We need more than identity-based language.
For decades, queer theory has circled around identity as the central line of inquiry. Who we are, how we see ourselves, what words we use to call ourselves, these questions have been at the forefront. We parse the language and mince the words to find the exact right verbiage for how we identify. As a queer person coming of age in the early part of this century (I came out in 2002 as a college freshman), I have benefitted from the expansive explorations of identity based language. I called myself bisexual before I ever knew the term queer; I just felt uncomfortable in my body for a decade before I came to call myself genderqueer.
Identity based language exists in all its complexity and I am grateful for it, but it has largely existed with a more nuanced overlay of the relationship of identity to power. We have long established that our assigned gender at birth does not necessarily correlate with how we identify. Activists have fought and continue to fight for this essential right of self-determination. Who you are is who you say you are, not what a doctor assigned you at birth, not what anyone thinks about you based on your appearance.
I’ve come to understand, however, that how we identify does not always neatly correlate onto how we experience privilege or oppression. Namely, that our gender identity does not necessarily match our gendered power. This is because while identity is self-determined, power is relational. How we are empowered or disempowered is always in relation to another entity, be that human, institution, system or culture. Gender and power are slippery concepts that will not be easily pinned down, and thus far, none of our existing language encapsulates all the nuances of their interactions.
Inadequate language cannot hold our complexities.
The traditional terms “men” and “women” describe the actors in a patriarchal system. These gendered terms are sloppy shorthand for the binary nature of patriarchy, and they do not accurately describe the breadth of experience humans have as gendered beings, nor do they name the power dynamics that overlap with our myriad identities.
In order to argue points about a binary system of power, “men” and “women” can be used to speak in broad strokes, but the cost is that, to an untrained eye, much of the specificity of how gender is experienced (by cis- and trans-people, binary and non-binary people) is lost. They are deficient for the personal and cultural phenomena I am attempting to describe.
After exploring lots of existing options created by others who felt the frustration of the shortcomings of language, I landed on these: men+ and women+. That little plus sign opens up a lot of nuance and leaves space for complexity that other alternatives don’t quite allow. The plus sign is both inclusive and non-prescriptive, which is exactly how I want to relate to and speak about gender.
Queer usages aim to acknowledge the vastness of gender beyond the binary, and I don’t mind their clunkiness as much as their inaccuracy. The use of “x” to try to be more inclusive (eg, “womxn”, “mxn”, etc) attempts to not erase the experiences of transpeople. When we say “women,” many people read that to mean only cisgender women. The “x” invites us to question our implicit cisnormativity, and while this is useful, it doesn’t go quite far enough.
For those beyond the binary, the “x” fails to include us. A binary-identified transwoman may feel included in the term “womxn,” but what about a transmasculine assigned-female person who explicitly doesn’t identify as a woman but yet still experiences misogyny? “Womxn” may be exactly the right term if the user means “people who identify as women, both cisgender and transgender.” But if the user means “anyone who is not a cisgender man,” the term falls short.
Another oft-used term is “women and femmes,” again meant to include people who are not just cisgender women. But this phrase’s inadequacies end up being exclusionary to some. When we say “women and femmes,” does that include a transman who doesn’t pass? He identifies as a man and is decidedly not femme, yet he still often experiences misogyny because of how others perceive him. What about a non-binary assigned-male person who sometimes present as femme and sometimes present more masc? Where do they belong? “Women and femmes” is a well-intentioned phrase that isn’t quite inclusive enough. This phrase is meant to rally against patriarchy and the gender binary, but it is limited because it orients around identity when it’s really about power.
Identity does not correlate with power.
The reason why these phrases fall short is because gender is both an internal experience, and simultaneously externally assigned and culturally mandated. Those assignments (and the privileges or oppressions that go along with them) may or may not line up with the internal experience. When we conflate identity with access to power, we inevitably leave someone out.
A non-binary AMAB person, for instance, may still sometimes benefit from “male privilege” if that is how they are occasionally perceived by the people around them, though at other times, they may suffer greatly because they deviate from patriarchy’s mandates that “male” people look, dress and act in certain ways. A transman may be oppressed by misogyny, shunned because of transphobia, and benefit from male privilege because of how the people around him perceive him, regardless of how he internally identifies. All of these experiences may happen in the same day.
As a genderqueer AFAB person, I have sometimes experienced cisprivilege and other times experienced transphobia. I am regularly perceived as a woman, thus I am frequently affected by misogyny. These experiences are determined solely by how other people comprehend my gender.
This is tricky territory to walk, because it skirts along the edges of TERF rhetoric. Please do not misunderstand me: I believe deeply in the rights of people to self-determine their gender, and I vehemently oppose any and all assertions of biological essentialism. And yet there is no way to control how the people around us perceive us, and thus bestow or remove power from us according to what they perceive. A transwoman is a woman, no matter what, and yet, depending on how the people around her perceive her, she may experience misogyny, transphobia, and/or “male” privilege.
It’s worth noting that the experience of receiving unwanted “male privilege” can create intense dysphoria for someone who does not identify as male. For me, being read as a woman creates cognitive dissonance I cannot ignore. These emotional consequences happen internally, while the access to privilege happens externally. The two cannot be considered separately, but still, they do not cancel one another out.
Socialization creates internalized superiority or inferiority.
Additionally, a person’s socialization, that is, the way the were brought up by family and culture in relation to gender, may also affect their access to power through their own sense of entitlement to it, or the lack thereof. For instance, a non-binary assigned-male person may have an outsize sense of entitlement to physical space or conversational airtime by virtue of frequently having had access to it. They may have a sense of “okay-ness” when they dominate a conversation, for instance, or ask for what they need, that is rooted in internalized gendered superiority.
This particular example comes from my own community, wherein queer spaces disallowing cismen (in an effort to make safer spaces for everyone else) sometimes find themselves struggling with the presence of AMAB non-binary folks who inadvertently take up lots of space, physically and otherwise. The women and AFAB folks in the space find themselves crowded out. Some have responded by wanting to bar all AMAB people from the space, while others have questioned the validity of the non-binary label these dominant AMAB folks claim.
Because we’ve failed to realize the ways that identity and power do not neatly correlate, we cannot parse out that a person’s behavior may correlate to their socialization, yet that does not erode their identity. Simply put, any person can behave like an asshole, but being an asshole doesn’t give the rest of us a pass to invalidate your gender identity.
Conversely, an assigned-female person may struggle with taking up space, being loud or asserting themself because of their gendered socialization, despite however they currently identify. This is not to say that a person’s internalized gender inferiority cannot be overcome, simply that this is frequently the starting point that non-binary and trans AFAB people are coming from. Gendered socialization is, at first, externally imposed and eventually becomes internalized.
We do gender; gender does us.
Gender is something we’re doing, and it’s also being done to us. This reality need not undermine anyone’s identity nor our honoring of it. When we separate out identity from power, we have clarity not only that person is who they say they are, full stop, but also that their gendered experiences of power may or may not correlate with their internal gender identity. When we can separate identity from power, we’re able to see a someone’s personhood as separate from their behavior. This distinction has useful applications in relationship building, community organizing, and restorative justice.
Gender is a social experience, and the language that currently exists fails to accurately name these nuances. I define the term “men+” to mean “people with more assigned gendered power” and “women+” to mean “people with less assigned gendered power. ” Men+ is men and people who are privileged like men. Women+ is women and people who are oppressed like them.
However, it’s crucial to note that these terms are not fixed, and that they are intended to be self-determining. They may shift in who they belong to and who claims them at any given moment, particularly for people who identify outside the binary. Men+ is meant to include cisgender men, transgender men, non-binary assigned male people, and anyone else who self-identifies as benefiting from patriarchy. Women+ means cisgender women, transgender women, non-binary assigned female people, and anyone else who self-identifies as experiencing misogyny.
I welcome feedback about these terms and exploration of further nuance I may have missed. I encourage use of these terms widely in an effort to expand our vocabulary to be as accurate and inclusive as possible. I look forward to a future in which our conceptions of gender have shifted, the power of binary-based patriarchy has fallen away, and these terms are no longer accurate or necessary.