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Cultural misappropriation

I must admit, the “gender is fluid” narrative is a particular bugbear of mine. At least the “gender is a social construct” myth has come from the root problem of society having applied meaningless rules to gender (although of course it disregards the fact that gender and gender stereotypes are distinctly different), but the idea that gender is fluid has zero grounding in reality. The closest connection to an extant belief about gender is that, in some cultures, there are non-binary or fluid “genders”. This, of course, is no different to a religious belief; that is to say, cultures without the access to clear medical knowledge created myths to help them understand LGBT people. To them, a gay man was not a man; he was something in-between. A trans person was not seen as the gender they know themselves to be; they were othered as having no gender or a changing gender.

Many LGBT people will accept the labels that allow them to remain on good terms with their families, friends, and communities, especially when a deeper understanding as to why they were attracted to the same sex, or why they felt disconnected from their sex characteristics, was not available. I know that, as a trans child, if someone had respectfully labelled me as belonging to a fluid gender or a gender that was neither male nor female, I would have happily accepted that label over “female” because my dysphoria was such that anything was better than “female,” especially when medical transition isn’t available. If accepting that label meant I would still be welcome and able to participate in society (in a way that I wouldn’t be were I to label myself as a trans man), I and many other LGBT people would do so. Besides, the many people who point to these “other cultures” that have non-binary or fluid “genders” are rarely from those cultures, meaning their non-binary/fluid “identity” is not just medical misappropriation of transsexualism, but cultural appropriation of a history that does not belong to them.

Medical misappropriation

The issue of gender being fluid, though, is problematic outside of the already-troublesome cultural appropriation. For one, it’s patently false. I’ve heard cries of, “But neuroplasticity!” as a vague, pseudo-scientific reason for why someone’s internal sense of self could change, but of course, neuroplasticity doesn’t work in the way that trans/genderfluid-identified cis people want to believe it does. If neuroplasticity was the culprit, the purported “change” in a person’s gender would not be a minute-by-minute change as many genderfluid-identified people claim; it would be a very long, slow process, brought about from very specific neural conditioning or major brain injury, because that’s how neuroplasticity works. Of course, we know from the case of David Reimer (and every trans person, too!) that a person with the neurobiological make-up of a one gender is not susceptible to gender-based neuroplasticity via social conditioning. The brain is adaptable, but not the whole brain, and not that adaptable.

What it really means

Often, when people say they are genderfluid, what they’re saying is; “sometimes I like to dress in stereotypically male clothes and sometimes I like to dress in stereotypically female clothes.” When they say “I’m a man today” or “I’m a woman today”, it is based on nothing other than a desire to present themselves in a manner that has been arbitrarily gendered by society. Unfortunately, society’s conditioning around gender roles is so intensely present from birth (or even before) that many people – trans and cis alike – can fall victim to internalisation of social gender roles in a way that can make people feel as thought they’re “not a real man/woman” if they don’t perform those social stereotypes of manhood or womanhood.

This belief that gender changes according to presentation, though, reduces transsexualism down to what is effectively a costume change, and it completely belittles the experiences of trans people. It also defies the purported “pro trans” beliefs that genderfluid-identified people claim to have. If a desire to wear certain clothes = a change in gender, then a gender non-conforming trans man is apparently a woman and a gender non-conforming trans woman is ostensibly a man. So much for “Trans men are men” and “Trans women are women” – if we’re to be treated no differently from cis people, and cis people are labelling themselves as the opposite gender because of their gender non-conformity, then trans people either have to be A) completely gender conforming, B) excluded from being treated the same as cis men and women so that we can be gender non-conforming while still being accepted as our true gender, or C) misgendered if we ever choose to present in a way that is gender non-conforming.

When speaking to a genderfluid-identified man about this, he argued that, when he wears his “femme” clothes/make-up/wigs, he is unquestionably female and this is what, apparently, makes him trans. I pointed out that, by that same logic, if I as a trans man were to put on “femme” clothes, that would make me a woman – but to call a trans man a woman is obviously transphobic. His response? “But it’s different for you because you’re trans.” The poor logic of this argument is dizzying; he is male but sometimes wears “female” clothes, which apparently makes him trans and – when wearing those clothes – a woman, but when a trans man wears “female” clothes, he’s still male because he’s trans… I’ve never been able to wrap my head around that one. However, it is emblematic of the kind of poor logic that so many trans “identities” are rooted in.

The impact

The ill-thought-out nature of it all seems glaringly obvious – and is emblematic of the toxic beliefs that knits the community of trans-identified cis people together – but somehow it persists. The above example of lazy “clothes = gender” transphobia that gets dressed up as “pro-trans” rhetoric is just the tip of the iceberg. The implication that a trans person’s gender can just “change back” is a dangerous one; it only adds to the scepticism around trans healthcare and creates an argument in favour of cutting access to that healthcare. It suggests that someone could initially appear to be the perfect candidate for a medical transition, only for their gender to change back to being in alignment with their birth sex – and if someone’s gone through an irreversible medical transition, it was all for nothing and only causes them more suffering.

Of course, those who most like to promote this idea of post-transition genderfluidity are the cis people who “identify” as trans, erroneously access medical transition (either by pursuing an “informed consent” healthcare provider, or by lying to gender specialists about their “dysphoria”, exaggerating their desire for hormones/surgery as a need), and want to detransition without admitting that they’re cis and made a mistake. “Genderfluid” is the perfect fit for those people; it allows them to still be “trans”, it means they never have to admit their error or the transphobic beliefs that fuelled it – and all of that serves as perfect ammo for the people who are more open in their transphobia (that is, those who believe that all trans healthcare should be banned).

This implication that a trans person’s gender can just – at any given moment – suddenly “change back” has also led to parents refusing to allow their kids with genuine dysphoria to access medical care. In wanting to understand their child, they reach out to a community that is made up almost entirely of cis people, where genuine trans voices are suppressed and shamed, and where other adults are declaring that their gender is in constant flux. Having a teenager say, “I’m trans and need hormone blockers/HRT in order to survive” versus an adult saying, “I’m trans and I don’t need any medical care. My gender changes all the time!” means that those parents are going to wonder what the big deal is about trans healthcare. After all, if so many “trans” people have “dysphoria” but are perfectly capable of living with their sex characteristics and experiencing a constant shift in their gender, then surely their kid doesn’t need healthcare, they just need to learn to love their trans bodies, just like that “trans” adult did! Besides, their gender might “change back” at any given moment; why take the risk of providing healthcare for something that might just go away on its own? When people seek information about transsexualism from a community of cis people, they are inevitably going to be misinformed in a way that harms trans people.

Unnecessary othering

The belief that gender is fluid is another misunderstanding that tag-teams the “gender is a social construct” myth in its othering of gender nonconforming people. I’ve seen several parents raise their kids as “genderfluid” because the child sometimes wears feminine clothes and sometimes wears masculine clothes. Parents have been misinformed that “gender is fluid” and are now imposing that myth on their children. Odds are that those kids are cis people who are occasionally gender nonconforming in the way that most people are, but from a young age they’re being labelled as trans because of this harmful lie that a change of clothes/behaviours/interests = a change of gender.

It’s reinforcing those limiting beliefs about gender to the children who are being raised as “trans”. To use one example, the parents of a six-year-old girl that they were labelling as their “genderfluid” child posted on social media about how the child had gone from “boy mode” to “girl mode” by playing with her Barbies after returning home from football practice. That is, their child did something typically (but arbitrarily) associated with masculinity so must have been male while doing so, then by picking up a Barbie – another arbitrary stereotype of femininity – her gender changed (because of course, only boys play football and only girls play with Barbie!). It doesn’t take a genius nor an avid feminist to see how damaging this is, not just to their kid, but to other parents of occasionally-gender nonconforming kids. It also harms trans people, as it implies we are a product of social gender stereotypes while categorically ignoring the very real, very painful fact of our neurologically-determined gender dysphoria.

Further to this point of ‘othering’ people – labelling them as belonging to the trans community based on meaningless gender stereotypes – I once met a woman who told me her mum “would definitely be genderfluid if she was a millenial”. She said that her mum changes her haircuts all the time, sometimes growing it out only to then cut it short and regrow it, and that she’ll wear anything “from dungarees to dresses” (since when were dungarees anything other than gender neutral, anyway?). This woman was taking her mother’s perfectly normal behaviour and saying “she’d be trans if she was a bit younger,” which of course also implies that being trans is something that only applies to people under the age of about forty. It goes to show that the “gender is fluid” myth only serves to label normal presentation and behaviour as something abnormal; something that should be constantly monitored, analysed, and assessed as belonging to a gender rather than just accepted as a normal part of being a human. 

For those gender nonconforming people who have other mental health issues going on, this kind of lazy labelling can add to their distress and make them feel as though there’s something wrong with them. I was recently speaking to a man who had developed an eating disorder from the stress of being labelled as trans by people in the queer community; he had other mental health issues and was getting increasingly worked up as more and more people told him that he was probably trans because of his presentation (sometimes wearing dresses/make-up, sometimes not). All it did was create confusion and pain, making him increasingly distressed and hyper-focused on something that had never previously bothered him. He said he felt like he was constantly on the look out for a “change” of gender in himself, analysing everything he did and trying to work out whether what he was doing was “male” or “female” because he’d been told – based on the clothes he wore – that he is probably genderfluid and that his gender could change at any time. It was only made worse when he reached out to “trans” spaces and was barraged with more misinformation that only confused him further. After a long conversation in which I explained how dysphoria really feels, he said he felt so much better to have a clearer answer which helped him recognise that being occasionally gender nonconforming doesn’t mean his gender is changing. When a group imposes their harmful beliefs on vulnerable people, it can cause a lot of problems for said vulnerable person – but of course, that group is so wrapped up in their own naïve positivity that others’ distress is largely meaningless to them. They don’t stop to consider the impact of their words.

Overall, “gender is fluid” is – much like the “gender is a social construct” myth – just another misunderstanding of gender that only serves to harm everyone, not just trans people. Some cis people who are gender nonconforming end up feeling immensely distressed and confused because they’re being labelled as something they’re not and do not want to be. Often, those people perpetuating the myths do so because, to them, being trans is fun. It’s a community, an ideology, a “fuck you” to the system, but for the cis people who have other mental health issues going on, or live in a deeply unsupportive environment, or just don’t have a strong sense of their own identity, it can create a lot of stress as they try to unpick something that doesn’t need unpicking.

While it’s totally understandable that a person who hasn’t experienced dysphoria since childhood (i.e. a cis person) can believe that gender – according to their belief that gender is the “social construct” linked to clothes, hairstyles, make-up, hobbies, etc.- can change according to those social rules, the basic logic of it only serves to reinforce those oppressive rules. Those who shout loudest about breaking the binary are often those who most reinforce it with their presentation-based identities. To say that you’re a woman today because you feel compelled to present in a way that the patriarchy has deemed “female”, but that you may well change gender tomorrow when you want to present in a way that has arbitrarily been labelled “male” only serves to uphold the binary expectations of female and male presentation.

The best thing anyone can do – for trans and cis people alike – is continue presenting however the hell you want without changing your identity to accommodate those outdated and meaningless rules.