Lol, what is gender?
If your answer is any form of male/female, man/woman, girl/boy etc, I can’t answer the original question without taking a step further back to discuss what gender is at all.
I’ve employed the help of every millenial’s favorite science teacher: Bill Nye the Science Guy. If you haven’t yet, I suggest you take a moment to watch his new Netflix Show Bill Nye Saves the World. The show in general is interesting and informative, but please watch Season one episode nine in particular. As somebody who identifies as a nonbinary dyke, this show was incredibly validating for me, and can help explain what I’m talking about here as I deconstruct everything you were ever taught about Gender.
In Bill Nye Saves the World 1.9, Bill Nye uses his “smoking hot abacus of sex” to break down these complex and interrelated aspects of identity into four categories: Sex, Gender, Attraction, and Expression. To understand what I say when I call myself a nonbinary dyke, I find it convenient to use this abacus of sex as a starting point.
The short version is this: sex and gender are different. Sex itself is less binary than we like to think due to the realities of Intersex people, and gender is so much more complex because it’s about the sociological relationships between people and the world around them. The gender binary is what we call the assumption that there are only two options, but those of us who identify as non-binary, genderqueer, genderfluid, etc, reject this binary that society has tried to trap us in.
I am The Gracetopher, my preferred pronouns are they/them, and when it comes to the topic of gender, you can your boots you haven’t heard the last from me yet.
Gracetopher Kirk 