What I Think is Happening with Gender Identity

Would that we could return to just a few years ago, when debate over LBGT issues centered entirely around acceptance of same-sex marriage. The debate was fierce, but easy to understand—should the legal definition of marriage remain as the union of one man and one woman, or be expanded to include two people of the same sex, either two men or two women?

We should have known it wouldn’t remain so simple for long.

The fight over same-sex marriage, which quickly morphed into a still-fierce debate over transgender rights and male/female gender identity, is even now shifting yet again, this time into a series of broader arguments over what truly constitutes gender. People are arguing that they are neither male nor female, but some combination of the two, or neither, and want to be referred to as “it”, “ze”, or “hir”. The movement for equal recognition of same-sex marriage—a movement I personally supported, albeit on a state, rather than federal, basis—has been hijacked into a growing movement calling for the recognition of group marriages, or of marriages between fathers and daughters, or between siblings. Similarly, the support network for those who are attempting to transition from male to female has been hijacked by radicals who believe they are dragons or other animals, fictional or otherwise. (I’m purposely not linking to any articles because many are so disturbing, but there are many easily accessible on Google for anyone curious enough to search for them.)

There’s an old experiment many people try growing up, where they purposely start thinking about an involuntary reflex like breathing, or walking. Most of us don’t think about having to breathe a certain number of times per minute, but the moment you begin thinking about it, you have to remind yourself to continue, and it becomes a conscious action. What was an unconscious reflex, taken for granted, rises to the realm of conscious thought.

The metaphor is strained, sure, but I think something similar is going on in society today with regard to gender identity. The concepts of male and female, something rooted in biology and largely unquestioned throughout history, is now being challenged. We as a society are thinking about things that until now have been relegated to the unconscious ticking of human social construct, but is now being challenged as never before. The ease of modern life, enabled by a standard of living that historically would have qualified some of the poorest among us as kings in the Middle Ages, coupled with a dominant liberal culture that still regards itself as a rebel counterculture, has given rise to a willingness to challenge ever more fundamental aspects of human existence.

And where will all this end up? It’s anyone’s guess, but it would be a mistake to think we’ve by any means reached the final end point, and there are only so many aspects of existence previously thought to be fundamental that can be challenged before society as a whole will itself begin to rebel. Until then, and for good or ill, group marriages and interspecies transitions may become as normalized in the public consciousness as same-sex marriage has been, compared to just a few years ago.