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Title: 21st Century Gender Author: Jack Welfare Date: 18/03/2022 Language: en Topics: anti-humanism, gender abolition, gender nihilism, gender theory, transgender
An Introduction to Gender
The purpose of this first chapter is to act as an introduction to the
concepts of the entire book – a nice way of me telling you what you’re
going to read, so there’s no nasty surprises later. It also exists
because I want this book to be as easy to read as possible – essentially
I don’t want to throw all you readers into the deep end – this chapter
is the equivalent of the shallows before we start open sea swimming
later on. The ideas presented in this book really rely on thinking
outside of what we’ve been taught and told to think about gender and sex
– so we need to slowly break down these barriers before we continue.
The original draft of this introduction chapter was written in an almost
accusatory tone – perhaps in my own cynicism, or distaste for the system
as it stands currently, I blamed cisgender people (those who are content
with the gender assigned to them at their birth) for not understanding
gender at all and as such causing the hostile environment that
genderqueer people live in. In case you are unsure – genderqueer is a
term for those who disagree with the gender binary; those who do not
believe they are man or woman, or those who have transitioned between
the two. I think this accusatory tone came from conversations I’ve had
with both friends and family over this topic, wherein they struggled to
think of gender identities out of the binary, along with struggling to
comprehend rethinking biology. And why should have I expected any
different? As I said earlier, I had just thrown them all in the deep
end, forgetting that I was already an experienced swimmer (the funny
thing about this analogy is the fact that I cannot actually swim).
So, in hindsight, I believe that framing it in this way was wrong – it
is not that cisgender people necessarily don’t understand gender, but it
is that most people have no need to think about gender. Is this
necessarily a bad thing? I don’t think so – after all there is no need
to question something that you are fundamentally content with. And yet,
there is a direct contrast with how genderqueer people think about, and
view, gender – we actively think about gender and where we fall within
the system, because a gender system is not made to incorporate us.
And of course, the difference in the perception of gender comes from our
experience in it – since genderqueer people need to question gender
initially as a basis of forming their identity, we obviously go further
in questioning it as a system as a whole.
The easiest way to begin our exploration is by breaking down the ideas
of sex and gender – two terms that are distinctly different yet
intertwined; two terms that are commonly conflated despite these
differences. The basic way of defining these two, a way in which I have
commonly heard, is that gender is how you feel, and sex is what’s
between your legs. And I think this definition is what has caused
criticism from conservatives over the idea of gender – since the
predominantly cisgender conservative critics have rarely thought about
gender, and there’s been no contrast between their gender and sex, they
struggle to believe that you can ‘feel’ a certain way about gender.
I think a different way of defining it is to say that gender is how one
presents, acts and defines themselves. If we use Judith Butler’s ideas
on gender, we can say that gender is created from a series of
‘performative acts’ that is used to fulfil the infinite amount of
possibilities within our physical bodies. Sex, however, is a form of
categorisation to label physical attributes – this is because there are
still physical attributes that are tied to certain sexes beyond genitals
– facial structure and bone structure, height, body hair – these are all
used to categorise people. And the issue with this system as it is, is
that not everyone fits into the male/female dichotomy that has been
instilled to us in high school biology classes.
I am not talking about non-binary people, who have physical
characteristics that would label them as male or female, but in fact
intersex people. The common public image of an intersex person is that
of an androgynous hermaphrodite, but this is wrong. Biology classes
teach you that males have XY chromosomes, and females have XX
chromosomes; in fact, ‘biological males’ can be born with XXY
chromosomes (called Klinefelter syndrome) and this is not a minor
difference, it can cause major physiological difference, including the
development of breasts, along with infertility. Some people would
disregard this point by saying that the percentage of intersex people is
so small that they do not disprove our sex binary, but the percentage of
those with intersex traits worldwide is estimated to be about 1.7% -
this figure is actually comparable to the amount of people with red
hair. So, if you’ve met someone with ginger hair in your life, then
there’s an equal chance that you have also met an intersex person (even
if they didn’t know it) in your life.
The binary of sex has not only excluded these people but has formed
society’s conception of gender and sex in such a way that being
cisgender is ‘the norm’. Similar to Simone De Beauvoir’s concept of
‘otherness’ in regard to men and women (men being the ‘norm’ and women
being ‘the other) we see that those who identify out the gender binary
are seen as ‘the other’ – a way of thinking born out of a dependence on
biology and sex. We can see this further expanded within the existence
of an LGBT ‘community’ as a monolith that is contrasted with the
cisgender and heterosexual ‘norm’. By this, I mean that the LGBT
community is commonly seen as a single cohesive group, being ‘LBGT’ is
seen as an identity within itself rather than an organisation of
individual communities.
The rest of this book will move on through this basic opener – we have
already begun to break down sex and gender here, and I fundamentally
wanted this chapter to make those who do not have such a critical view
of sex/gender to open their minds to these concepts not being as set in
stone as one would think.
The Basis of Gender
So, we know that gender isn’t as set in stone as we thought – the ideas
of ‘man’ or ‘woman’ are not immutable facts but simple concepts that we
can easily escape from. The next logical step is for us to discuss the
question: “Where does gender come from?”
There are two strands of thought around this subject that I’d like to
talk about here; the first is a more political/ideological stance on
gender, and the other is a stance that focuses more on the personal
relation to gender that we all have, and why we, as individuals, uphold
it rather than wishing to destroy it.
The ideological way to deconstruct gender is to label it as a class
system. You would normally view a class system in an economic sense –
perhaps the Marxist view of the bourgeois factory owners and the
proletariat workers, or perhaps through the social classes – upper,
middle and lower classes along with their more complex modern
definitions. So, of course, this way of thinking views gender along the
same lines – as a means of categorising and subjugating people.
This class system of gender originates from reproductive labour, and the
division of it. Reproductive labour, if you haven’t already worked it
out, are the acts involved in both conceiving and rearing children. Men
are the dominant one traditionally in both sex and the home life – their
dominant role in sex translates to their dominant role in society.
Women’s share of reproductive labour is both their submissive role in
sex and their taking care of the children after they are born.
So, the ‘material base’ (which is the fundamental desire or fundamental
act of labour in which it stems from) of gender is the division of
reproductive labour. Fundamentally, this is where gender comes from.
Regardless of the culture or gender system we see in the modern day,
this is where it stems from.
As it stands today, the gender system (and that is the system stemming
from western society), as defined by Vikki Storm and Eme Flores in The
Gender Accelerationist Manifesto, is governed by these characteristics:
other genders are marginalised, seen as a perversion.
isn’t tied to biology, but identical to it – being a man means having a
penis. Your gender is fixed from birth, it is immutable.
choice for the two who are getting married.
who is expected to clean and take care of the home.
Of course, for the sake of our discussion we can disregard the points on
marriage for now and focus on gender. So, under this system, we see that
only ‘man’ and only ‘woman’ are recognised by the dominant power – but
what is this dominant power? Unlike other class systems, such as
economic class and race, gender is not primarily enforced by the state,
but more so enforced by societal thought and norms, alongside being
enforced by sexual violence.
The rates of sexual violence are much higher amongst both women and
queer people than they are straight males. As such, they inhabit a lower
position within this system of gender than men. However, whilst I agree
with the interpretation that the gender system is enforced via sexual
violence, I would further add that gender is kept in check by societal
values along with our active participation in the system – the link of
gender to our biology has created a sense that there is no other system,
there is no alternative to the system.
This is where the second strand of thought, with a more personal
approach, comes into play. On a personal level, we both identify with
and uphold the current gender system as part of a search for recognition
and identity, rather than a strong natural feeling to what one could
call ‘gender’. I would say that this is a more prevalent issue within
the LGBT community rather than cis people, as the former have more
desire for recognition due to a long history of oppression.
As it stands, queer politics is based around the issue of recognition of
LGBT people within mainstream society – and, as such, there is a
proliferation of identities to expand this recognition. It seems to be
that, for at least some people, the goal is to as accurately define and
label one’s sexuality and gender experience as accurately as possible,
an entirely non-reductionist method to classify gender anew. The system
that is enforced via this method of thought is slightly different to the
gender system proposed within the Gender Accelerationist Manifesto, but
still works in a way that I would describe oppressive.
extreme ends of gender, and there is an infinite amount of gender
identities between them.
precise identity of an individual.
explain every aspect of attraction that one feels.
The issue with this system is that it shapes both gender and sexuality,
which should be viewed as an experience rather than a concrete identity,
into a comprehensive identity which is somehow distinct from the
infinite other amount of identities.
These identities come about as queer people struggle with their
identities, especially during their adolescent years. As such, a label
that allows themselves to ‘form’ their identity around it is very
helpful within their own personal understanding of themselves. I do
believe that they are working upon the right lines – they have detached
gender from sex and have in turn, viewed gender as just an accessory to
their whole identity. However, the issue, as I may have made clear, lies
within the fact that they are using a concrete identity label to do so –
they are still expected to ‘perform’ within their gender role, they are
not given freedom.
I realise that, within this section, I have only talked about LGBT
people – this was simply because their connection between gender and
identity was more blatant than that of a cisgender person. A cis
person’s attachment to their gender is more subtle because, as I said
earlier, it has not been something that they have never had to truly
think about. But similarly, their identity stems from their gender and
its stereotypes – this is, in part, due to socialisation, which as I
have described is the process in which gender roles are enforced within
young people. Even those who rebel against their gender roles
fundamentally have their identity based within it, therein that their
identity is still based upon these roles, just the act of rebelling
against it. Their identity, which includes their physical
characteristics, how they dress, their own interests, is linked to
whether they are a man or a woman – they often fail to realise that
nothing would necessarily need to change if they were to change genders.
And this is how the gender system is truly enforced – the categorisation
labels of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ have become all-encompassing identities that
are upheld by people who want to feel as if they have something to
belong to.
The issue is here that gender is used as a means by which to give
someone an identity, rather than it being a simple aspect of a
multifaceted, ever-changing collection of traits that we call
‘identity’.
The Oppression of Gender
I’m not sure if this has any business being its own chapter, given that
this is a flat continuation of Chapter 2, but I think it’ll make it
easier to understand. Within the last chapter I tried to lay down the
foundations, saying that there are two aspects of gender, the personal
experience and the societal apparatus.
The societal apparatus is, of course, gender as it can be viewed as a
class system – that of subjugation of primarily women and genderqueer
people, one in which the categories of man and woman are natural and
biological, and that queer people are seen as the ‘other’. And then,
gender on the personal level, as an experience, is gender being upheld
by those, especially LGBT people, who are seeking both identity and
recognition. These two systems do fundamentally sit side by side, and,
in my opinion, complement each other.
The view of gender as a spectrum, with an infinite amount of identities,
essentially expands the gender system as it is, rather than combatting
it. It can easily slot into the view of gender as a class system, as
this spectrum still places ‘man’ and ‘woman’ on either end, and seeks to
say that instead of these identities on the spectrum being in flux,
everyone has a concrete identity on it. This means that we can still
view it as ‘man, woman and other’.
Regardless of whatever system of classification that one may use to
create a gender system, the existence of this categorisation is flawed
within itself. It cannot be reformed – I believe that any reformation of
the gender binary as it stands, still recognises the gender binary as
the ‘default’ and as such will do nothing but continue its oppressive
nature. This oppressive nature not only stems from the state’s
deployment of gender, and how it fundamentally favours cisgender people,
but also from the simple existence of the system.
I said earlier that gender has been used to give a basis to identity –
labels that can be used for someone to ‘grow’ around it. However – I do
not believe that this is a guiding stem that you can grow around, it is
a box to grow into; a box that fundamentally limits you.
“because gender is not a fact, the various acts of gender creates the
idea of gender, and without those acts, there would be no gender at all”
The idea of gender being the basis of one’s identity presumes the fact
that gender is grounded enough to be this base. I said in the
introduction that gender was performative – a series of actions that
realise infinite possibilities – so I’ll use the metaphor of a stage
performer.
A performer is given a character that they can interpret as they please
– they are given no boundaries and can play it as old, young,
optimistic, pessimistic or whatever. However, the performer makes their
interpretation right at the start, without even reading the latter half
of the script, completely unaware of what may happen. So, as such they
are restricted – upon reading the second half they may realise that a
better interpretation was available, yet they cannot change it.
This quote from Judith Butler also continues the notion of gender not
being “set” – the concept of any aspect of gender, or sex, being
immutable and unchangeable is fundamentally the core tenet in its
oppression. What is assigned to one at birth is fundamentally not their
destiny, which is something that the majority of the LGBT community can
agree on. However, it can be said the assigning of any label on someone
does exactly the same thing – it creates the idea that one has defined
themselves fully within this label, and, as such, the oppression
continues.
Gender, as a concept that is constantly creating and renewing itself
through these performative acts, cannot at any one point be truly
defined and encapsulated within a label without limiting one’s own
expression. The true breaking down of gender norms, a common effort in
modern society, does seek to break down the expectations and oppression
of gender labels – but it does not go far enough. It is well enough to
break down the categories of “man” and “woman”, reaching a point where
the notion of “boys can wear skirts and wear make-up” becomes the
standpoint of the majority of people, but the true goal should be simple
viewing them as people, not “boys” or “men”. To break down gender norms
should end in the result of breaking down gender labels.
Any label must be strictly defined; any gender system must be strictly
defined in order to keep their categories “correct.” Any strict
definition requires exclusion and policing to uphold. When the term
“femme” came into popular use as a means by which to replace the word
“woman”, it immediately became hard to define what a “femme” was without
immediately excluding people. In order to replace the “old” gender
binary (what one would consider the man/woman binary), “femme” was
basically seen as the oppressed class. It began to include feminine gay
men, non-binary people along with feminine women. But via doing this, it
failed by implying that masculinity was the bringer of oppression; butch
women, and masculine non-binary people, became as equally blamed for the
strife of women.
It is at this point where labels, and by extension the apparatus of
gender itself – becomes especially oppressive. Gender and identity
become extensions of ‘power’. In this sense, ‘power’ is defined as the
ability to take away freedom – the only way power can possibly be
exerted is to fundamentally take away freedoms; the laws of a country
are an extension of power, they take away one’s ability to commit crimes
without consequence, which is restricting freedom, despite moral
justification. And this mystical idea of ‘power’ is not something that
wholly exists between the state and the individual, it is not that the
state exerts power and oppression on individuals, it is more so that
complex networks of power exist within social norms and individual. In
the modern era, we police ourselves.
So, to connect this to gender, and, especially the idea of labels, both
gender norms are extensions of power (insomuch that they limit the
freedom of the individual to act as they please without fearing social
rejection) and the existence of gender labels further restrict the
individual out of a desire to conform to their identity. It could be
argued that people cling to the existence of gender much like how people
desire a state – the trade-off of a loss of power for perceived
security.
By detaching ourselves from our labels it does nothing but free us –
labels do not ‘empower’ us and equally the subjective language that we
use to identify ourselves has no intrinsic meaning. The subjectivity of
language, that being that language has absolutely no concrete ‘truth’ or
meaning leaves the dependence of labels as absolutely null and void.
A key example I use of this is the bisexual-pansexual debate within LGBT
spheres (I will be honest and say I am absolutely tired of this
pointless debate over semantics when there are much greater injustices
happening to queer people worldwide). This entire debate stems around
the idea that “pansexual” means an attraction to people regardless of
gender whilst bisexual means attracted to the “biological sexes” of male
and female. First of all, this is obviously wrong – bisexual people can
feel an attraction to both non-binary and intersex people, and typically
this argument is only used by pansexual people claiming that bisexual
people are transphobic.
In practice, this doesn’t matter – there’s no need to categorise sexual
attraction down to the methods by which they’re attracted (i.e. being
attracted to them because of their gender versus being attracted to them
regardless of their gender) as either way people interpret these labels
differently. If we seek to abolish the concept of gender, we also need
to seek to abolish the categorisation of sexuality.
The Sanctity of Sex – What Makes us Human?
20th Century Feminism was powered by the female body – one of the core
aspects of our forebearers’ movement was the empowerment of the female
body. A reclamation of the female body from an object that is sexualised
and exists for the pleasure of men into something to be celebrated by
women, bodies of all shapes and sizes. However, the good intentions of
this movement are the very reason as to why transmisogyny has become
prevalent in radical feminism.
Transmisogyny is defined by the hatred, and a prejudice against, trans
women specifically – this does not include trans men. The fear that
trans women are ‘men in disguise’, and the unfounded belief that
identifying as a trans women is primarily used by sexual predators to
prey on so-called ‘real’ women is heavily founded in transmisogyny. And
this, in turn, is born from how earlier feminist movements treated the
female body. The empowerment of the female body led to it being seen as
a near sacred object – and the sanctity of the female body, in the eyes
of these feminists, is being violated by the existence of trans women.
This, similarly, is the reason why these feminists (often called TERFs,
short for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists) do not hold such strong
views against trans men. Not only do trans men, in their eyes, not
infringe on their women-only movement, but the fact that they are AFAB
(Assigned Female at Birth) individuals means they can do no harm. In the
eyes of TERFs, the female body is devoid of sin, it can do no harm,
unlike the male body, seen as an oppressive and predatory concept. This
also often leads to the infantilisation of trans men.
You may be wondering why this even matters besides an excuse for me to
go on a little tangent, but to me it shows the prevalence that sex has
over gender in the eyes of the general public.
Sex is wholly a scientific concept – a result of the desire to
categorise and label the human body. It isn’t a natural, inherent fact
of life. Much like the concept of gender, the concept of sex is
something that is man-made. Gender does not come from sex; sex is the
active gendering of the human biology.
You cannot misinterpret this as me denying the existence of penises and
vaginas – of course these are aspects of the human biology in the same
way that lungs and hair colour are aspects of the human biology. Gender,
which has existed as a class system, that is based upon reproductive
labour, is justified through the concept of sex as an innate natural
aspect of the human condition.
The concept of sex has changed, much like gender, and as such we cannot
sit here and use it as the be-all and end-all of the gender argument. It
was originally that sex was wholly determined through the genitals; with
the advancement of science, sex has of course changed – aspects of the
body that we were not aware of before, such as the ovaries or even
chromosomes, have become gendered. This is something I touched upon in
the introduction – human biology is infinitely more complex to be
determined within a binary. In fact, I would go as far to say the human
biology is too complex as to label and categorise sex as a concept at
all. Even the concept of oestrogen and testosterone being dominant
hormones for each sex is slightly wrong – biological ‘men’ can have
oestrogen-dominated endocrine system. There is nothing that inherently
‘male’ or ‘female’ – it is merely a process of categorisation that we
have taken as fact.
The inevitable goal of gender abolition cannot happen if we cling to
sex. Even in transgender spaces, there is an obsession with being either
‘AMAB’ (Assigned Male at Birth) or ‘AFAB’ (Assigned Female at Birth) –
it is something that is presented as needed for medical purposes, when
in fact in most circumstances it makes no difference. It also continues
to undermine the idea of transitioning – it creates a difference between
a so-called ‘real’ (cisgender) woman and an AMAB trans woman. This
dependence upon sex means that society will never be able to progress
beyond a binary – there will always be a difference between trans people
and cis people; a barrier in which we inevitably wish to blur.
Sex, much like gender, is something that is not a binary – something
that I touched upon in the introduction to this book. The existence of
intersex people goes to show that sex isn’t as clear cut as it has been
defined. Sex has been gendered into the binary.
However, we cannot use the existence of intersex people as a means by
which to justify non-binary gender identities – both the intersex and
non-binary communities of course have very different interests and goals
which keep the two as distinct entities. In fact, I believe that there
should be, as a whole, no need to justify any sort of identity, no need
to appeal to a hypothetical greater body of the masses in order to
portray how one expresses themselves as ‘correct.’ If we have already
touched upon the idea that sex in itself doesn’t matter – and that sex
is a product of gendering the human biology – then there is no need to
appeal to biology and sex when trying to justify the spectrum of gender.
In the end, why should we appeal to biology, or any naturalistic
argument, at all? The essentialist argument of “this is how humans
naturally are” falls apart when we start to consider what a ‘human’ even
is. What is it that naturally separates the ‘human’ from the ‘animal’,
or the ‘human’ from the machine? As science progressed during the 18th
and 19th centuries, the previous held belief that humans were naturally
different to any wild animal started to disappear – humans were animals.
One idea is that the fundamental difference that separates us from most
animals is our intelligence and ability to build civilisation. But
equally, as the 20th century advanced with technology and artificial
intelligence, both the dependence on this new technology and its own
advancement created beings that were equally intelligent to humans. If
we use the measure of intelligence to separate humans from animals,
could it be that these machines are equally human?
The point that I’m trying to say is that we cannot talk about the
“natural human” when the concept of a human is as much of a concept as
sex and gender. This concept is just a way of defining ourselves and
others around us, the same as terms we use to define sex and gender. Our
body is something that is separate from whatever we would call ‘us’. Our
identity, our personality is something that wholly exists within our
brain, it’s a non-physical entity that we try to define through
language.
Judith Butler argues that gender is a process of performative actions
that culminate to define itself. The entirety of our identity is not
much different – the final definition of who you are as a person comes
from the actions that you have performed upon others. We do not live our
lives as completely atomised and isolated individuals – the identity of
who you are is something that is simply exerted on others. The concept
of ‘me’ is something that exists solely within other people’s heads as a
culmination of the actions that I have performed around them or to them
– and how I view myself, the interpretation of me is, in fact, created
through my own observation of how others view me. Any sense of self is
defined through the existence of others – if there was no other living
entity in this world, if we lived a completely solitary existence, then
how would we define ourselves? What would we know that was ‘us’ and ‘the
other’?
The body is not the human – the body is a physical medium, an
intermediary, between the ‘human’ (that is the collection of actions
exerted upon the others around me, a definition of my personality
created through my actions) and the world around us. Therefore, we
cannot use the body as a justification for the definition of the human,
be it through sex labels or gender labels, as the body is not the human.
As I said – there is nothing that makes us essentially human – language
is a subjective entity that can change with the flow of time. Much like
how our body is a physical medium between us and the world, the language
that we use is a metaphysical medium between us and the world, Language
allows us to interact with everything around us, describe it and define
it, without needing to interact with it physically. And our concept of
identity is defined via this subjective medium – the concept of me is
something that is created through interacting with others and described
through language. A ‘human’ is not a physical being – but a metaphysical
concept.
Gender, Life and Society
The theory of intersectionality, especially within the realm of liberal
politics, is focused around linking forms of oppression within society.
Race-based, sexuality-based and gender-based discrimination are
interlinked, yet separate. As such, intersectionality dictates that the
members of such a movement can never be united fully since the
experiences of one person may differ so wildly to another. However, the
thought that the relationship between these movements is that of
separate but allied movements is false – in fact these are all part of a
greater totality.
“In truth, oppressive systems are more than that. There is no one
untouched by the domination of class systems within liberal society.
Everyone, from the most powerful capitalist to the lowliest worker, from
the domineering patriarch to the uncertain young trans woman, from the
controlling asylum administrator to the schizophrenic force-fed
medication, from the white gentrifier to a black family pushed out of
their family apartment all experience the control of these systems. No
one is left untouched. Rather than being systems of passive control,
they are an active totalitarian whole, a totality.”
The Gender Accelerationist Manifesto, quoted here, summarises the
reality much better than I ever could – the gender as a system of class,
which has previously been alluded to in this book, is another system in
the cycles of oppression that everybody faces in their day-to-day life.
This interpretation is strictly different to the liberal intersectional
interpretation – the latter of which describes these cycles of
oppression as wholly separate (i.e. a black man only experiences
oppression related to that of his race). For this interpretation, the
interlinked nature of these cycles only comes into play when it concerns
someone that falls into two or more categories (i.e., a gay woman, or a
black non-binary person). However, this is not true – these systems are
part of a greater totality, as described in the formerly mentioned
Gender Accelerationist Manifesto.
In a Marxist analysis – gender is formed from the division of
reproductive labour, which leaves it as a class system not dissimilar to
the economic class system born from capitalism. Reproductive labour and
economic labour are not separate (children are becoming viewed as
“economic units” and as such the production of children is the
inevitable production of greater surplus value) – and therefore neither
are these cycles of oppression.
The key point of this chapter is to answer the question; “why does this
matter?”. And the answer to this question relies on two things – one,
the totality of oppression that I have just described, and two – the
fluidity of identity and the non-importance of identity.
If we seek to liberate ourselves (and I am looking at this through a
communist lens) through abolishing the present state of things – we
cannot simply stop at the abolishment of class as an economic concept.
The abolishment of gender and sex comes hand in hand with this – it is
just another class system within the totality. Equally, to look at it
the other way around – gender cannot be fully abolished without the
abolishment of the totality as a whole. To put it simply, the ideas in
this book are not something that can be recuperated by mainstream
liberal politics – and that is why mainstream politics and social
activism has not focused on this movement – it is too far, too extreme.
And that is its greatest advantage.
The concept of identity is born from subjectivity – the idea that “I” or
“myself” am something that is uniquely different to anything else, that
my lived experiences are unique and must be given meaning. To further
categorise oneself is something that is done to form a uniqueness to
oneself – identity is used to describe something that is indescribable,
a constantly changing, non-sensical collection of memories and lived
experiences with no inherent meaning. There is no comfort to be had in
identity – there is nothing that you can do with identity that can be
achieved otherwise.
In particular, gender identity is something that is redundant; as I said
earlier, the concept of a concrete and founded identity is one that
inevitably only limits personal expression.
This book, in the end, aims to end the concept of identity politics by
doing away with identity as a whole – identity will crumble if we do
away with the labels used to define it. As previously mentioned,
language is a subjective, metaphysical concept used to define things
around us – and in a solely metaphysical concept such as identity, as
soon as this language is done away with, the concept is destroyed
alongside it. But it is a mistake to assume that this destruction of
identity would have any ill effects on those everyday people.
To describe the effects of this great shift, we need to continue our
analysis of gender through a Marxist perspective, one which closely
allies the former with that of capitalism. Under the economic class
system, one’s identity stems from the work that they perform, and under
this class system of gender, one’s identity does not only form from the
reproductive labour that they perform, but the actions that they
perform.
Under the capitalist system, you may be a baker; which is subsequently
part of your class, your identity in a sense. If we were to do away with
any form of monetary system, in which you would no longer have a job
which creates surplus value (a Marxist term that effectively means the
profit created by an individual worker) but you would still bake things
to provide for others. In doing away with both gender and sex were are
performing a similar function – it is not correct to think that it would
be ‘taking away’ your identity, it is more so taking away the need to
identify, the need all of our identities to be part of one whole
coherent hierarchy.
And that is the key point I want to make here – I do not want the
average person to misinterpret this message as something that is
aggressive – to take away one’s freedom to identify is to do the same as
the structures/power systems that I have already criticised within this
book. My point is more so that we should stop categorising the fluid
entity that is identity into multiple categories – we should give
ourselves ultimate freedom.
Take the Shield, Raise the Spear
Do we need gender, or does gender need us?
The very question posed at the title of this book, one in which I
refrained from referring to until the very end of it – it was a question
of course alluded to throughout the course of writing it but it was
something that I had hoped you, the reader, would question whilst going
through each chapter.
The fact that gender, and identity, is something constituted via our own
performative actions means that we are the people who actively police
and uphold it. Gender is a class system, and your class only exists via
your acceptance of it.
In the end, we, the average people, are the only ones who can bring
about the end of gender – as we are the ones who actively police it and
enforce it in are everyday lives. Socialisation and gender norms are
exerted via the class system of gender through everyday people – a great
shift is needed in the way of thinking of the masses for this change to
take place.
And the best way that one can begin this revolution, is by simply saying
“No” to gender. This doesn’t need to be done by completely eschewing the
concept of gender in relation to oneself however, but it is more so
rejecting how gender is enforced upon you.
Destroy the meaning of gender labels – we must use gender, in the end,
to bring about its destruction. The hyper-specificity of labels can be
fought by misusing them, vandalising them.
Call yourself a cis woman with a penis.
Call yourself a male lesbian.
Call yourself an asexual slut.
All of these labels, both in terms of sexuality and gender, are
completely meaningless – language is not a concrete be-all and end-all,
we can use the power of language to destroy the systems around us. The
meaning of “cis woman” starts to degrade when those who they would
consider “AMAB” start calling themselves a cis woman – and that is
entirely the point. Breaking free from the labels that are both enforced
onto yourself, and the labels that you yourself may have chosen, is to
achieve freedom.
What we are aiming for is a greater societal shift – as such we do not
need to use sexuality/gender labels as a means by which to explain
ourselves – or a way to make our identities “valid”. There is no “queer
community” – we are not a monolith of united individuals, but we should
not seek to validate ourselves, and instead accept that there is no
validity as there is no standard. There is no need to appeal to the
nature argument, to cite sources about homosexuality in animals, because
the concept of anything being “natural” is completely made up.
Empowering queer voices and people is something that is not done through
assimilating these very same things into a “normal” society. We should
actually try to invalidate ourselves as much as possible – we are not
agents of the state as a whole, or society – we stand in blatant
opposition to it. The very concept of being queer is something that we
should embrace as wholly invalid – something that stands completely
against the norms of society.
It is a common concept that no-one is “normal” – everyone is so unique
up to a point that you cannot define a standard normal to work with. As
such, the quest in LGBTQ spaces to define things as “valid” and
“invalid” works in a similar sense – no-one in this world is valid, we
are all fundamentally invalid.
This abolishment of gender and sex is something that I personally
believe is a Marxist concept. The quest of communism, as defined by
Marx, is the movement to abolish the present state of things. Do we have
an outset plan for the future, in how people should express themselves,
how our lives should be lived? Of course not. The system of gender and
sex, as it stands now, was not something that was ever perfectly planned
out top down. All we know is that we need to make a change, and we need
to do it now.
In the end, like all systems of power, gender needs us. In all aspects
of modern society, we have been moulded into entities that completely
police themselves. So, if we could collectively reject gender, kicking
into the foundations, then the whole structure collapses.
But, of course, in the end, it’s your choice.