by others? How did you treat them?
•How have your race, ethnicity, faith, class, community, and sense of place influenced your gender?
• How has your understanding of gender influenced the way you relate to others?

If you are a parent, you may also want to consider the key messages you want your children to receive about gender. It is easy to pass on unconsciously any restricting messages you may have received as a child. Ask yourself what messages about gender you want to relay, and talk to your children about gender. Find opportunities to talk about things they are interested in (such as movies, TV shows, books, and games) from a gender perspective. Sharing personal insights about your own gender story is another great way to spark conversation. Communicate an openness to understanding gender in new ways and that you are interested too in learning how your children see and experience gender.

Today’s expanding understanding of gender is an opportunity for all of us to see the ways we may have constricted ourselves to fit gender expectations, becoming less of who we are along the way. This is a chance to reclaim those lost parts of ourselves and to help those we care about step more fully into their whole, authentic selves too.

Endnote
1 genderspectrum.org