User:Kboles2000/Gender binary

In the LGBT Community
There are some people who have started rejecting the gender binary as a whole. Postgenderism is a term used to describe the social concept of rejecting gender, and the systems that control it in society. They subscribe to the idea that the dismantling of the gender binary would make a safe space for all expressions, and thus make society better as a whole.

Ball culture is an example of how the LGBT community interprets and rejects the gender binary. Paris is Burning, a film directed by Jennie Livingston, depicts New York's ballroom scene in the last 1980's. To compete in the Balls, men, women, and everyone in between create costumes and walk in their respective categories, some being Butch Queen, Transmute Realness, and Femme Queen. During the Balls, the gender binary is thrown out the window, and the people competing are allowed to express themselves however they interpret the category. Within the scenes of people competing in various categories there's a narrative that describes life outside the gender binary in New York. Since the film came out there's been a decline in the Ballroom scene do to the rise of media and the appropriation of the Drag culture (NYT article).

Degendering fashion
Self-expression that opposes the gender binary is stigmatized and in some cases has been criminalized. The United States has a history of laws and policies against cross-dressing, such as New York's "walking while trans" law and the informal three-article rule used during the 1940s-1960s by police to punish people that dressed in a way that defied the gender binary.

#DeGenderFashion
The social media hashtag #DeGenderFashion was created by transfeminine writer and activist Alok Vaid-Menon in 2019 and seeks to separate clothing from the gender binary. They share their fears of violence due to existing as openly gender nonconforming and declare that degendering fashion "should be understood as an anti-violence imperative".

Examples in popular culture
There are public figures that also oppose the gender binary by wearing clothing not typically associated with their perceived gender, such as Prince, David Bowie, Kurt Cobain, Jaden Smith, Ruby Rose, Rain Dove, Billy Porter, and Harry Styles.

Ruby Rose wrote, produced, and starred in a short film titled Break Free, in which Ruby appears wearing feminine clothing and makeup and then removes it, replacing it with masculine clothing. The video's description on YouTube describes it as, "A short film about gender roles, Trans, and what it is like to have an identity that deviates from the status quo". The video went viral, with millions of views within the first two weeks of its release in 2014, and inspired public discourse about transness and the gender binary.

Harry Styles' appearance on the cover of American Vogue in 2020 was the first instance a cisgender man doing so by himself. This was groundbreaking as well as controversial due to the fact that on the cover he wore both a dress, a clothing item associated with women, as well as a blazer, which is associated with men. His embrace of clothing associated with women and men is a rejection of the gender binary.

#IAmNonbinary
#IAmNonbinary is a social media hashtag that gives nonbinary users a specific platform to elevate their stories and share pride in existing outside the gender binary. The hashtag has been used by people and celebrities alike, including musician and actor Janelle Monáe. Other public figures that identify outside the gender binary include Sam Smith, Indya Moore, Brigette Lundy-Paine, King Princess, Johnathan Van Ness, Bex Taylor-Klaus, Amandla Stenberg, Demi Lovato, and more.

Personal pronouns
Personal pronouns in the English language are typically associated with either men (he/him) or women (she/her), which excludes people who do not identify as a man or a woman. However, gender-neutral pronouns, such as singular they pronouns (they/them) are sometimes used by nonbinary and gender nonconforming individuals. A 2019 study found that "close to 1 in 5 Americans personally know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns such as ‘they’ instead of ‘he’ or “’she’”. In addition, people may use neopronouns in place of other personal pronouns. Examples of neopronouns include xe/xem, ze/zem, and sie/hir.

Individuals regardless of their gender identity are encouraged to share their pronouns to help normalize the practice and make more inclusive spaces for transgender people. This has resulted in people adding their pronouns in email signatures, professional sites like LinkedIn, and social media profiles. Recognizing this, Instagram released a feature in 2021 that gives users a dedicated space in their profile to add personal pronouns.

Limitations
Some scholars have contested the existence of a clear gender binary. Judith Lorber explains the problem of failing to question dividing people into these two groups "even though they often find more significant within-group differences than between-group differences." Lorber argues that this corroborates the fact that the gender binary is arbitrary and leads to false expectations of both men and women. Instead, there is growing support for the possibility of utilizing additional categories that compare people without "prior assumptions about who is like whom".

This idea of a gender as a binary is thought to be an oppressive means of reflecting differential power dynamics.

In her paper "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough", Anne Fausto-Sterling discusses the existence of intersex people, individuals possessing a combination of male and female sexual characteristics, who are seen as deviations from the norm, and who frequently undergo coercive surgery at a very young age in order to maintain the two-gender system. According to Fausto-Sterling the existence of these individuals challenges the standards of gender binaries and puts into question society's role in constructing gender. Fausto-Sterling says that modern practitioners encourage the idea that gender is a cultural construct and concludes that, "we are moving from an era of sexual dimorphism to one of variety beyond the number 2."

Femmephobia
background on gendering characteristics, associations with masculinity/femininity

dive into why it's more acceptable to embrace masculinity than femininity

Cisnormativity
Cisnormativity is a product of the gender binary that assumes people are cisgender, meaning that their gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth. Both binary and nonbinary transgender individuals are excluded from this ideology. This leads to individuals outside the gender binary experiencing disparities in health and violence at individual, interpersonal, and institutional levels due to their non-normative status.

Violence against non-cisgender individuals
Transgender individuals are at a greater risk of physical and sexual intimate partner violence than cisgender individuals. The rates of intimate partner violence among transgender populations are referred to as “epidemic levels” and they are classified as a high risk population. Discrimination against transgender individuals is believed by researchers to contribute to greater risk of intimate partner violence. This is especially prominent in areas where gender identity is not legally protected against discrimination.

state violence via three-article rule (history of cross-dressing article), literal gender policing

Health disparities
Gender binarism poses limitations on the adequacy of medical care provided to gender nonconforming patients. There is a large gap in medical literature on non-binary populations who have unique healthcare needs. A lack of cultural competency about nonbinary gender identities among providers contribute to nonbinary transgender individuals facing greater health disparities than both binary transgender and cisgender individuals. However, cisnormativity affects transgender individuals that identify within the gender binary as well. An individual's discomfort due to incongruence with their gender identity and sex assigned at birth used to be classified as a mental illness. "Gender identity disorder" entered the DSM-IV in 1980 and was used by doctors to pathologize transgender individuals. While it was updated to the term "gender dysphoria" when the DSM-V was published in 2013, transgender health is otherwise largely absent from medical curriculums. Health systems remain cisnormative and discriminative, which lead to adverse health outcomes for transgender populations.

An individual's discomfort due to incongruence with their gender identity and sex assigned at birth used to be classified as a mental illness. "Gender identity disorder" entered the DSM-IV in 1980 and was used by doctors to pathologize transgender individuals. While it was updated to the term "gender dysphoria" when the DSM-V was published in 2013, transgender health is otherwise largely absent from medical curriculums. This is especially evident for nonbinary transgender individuals, whom face greater health disparities than both cisgender and binary transgender individuals due to the lack of culturally competent healthcare providers versed in nonbinary health.