How A Nonbinary World Would Increase Equality
In the debate over whether trans women should be allowed to participate in women’s sports, people are asking the wrong question. Why do most sports competitions still only have two categories labeled “men” and “women”? The system was never more than a crude attempt at a level playing field. It’s usually not fair for a 5 ft. 4 in. cisgender man weighing 120 pounds to compete with a 6 ft. 5 in. cisgender man weighing 270 pounds. In boxing and wrestling, this has been acknowledged with weight categories. There have always been cisgender female athletes who felt better matched with cisgender male athletes. Why not take this opportunity to create a more equitable and inclusive system based on scientific criteria?
We could establish several categories of athletic competition based on fairness criteria appropriate for each sport. In basketball, the categories might be based on a combination of height and testosterone level. In football, perhaps the most relevant criteria would be weight and human growth hormone level. For cross-country running, maybe height and hemoglobin levels would be the deciding factors. Under this system, there could be less incentive for certain forms of doping because increasing your levels of a performance-enhancing hormone would simply move you into another category of competitors with that same level of hormone. Athletes with more diverse body types would have a chance to win — for example, mixed teams of men and women who are 5 ft. 7 in. to 5 ft. 9 in. tall could play against each other in a basketball tournament. Exceptional athletes could opt into a more challenging category if they are comfortable doing so.
In what other ways would the world benefit from abandoning systems based on gender to create more equitable systems with a nonbinary default? According to an article by Tori Rodriguez in Psychiatry Advisor, “studies of both adults and children have shown that many cisgender individuals actually experience their gender in a nonbinary way. In a research study published in 2013 in Psychology & Sexuality, Dr. [Daphna] Joel and colleagues used the Multi-Gender Identity Questionnaire to assess measures of gender identity in 570 cisgender men and 1585 cisgender women. More than 35% of participants indicated that they felt like the ‘other’ gender, both genders, or neither gender to some extent.” That study dates back to 2013, and as society continues to relax gender norms, I expect an increasing number of people will be gender nonconforming while not necessarily identifying as trans. Not fitting into one box doesn’t mean you fit better in the other box.
In her book Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, Kathryn Schultz described a study in which researchers Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson asked test subjects to tell them which of four types of hosiery they preferred. In reality, the stockings were identical. The subjects confabulated various reasons why they preferred one over the others. After they were told the stockings were identical, many subjects still insisted the stockings were different. In a world where we are asked to pick between two genders, we are primed to see ourselves as being one gender or the other. The experience feels real, but does it match with reality? In our daily lives, we all experience the Earth as flat, but it’s actually round.
Current science suggests gender exists on a spectrum, rather than being binary. In her book Gender and Our Brains, neurobiologist Gina Rippon explained how many myths about differences in male and female brains originated from poor interpretation of data or inaccurate reporting. If a study shows no difference in male and female brains, the scientist or reporters will think it is not worth discussing. In a study where almost all areas show no difference but there is a small difference in one area that is “statistically significant” — meaning only that it is unlikely to be an error but not large enough to be significant in common parlance — the results will be written up as “significant” or “profound.” Sometimes the study was actually done on rat or hamster brains, but the scientist or reporter then suggests the findings would be applicable to humans as well. What the evidence actually shows is that you cannot sex a brain by looking at a brain scan, because male and female brains mostly overlap, with almost all people having a “mosaic brain” that has a combination of male-end or female-end characteristics. A 2015 study found that a mere 6% of brains were consistently “male” or “female,” with the majority of 116 characteristics being from the male end or female end. Nonbinary is the default, not the exception.
According to Rippon, “a gendered world will produce a gendered brain.” Rippon described how children’s brains are sponges that soak up cultural cues as to how they are supposed to behave socially, even when they are infants or toddlers. There are periods in a child’s development when they are “slavish” to the perceived rules, castigating other children for not following those rules. And perhaps because girls are rewarded for good behavior while boys are rewarded for being right, girls are especially primed to adhere to the gender construct. Researchers took random objects such as a shoe shaper or a garlic press, painted them pink or blue, and then labeled them as toys “for girls” or “for boys.” The girls rejected the toys “for boys,” but became more accepting of the toys when they were repainted pink, in what’s called the “giving girls permission” effect. Another study found that children are good at figuring out hidden truths about what their parents really think about gender. Although 64% of parents claimed they would buy their son a doll, only 5% of five-year-old boys thought their father would approve of their playing with a doll.
When studies actually show differences between male and female brains, the difference might be a result of different life experiences, Rippon explained. For example, boys tend to be slightly better at visual-spatial processing, but researchers found that it correlated with a lot of video game playing. After three months of playing video games for 1.5 hours per week, the girls’ brains showed enlargement in the visual-spatial processing areas. If men and women are encouraged to pursue different types of careers, the plasticity of the human brain means their brains will change to adapt to their daily tasks, so a study can’t determine whether any brain differences are social or biological without a more complex inquiry into the life experiences that shaped them. (As Judith Butler posited, gender is performative — our actions shape our gender, rather than the other way around.)
Rippon clarified that there are sex differences in the incidence of physical and mental health issues, but research must be done carefully, to unravel how social shaping of gender might have affected lifestyles and outcomes, so we can distinguish those influences from sex-linked genetic or hormonal factors.
Suppose you don’t find these conclusions by Rippon and her colleagues to be convincing. Maybe all the evidence isn’t in yet, so we just don’t know whether gender is real. I’m willing to concede the possibility. But which mistake would be worse: a gendered world forcing people into gender norms even though gender doesn’t actually exist, or a nonbinary world that accepts diverse ways of being and treats everyone equally even if later we find some preferences are gender-based?
I understand that, for some trans people who believe gender is innate and binary, the idea that gender is a construct makes them feel erased. But in a nonbinary society, they would no longer be marginalized, because there wouldn’t be any gender norms or gender policing. From my perspective, being a woman makes me feel erased. It means we need to have experience already to be hired for a job, whereas men are more often hired for their potential without experience. It means keeping an enthusiastic smile on our faces to show we’re “likeable” — but not too likeable, because then people suspect we’re not competent. It means being devalued if we don’t have children, but not being taken seriously if we do. It means doing most of the housework in a heterosexual cohabitation, unless we pay another woman to do it. It means having to be responsible for other people’s emotions, such as being considered a sexual threat no matter how we dress or act — or alternatively, being invisible and unheard because we’re not attractive enough. It means being expected to be so emotionally adept that we can charm the most intractable person, but then being told we’re too sensitive and that we’re imagining perceived discrimination based on gender.
Once you accept that a woman can be petite or large, butch or femme, timid or bold, agreeable or dour, promiscuous or celibate, have kids or not, enjoy video games and/or crochet, be great or mediocre or terrible at math, wear heels or combat boots, and have any combination of reproductive organs, then there is nothing that makes a person a “woman.” From there, the only logical definition of “woman” is a person traditionally discriminated against on the basis of gender, even though femininity itself is constructed by society. The term “woman” is only useful in the context of redressing past and current discrimination. A truly inclusive world would be nonbinary.
