Transcend

There are a few common critiques of gender diversity and the proliferation of gender identities (like non-binary, genderqueer etc). Many people, including members of the LGBT+ community, argue that it puts more focus on gender as a thing when we actually want to get rid of it. This is often couched in the idea that we should just be 'gender blind'. On the more overtly hostile end, there are those, often from philosophy backgrounds unrelated to gender studies or from trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) perspectives, who argue both binary and other trans* genders are a threat to feminism. For them, a focus on gender not ("biological") sex, and the desire to change gender itself up, undermines the reality that we live in a binary sexed world where women are subordinated in the gender order. As both an empirical sociologist (I go out and ask people things) and a social theorist (I sit and think about how things work), and a genderqueer person (I don't like binary gender), in recent work I have argued against these with some key points.