(en)(blog) does gender exist?

locale/en/blog/does-gender-exist.md

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+# Does Gender Exist? Do We Want to Abolish It?
+
+<small>2024-06-10 | [@andrea](/@andrea)</small>
+
+![A picture of a person wearing a face mask and sunglasses, participating in a protest, and holding a sign that says: My favourite season is the FALL of the patriarchy](/img-local/blog/fall-of-the-patriarchy.png)
+<p style="margin-top: -.75rem"><small class="text-muted">Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/fr/@gmalhotra?utm_source=unsplash&
+utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Gayatri Malhotra</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/ft3ndjrS2TI?utm_source=
+unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></small></p>
+
+While browsing the responses in the [2023 Polish Nonbinary Census](https://zaimki.pl/spis), I came across one where the respondent refused to
+answer most questions, adding notes like “gender doesn’t exist”, “gender doesn’t matter”, “we don’t need pronouns”, “you can’t escape
+labels by adding more labels”, “be yourself”, “abandon the concept of gender”, “don’t let yourself be pigeonholed”, etc. This is not a
+lone voice (though, admittedly, very rare) – I once discussed similar issues with an agender person who is currently working on one of
+the upcoming language versions of Pronouns.page; and I myself am agender and have delved into similar reflections many times.
+
+For our [zine “Poczytałosie”](https://zaimki.pl/zin), I wrote a piece ([“Analogies”](https://avris.it/texts/analogie)), in which I consider this theme
+– how from the perspective of a person who doesn’t feel a connection to any gender and understands it more in intellectual terms than
+a personal experience, dividing people into categories more or less related to their genitals seems as absurd as if we treated each other
+differently based on our blood type or hair color. It’s hard for me to see gender as anything other than an arbitrary and harmful
+division.
+
+But at the same time, I understand people for whom their gender identity and the ways of expressing it are extremely important. Not
+just transgender and nonbinary people, but also cisgender people. After all, when a cis man lowers his voice to sound more masculine,
+or when a cis woman puts on makeup to emphasize her femininity – that’s also _gender performance_. Heck, I myself, even though I don’t
+consider things like facial hair, makeup, or clothing as inherently appropriate for only one gender, when I paint my nails or wear a
+dress, it’s partly just to feel good in my skin and feel that I look great – but undeniably, I often do it also to signal to the world:
+I am not a man, stop seeing a man in me.
+
+Why are gender identity and expression so important to us? Because, even if we see the matter differently as individuals, we live in a
+society where gender _is_ important. Even if it is “made up”.
+
+Gender is a **social construct**. There is no immutable law of physics
+or biology that makes pink girly and blue boyish, that half of society must be referred to as “she” and the other half as “he”, that part of society
+must be frowned upon for wearing makeup, and the other part for _not_ wearing it, etc., etc., etc. All these things are just conventions!
+The society in France agrees on different norms than in Japan, people in antiquity observed different norms than we do now.
+
+This does not mean, however, that gender does not exist. A good analogy might be the law – yes, the law is a social construct, an
+agreement, a convention, nothing tangible, objective, or immutable. But if you break it, you _will_ feel the consequences.
+
+Sure, it’s nice to speculate about how wonderful it would be to live in a world where gender doesn’t matter – where you can be whoever
+you want, where no one looks at you through the lens of gender, judges, makes assumptions, imposes, forbids… where your gender has as
+little impact on your life as your eye color. I would love to live in such a world and I bet a large part of nonbinary people shares a
+similar vision. I don’t know if it could be called “abolishing” or “overthrowing” gender – since gender would still exist, it just
+wouldn’t be a social compulsion. Maybe rather “abolishing gender roles”?
+
+But call it what you will. It seems that whether we collect queer labels and experiment with our gender expression, or completely
+reject the concept of socio-cultural gender as absurd, we have the same goal – a world free of patriarchal constraints. The question
+remains, how to achieve it. Pretend that it already is the way we would like it to be? Live as if gender didn’t matter until it finally doesn’t?
+The pragmatic part of my mind screams that this is not the way.
+
+Using pronouns can be a good example… I fully understand people who use [_any pronouns_](/any), basically saying “call me whatever you want”.
+I  usually don’t feel dysphoria just because someone addresses me using [female](/she), [male](/he), [neutral](/they), or [neological](/xe)
+forms. But I also know very well that if I told the world “my pronouns don’t matter, call me whatever you want” – 99% of people would
+use male forms. Their mistaken assumption that I am a man will not be challenged. Language will reinforce the pattern. Although
+_individually_ pronouns don’t make much difference to me, _collectively_ I prefer to choose (and expect respect for) the forms that
+strike the patriarchal system.
+
+I approach the queer labels in a similar way. My identity (gender, sexual, romantic, relational) is complicated, ambiguous,
+fluid, and constantly rediscovered. I don’t want to be pigeonholed, I’ve never been comfortable in any box. But I still gladly use
+labels and flags – because I know they are our collective effort to understand and describe reality; that they are a tool by which we
+tell each other: “I feel the same way”, “being like you is okay”. It’s easy to tell someone “just be yourself” – but it’s hard to know
+who you really are, if you have no point of reference, if you don’t know what is even possible.
+
+Pretending that gender doesn’t exist can also be dangerous. Violence often has a gender – should we also ignore, for example, that
+restricting reproductive rights is tied to how gender roles are perceived? Denying trans people the right to gender identity using the
+excuse “I don’t believe in gender” could be compared to advocating for the abolition of borders: it’s a wonderful, utopian vision of
+the world, and it’s nice to strive for it – but it requires systemic changes, not empty declarations and attacking the most vulnerable.
+If, for example, you deny immigrants citizenship “because I don’t believe in borders”, you are not fixing the system, but under the
+pretext of disagreement with the system, you are actually reinforcing it.
+
+I'm not saying any of this to attack [people who don’t use labels](/terminology#unlabeled) or who use [any pronouns](/any) –
+there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that! Everyone has their reasons, their thought process, and their preferences. However, I must
+admit that it hurts to read demands like “stop seeing gender!” while the whole world constantly sees gender in me and imposes
+arbitrary behavioral norms based on it. I don’t understand why someone tells me “just be yourself”, but at the same time tells me to
+abandon all the vocabulary that helps me name (even if it's not super precise) who I am…
+
+Pronouns.page exists to help solve specific problems created by patriarchy. Yes, I would love a world where there is _no need_ to create
+such resources, where there is _no need_ to introduce yourself with pronouns, to think about your gender or look for labels.
+But as long as the oppressive patriarchal system imposes gender roles on us, surrendering and pretending that
+“gender doesn’t exist” does not help us overthrow it in any way.