My Concerns About the Third Gender Movement

Last year, Australia made it legal for people to register their gender as "nonspecific"--that is, neither male nor female.  Other countries, including New Zealand and Nepal, have similar laws.  I support this, because I think people should be able to "identify" however they want, or to not "identify" as anything at all.

My concern isn't with the third gender movement itself, but with how people understand it, and how they understand gender as a result.  Articles like this one from Sunday's NY Times adopt language that, despite their apparent inclusiveness, actually reiterate the gender divide.  In part, the article details the gender-related travails of Norrie May-Welby, an Australian who was designated male at birth, but by age four, "was drawn to the world of girls, playing with dolls..."  Later in life, Norrie underwent gender reassignment surgery and identified as female.  Although this development was gratifying, she found she did not want to "dissociate [her]self from aspects... simply because they were labeled masculine" (she now IDs as gender nonspecific, though she's fine with female or nonspecific pronouns).

I have zero problem with Norrie's personal decisions or (quite courageous) journey.  My problem is in the way this story is told, and in what this telling means.  The story, and others like it, suggest that Norrie's doing "girl things" as a kid was a clue to her female-ness, but that her refusal to let go of "masculine" things later meant she wasn't "fully female," or that part of her was "truly male." 

In other words, much of the "third gender" discussion equates "masculine" things with maleness, and "feminine" things with femaleness.  It reiterates the gender binary by trying to oppose it.  That is, when you say that a third gender exists because some people like "boy stuff" and "girl stuff," you're still adopting the idea that "girl stuff" and "boy stuff" exist as categories.  And I don't think they should; I think it's stupid for the categories to exist at all.

I also don't care for the idea that liking "boy things" makes your gender partly male, and that liking "girl things" makes your gender partly female.  Personally, I consider myself fully female when it comes to both sex and gender.  Others have told me I'm genderqueer or that my gender is butch.  I reply that while my appearance may seem genderqueer, and while I do identify as butch, my gender is female--and any argument that I am wrong about my own gender suggests a very limited notion of what it means to be a woman.

If you want your gender to be butch or nonspecific or agender or neutrois or anything else, I think that's awesome and that you should go for it.  But I also think it's important to fight against the idea that people are necessarily something besides male or female simply because they don't fit into society's ideas of typical masculinity or typical femininity. 

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