End Binary Gender Tyranny!

anythingnonbinary:

f we can agree that…

- our current model of understanding sex in a “two-sex binary model” is a social construction that followed a “one-sex model”.
- sex is constructed, insofar as gender is constructed, and we gender sex. Or, characteristics that we “sex” as “male” or “female” are actually genderings of the body. Or, we consider vaginas to be “female” because we gender them as “female”, not because vaginas are essentially female.
- male and female are not essential, opposing, mutually exclusive categories.
- bodies exist outside of binary male/female categories.
- bodies exist within binary male/female categories that challenge our understandings of those categories.

…why do we insist on language that places everything back within a male/female two-sex binary model?

Why is it that we acknowledge the problems and limitations of a two-sex model, and yet are forced to re-enter it when discussing the gendered experiences of bodies?

The question that I have is:

How can we construct sex, and the language that we use to describe it, in a way that is not based in essentialist binary categories? That moves beyond the idea of a “spectrum” with male and female rooted firmly on opposing ends? That frees us from having to describe intersex people as “between” sexes, or transsexual people as moving “across” sexes? That eliminates the dichotomy between trans* and cis bodies? That is more than male, female, and “indeterminate”? And that finally stops us from having to make vast assumptions about the bodies and experiences of “male” and “female” people?

This is about more than intersex, trans*, and genderqueer people knocking on the doors on the binary begging to be let in, or at the very least, “included”. This is about more than challenging cissexist assumptions of what “male” and “female” bodies look like. This is about understanding that the two-sex binary model is an inadequate means of describing the realities of sexed bodies. And about recognizing that it is imperative that a new way of understanding and describing sexed bodies needs to be created.

Submitted by: http://gypsydavy.tumblr.com/

I feel like this can start a lot of good discussion

(via anythingnonbinary-deactivated20)