An Old Man Learns to Understand New Definitions of Gender Identity

 A New View of Gender

Many people today believe that people can choose their gender identities. Any person may choose to be either a man or a woman. Indeed, a person may even choose to be “non-binary,” which I take to mean that the person is neither a man or a woman but rather some third alternative. For someone brought up in a time when gender identities were considered to be fixed at birth, this has been difficult to understand, and I have struggled with it. However, a recent conversation with one of my daughters has changed my perspective and helped me to understand the new approach.

It begins by distinguishing between biological sex and gender. A person’s biological sex is indeed determined at birth. A person is born female or male, but a person is not born with a specific gender identity because gender identities like “man” or “woman” are not biologically determined. “Woman” and “man” are social roles that have to be learned. We know that this is true because we know that children have to learn how to be women or men.

Can We Separate Genders from Sexes?

When I was growing up, we assumed that little girls had to learn to be women, while little boys had to learn to be men. However, once we recognize that genders are roles that must be learned, we can ask whether or not they have to be connected to biological sexes. Must girls learn to be women and boys learn to be men, or can any person learn either role? Can any person choose to be a woman, a man or even neither?

Certainly, it is true that most elements of gender roles can be learned by anyone, and that fact points us to the conclusion that people can indeed choose their genders. However, there is one element of gender roles that cannot be learned by anyone, and that is the function of reproduction. Only a biological female can bear children, and only a biological male can impregnate a biological female. Moreover, bearing children has always been considered to be a central element of the role of women, and impregnating women has always been a central part of the role of men. Thus, at first glance, it appears that the reproductive element of gender roles may force us to link the role of “woman” to the female biological sex and the role of “man” to the male biological sex, but let us think this through further.

Is the ability to bear children a necessary component of the role of a woman, or can a person be a woman without being able to bear children? I think we have to admit that the ability to bear children is not a necessary part of being a woman. There are many women today who are biological females but who are unable to bear children, and yet they are fully accepted as women. The same thing can be said of men.  Men who are unable to impregnate women are fully accepted as men. Thus, the ability to carry out the reproductive function is clearly not a necessary component of either gender role.

However, while a person may be a man or a woman without being able to carry out the associated reproductive function, there still remains the question of the compatibility of each gender with the reproductive function of the opposite gender.  Is the ability to bear children compatible with the role of a man? Is the ability to impregnate a biological female compatible with the role of a woman? Does it make sense to describe a man as a mother or to say that a woman is the father of a child? Does it make sense to describe a person who is neither a man or woman as either a mother or a father?

From one point of view, the answer to these questions must be “yes.” “Father” and “mother” are socially defined roles that can be learned, and they are not necessarily connected to reproduction. We know that because when a child is adopted, we call the adoptive parents the “father” and “mother” of the child. Moreover, once we have separated gender roles from biological sexes, there is no logical reason why a man cannot give birth to a child or why a woman cannot impregnate a female.

However, I am not sure that this logical point of view provides a complete view of the subject. If we were social beings only, the logical point of view would tell us all that we needed to know, but we are not social beings only. We are also physical beings. We live in bodies that are rooted in the natural world. We belong to that world just as much as we belong to our social world. Our place in the natural world provides a broader context to the question of the relationship between our gender roles and our biological sexes. The fact that we belong to both worlds invites us to ask how far we can or ought to separate gender roles from biological sexes.

How Far Can We Take the Separation of Gender from Sex?

Our socially defined gender roles were originally built on our naturally defined biological sexes, but those roles have developed far beyond what is required by our biological sexes. In fact, we have sometimes attempted to include things in the gender roles that are inconsistent with the demands of our biological sexes or with other aspects of our nature, and those attempts have often failed. For example, some societies have tried to say that women don’t have sexual desires. A woman participates in the procreative act out of duty or financial necessity but not for pleasure or because of an innate sexual drive. Novels like Anna Karenina or Lady Chatterley’s Lover show us the complete failure of that definition of a woman’s role. In the nineteen-fifties, we tried to define a woman’s role to exclude earning a living or contributing to her family’s income, and that also failed. Women found the role defined by the “feminine mystique” stifling and rebelled against it. We have also tried to define a man’s role in narrow ways that excluded many men. Men are supposed to be rough, physically strong characters with a narrow focus on dominance, wealth and power, but we have been unable to make that definition of a man’s role work for a large share of our male population.

The point here is that when we try to define our gender roles in ways that are inconsistent with our biological nature, we often fail. Our biological nature sets limits to our ability to define our social roles, and when we try to go beyond those limits, we run into trouble. Is the attempt to completely separate gender roles from biological sexes a case of that kind? Can we really get away with saying that a man can bear children or that a woman can impregnate a female?

Giving people the right to choose their sexual identities is certainly liberating. It gives people a degree of freedom that they did not have before. On the other hand, a person who is free to choose his/her gender is also required to do so, and that can be a heavy burden. People may shy away from this responsibility, and that may make them feel guilty or ashamed. Or they may find it difficult to deal with choices that they later decide were mistaken. Freedom to choose a non-binary identity is an even heavier burden because a non-binary person must not only choose that identity but also define its meaning. There is no traditional, non-binary role for a person to fall back on. Freedom is not always an unmixed blessing, and we may find that most people prefer to stick with the gender identities that are traditionally associated with their respective biological sexes.

Moreover, our reproductive function and our biological sex are at the heart of our being as mammals in the natural world. Every mammalian species has clearly defined reproductive roles for males and females. Producing and nurturing the young are the main functions of adult members of each species.  Furthermore, in every human society up to the present, the women have born the children, and the men have impregnated the women. Can we really deviate from that successfully? Perhaps, we can. We are, after all, an extremely flexible species.

Will the shift to freely chosen gender identities be a permanent change in our society? I don’t know the answer, and I have an uncomfortable feeling that the question itself may be nothing but an expression of an old man’s difficulty in accepting new ideas. In any case, the new ideas are widely accepted, and there is no doubt that we are going to try the radical separation of gender and sex. I hope I live long enough to find out how well the separation works.