Gender binary

Gender binary (also known as gender binarism, binarism, or ambiguously genderism)[1][2][3] is the classification of gender into two distinct, opposite forms of masculine and feminine, whether by social system or cultural belief.

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In this binary model, sex, gender, and sexuality may be assumed by default to align, with aspects of one's gender inherently linked to one's genetic or gamete-based sex, or with one's sex assigned at birth. For example, when a male is born, gender binarism may assume the male will be masculine in appearance, character traits, and behavior, including having a heterosexual attraction to females.[4] These aspects may include expectations of dressing, behavior, sexual orientation, names or pronouns, preferred restroom, or other qualities. These expectations may reinforce negative attitudes, bias, and discrimination towards people who display expressions of gender variance or nonconformity or whose gender identity is incongruent with their birth sex.[5]

General aspects

The term gender binary describes the system in which a society allocates its members into one of two sets of gender roles, gender identities, and attributes based on the type of genitalia.[6] In the case of people born with organs that fall outside this classification system (intersex people), enforcement of the binary often includes coercive surgical gender reassignment.[7][8] Intersex people often identify anatomically as male or female; however, their innate gender identity may be different. Gender binary therefore focuses primarily on one's innate identity irrespective of their anatomical features.[9]

Gender roles are a major aspect of the gender binary. Gender roles shape and constrain people's life experiences, impacting aspects of self-expression ranging from clothing choices to occupation.[10][11] Most people have feminine and masculine psychological characteristics.[12][13] Traditional gender roles are influenced by the media, religion, mainstream education, political systems, cultural systems, and social systems.[14] Major religions such as Islam and Christianity, in particular, act as authorities for gender roles. Islam, for example, teaches that mothers are the primary care givers to their children and the Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination, only ordains cisgender men as priests. Christianity supports its adherence to a gender binary with the Book of Genesis in the Bible, where it is declared in verse 27 that "God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."[15] Orthodox Judaism also forbids women to be ordained as rabbis and serve as clergy in their congregations.[16]

In English, some nouns (e.g., boy), honorific titles (e.g., Miss), occupational titles (e.g., actress), and pronouns (e.g., she, his) are gendered, and they fall into a male/female binary. Children raised within English-speaking (and other gendered-language) environments come to view gender as a binary category.[17] Studies have found that for children who learn English as their primary language in the U.S., adults' use of the gender binary to explicitly sort individuals (i.e. "boys" and "girls" bathrooms and softball teams), as opposed to just the presence of gender markers, causes gender biases.[17]

According to Thomas Keith in Masculinities in Contemporary American Culture, the longstanding cultural assumption that male–female dualities are "natural and immutable" partly explains the persistence of systems of patriarchy and male privilege in modern society.[18]

Hyde and colleagues suggest that gender being visibly marked makes it become unnaturally psychologically salient.[17]

In the LGBT community

Gender binarism may create institutionalized structures of power, and individuals who identify outside traditional gender binaries may experience discrimination and harassment within the LGBT community. Most of this discrimination stems from societal expectations of gender that are expressed in the LGBT community. But many LGBT people and many youth activist groups advocate against gender binarism within the LGBT community. Many individuals within the LGBT+ community report an internal hierarchy of power status. Some who do not identify within a binary system experience being at the bottom of the hierarchy. The multitude of different variables such as race, ethnicity, age, gender, and more can lower or raise one's perceived power.[19]

Worldwide, there are many individuals and several subcultures that can be considered exceptions to the gender binary or specific transgender identities. In addition to individuals whose bodies are naturally intersex, there are also specific social roles that involve aspects of both or neither of the binary genders. These include Two-Spirit Native Americans and hijra of India. Feminist philosopher María Lugones argues that Western colonizers imposed their dualistic ideas of gender on indigenous peoples, replacing pre-existing indigenous concepts.[20] In the contemporary West, non-binary or genderqueer people do not adhere to the gender binary by refusing terms like "male" and "female" as they do not identify as either. Transgender people have a unique place in relation to the gender binary. In some cases, attempting to conform to societal expectations for their gender, transsexual individuals may opt for surgery, hormones, or both.[21]

Limitations and rejection

Some scholars have contested the existence of a clear gender binary. Judith Lorber explains the problem of failing to question dividing people into these two groups "even though they often find more significant within-group differences than between-group differences."[22] Lorber argues that this corroborates the fact that the gender binary is arbitrary and leads to false expectations of both men and women. Instead, there is growing support for the possibility of utilizing additional categories that compare people without "prior assumptions about who is like whom".[22]

Scholars who study the gender binary from an intersectional feminist and critical race theory perspective[23] agree that during the process of European colonization of the U.S., a binary system of gender was enforced as a means of protecting patriarchal norms and upholding European nationalism.[24] This idea of a gender as a binary is thought to be an oppressive means of reflecting differential power dynamics.[25] Studies of Two Spirit traditions have shown that various indigenous cultures understand gender and sexuality in a way that opposes Western norms.[26][27][28] Gender binarism also poses limitations on the adequacy of medical care provided to gender nonconforming patients. There is a large gap in medical literature on non-binary populations who have unique healthcare needs.[29]

Anne Fausto-Sterling suggests a classification of 23 sexes and to move away from the classification of male and female. In her paper "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough", she discusses the existence of intersex people, individuals possessing a combination of male and female sexual characteristics, who are seen as deviations from the norm, and who frequently undergo coercive surgery at a very young age in order to maintain the two-gender system. The existence of these individuals challenges the standards of gender binaries and puts into question society's role in constructing gender.[30] Fausto-Sterling says that modern practitioners encourage the idea that gender is a cultural construct and concludes that, "we are moving from an era of sexual dimorphism to one of variety beyond the number 2."[31]

See also

References
  1. Marjorie Garber (25 November 1997). Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety. Psychology Press. pp. 2, 10, 14–16, 47. ISBN 978-0-415-91951-7. Retrieved 18 September 2012.
  2. Claudia Card (1994). Adventures in Lesbian Philosophy. Indiana University Press. p. 127. ISBN 978-0-253-20899-6. Retrieved 18 September 2012.
  3. Rosenblum, Darren (2000). "'Trapped' in Sing-Sing: Transgendered Prisoners Caught in the Gender Binarism". Michigan Journal of Gender & Law. 6. SSRN 897562.
  4. Keating, Anne. "glbtq >> literature >> Gender". www.glbtq.com. glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. Archived from the original on 3 April 2015. Retrieved 2 April 2015.
  5. Hill, Darryl B.; Willoughby, Brian L. B. (October 2015). "The Development and Validation of the Genderism and Transphobia Scale". Sex Roles. 53 (7–8): 531–544. doi:10.1007/s11199-005-7140-x. ISSN 0360-0025. S2CID 143438444.
  6. Judith., Lorber (2007). Gendered bodies : feminist perspectives. Moore, Lisa Jean, 1967-. Los Angeles, Calif.: Roxbury Pub. Co. p. 2. ISBN 978-1933220413. OCLC 64453299.
  7. Fausto-Sterling, Anne (2000). "The Five Sexes, Revisited". The Sciences. New York Academy of Sciences. 40 (4): 18–23. doi:10.1002/j.2326-1951.2000.tb03504.x. PMID 12569934.
  8. Fausto-Sterling, Anne (2000). Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (1st ed.). New York, NY: Basic Books. ISBN 9780465077144. Retrieved 18 November 2016.
  9. "Understanding Non-Binary People: How to Be Respectful and Supportive". National Center for Transgender Equality. 2016-07-09. Retrieved 2019-08-01.
  10. D'Innocenzio, Anne. "Breaking down the gender stereotypes in kids clothing". chicagotribune.com. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  11. Bank., World (2011-01-01). World development report 2012 : Gender equality and development. World Bank. ISBN 9780821388129. OCLC 799022013.
  12. Koestner, Richard; Aube, Jennifer (September 1995). "A Multifactorial Approach to the Study of Gender Characteristics". Journal of Personality. 63 (3): 681–710. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.1995.tb00510.x. ISSN 0022-3506. PMID 7562367.
  13. Spence, Janet T. (1993). ""Gender-related traits and gender ideology: Evidence for a multifactorial theory": Correction". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 64 (6): 905. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.64.6.905. ISSN 1939-1315.
  14. Johnson, Joy; Repta, Robin (2002). "Sex and Gender: Beyond the Binaries" (PDF). Designing and Conducting Gender, Sex, & Health Research: 17–39. Retrieved 2 April 2015.
  15. Schwarzwalder, Rob. "Sexual Madness and the Image of God". Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission website. Retrieved December 17, 2019.
  16. Student, Gil (February 10, 2018). "Orthodox Union to enforce ban on women rabbis". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved December 17, 2019.
  17. Hyde, Janet Shibley; Bigler, Rebecca S.; Joel, Daphna; Tate, Charlotte Chucky; van Anders, Sari M. (February 2019). "The future of sex and gender in psychology: Five challenges to the gender binary". American Psychologist. 74 (2): 171–193. doi:10.1037/amp0000307. ISSN 1935-990X. PMID 30024214.
  18. Keith, Thomas (2017). Masculinities in Contemporary American Culture: An Intersectional Approach to the Complexities and Challenges of Male Identity. Routledge. p. 2. ISBN 978-1-31-759534-2.
  19. Farmer, Laura Boyd; Byrd, Rebekah (2015). "Genderism in the LGBTQQIA Community: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis". Journal of LGBT Issues in Counseling. 9 (4): 288–310. doi:10.1080/15538605.2015.1103679. S2CID 146423757.
  20. Lugones, María (December 12, 2017). "Heterosexualism and the Colonial / Modern Gender System". Hypatia. 22 (1): 186–209. JSTOR 4640051.
  21. Cromwell, Jason (1999). Transmen and FTMs: Identities, Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities. Chicago, Illinois: University of Illinois. p. 511. ISBN 978-0252068256.
  22. Lorber, Judith. "Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology." In The Gendered Society Reader, edited by Michael S. Kimmel, Amy Aronson, and Amy Kaler, 11-18. Toronto, ON: Oxford University Press, 2011.
  23. Carbado, Devon W.; Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams; Mays, Vickie M.; Tomlinson, Barbara (2013). "INTERSECTIONALITY". Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race. 10 (2): 303–312. doi:10.1017/s1742058x13000349. ISSN 1742-058X. PMC 4181947. PMID 25285150.
  24. Narayan, Yasmeen (2018-10-02). "Intersectionality, nationalisms, biocoloniality" (PDF). Ethnic and Racial Studies. 42 (8): 1225–1244. doi:10.1080/01419870.2018.1518536. ISSN 0141-9870. S2CID 149928000.
  25. Boydston, Jeanne (November 2008). "Gender as a Question of Historical Analysis". Gender & History. 20 (3): 558–583. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0424.2008.00537.x. ISSN 0953-5233.
  26. Sheppard, Maia; Mayo, J. B. (November 2013). "The Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality: Learning from Two Spirit Traditions". The Social Studies. 104 (6): 259–270. doi:10.1080/00377996.2013.788472. ISSN 0037-7996. S2CID 146702099.
  27. Dozono, Tadashi (2017). "Teaching Alternative and Indigenous Gender Systems in World History: A Queer Approach". The History Teacher. 50 (3): 425–447. ISSN 0018-2745.
  28. Walley, Meghan (2018). "Exploring Potential Archaeological Expressions of Nonbinary Gender in Pre-Contact Inuit Contexts". Études/Inuit/Studies. 42 (1): 269–289. doi:10.2307/26775769. ISSN 0701-1008.
  29. Edmiston, E. Kale; Donald, Cameron A.; Sattler, Alice Rose; Peebles, J. Klint; Ehrenfeld, Jesse M.; Eckstrand, Kristen Laurel (2016). "Opportunities and Gaps in Primary Care Preventative Health Services for Transgender Patients: A Systemic Review". Transgender Health. 1 (1): 216–230. doi:10.1089/trgh.2016.0019. ISSN 2380-193X. PMC 5367473. PMID 28861536.
  30. Morgan Holmes (2008). Intersex: A Perilous Difference. Associated University Presse. p. 17. ISBN 978-1-575-91117-5. Retrieved 29 April 2014.
  31. Fausto-Sterling, Anne (March–April 1993). "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough". The Sciences: 20–24. doi:10.1002/j.2326-1951.1993.tb03081.x.

Further reading
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