Let Me Count the Ways
A few years ago, philosopher Kathleen Stock distinguished five conceptions of gender. [“Can You Change Your Gender?”, The Philosopher 107:3 (2019). Later, in her monograph, Material Girls (2021), she reduced her five to four, but I like the five.] In addition to her helpful systematizing, she tries to answer if, according to each definition, some individual could change her or his gender. I will borrow from her work, and make some improvements (in my opinion), in order to lead up to my own answers.
Just like the historical review I did last time, I find these five possible ways people might now use the word, gender, very helpful to lay out and think through. For, we find, whether you can change your gender depends upon how you define the word.
Gender is….
- …a synonym for biological sex. This common usage we all probably employ on occasion. For example, when someone says, “There is a gender-pay gap,” or “That city is experiencing gender-based violence,” he is adopting this meaning. A driver’s license application asking your gender is joining in. Under this definition, can someone change their gender? No, because it is the same as a given sex.
- …the culturally accepted manifestation of biological sex. Here, gender is the collection of stereotypical characteristics, attitudes and behaviors of which the current culture approves for men and women. E.g., “Asking directions while driving is a gender thing,” or “Watching mixed martial arts is a cultural gender marker.”
Can you change this gender? Well, you can challenge it by changing your behavior. You can vigilantly stand ready to protest if you feel someone’s attitude toward you expresses gender. But this gender doesn’t belong to you, so you cannot really change it. It is more about changing social mores. Corporately over time, these things change anyway. Women haven’t always been the ones to wear dresses, and may not be in the future. Or witness the number of movies today where spindly women typically demonstrate an ability to beat up men.
- …the occupation of masculine/feminine social roles. This meaning of gender focuses on the functional, purporting that gender is something we do, rather than something we are. The things performed by individuals and perceived by society compose it, but here it is unconnected to biological sex.
Such roles are breaking down in our culture, which is not an entirely good thing for relieving social stress or avoiding offence. But some still remain. E.g., When you apply make-up, you are doing gender. When you become a firefighter or take on some other very dangerous job, although there are exceptions and gifted female outliers, that is usually a gender act.
Can you change your gender here? Sure. As a woman, you could deliberately perform the roles or acts attributed to men or vice-versa. This is sometimes called drag.
- …a discursive construction and illusion, that also precedes sex and projects sex onto a body. Here we travel to the exotic land of Judith Butler and the queer theorists. (In 1987, Teresa de Lauretis coined the term, “Queer Theory,” which eventually birthed this meaning of gender.) We hear in statements like, “We read society’s illusion of a sex-binary onto people, without their choice really.” This sentiment is hard to sustain belief in, as soon as you have a baby and reflect on how it was done. But it remains influential in the academy. Can you change it? You can parody and disrupt, but there is no guarantee you can break out of society’s framework, especially if the current administration passes legislation that forbids men in women’s prisons.
- …an identity that you determine in yourself (the Trans meaning). This “gender,” sometimes also called “gender-identity,” is made up of people’s individual feelings of ease or lack of ease with their sex. The gender-dysphoric are most apt to use it. An example is: “I am trapped in the wrong body, because I am a different gender than my body.”
And, of course, for people using this last definition, the very big question is, can it change? Well, depends who you talk to.
A Surprising Answer
I would answer, practically, that someone’s “gender” of this type (sense of gender identity) CAN change. Because I have seen it. Amazing as it sounds, people can change the way that they understand themselves under the power of the Holy Spirit. In fact, God is in the business of doing just this—changing how we view ourselves. And I have seen people absolutely alienated from their body be completely reconciled to it. And, I can tell you, it is a lot more freeing, and a lot more cost-effective, than trying to change your body.
So, in this sense, yes, their “gender” or view of themselves changed. And they now praise the Lord for it.
So, can gender change? If you mean it in this last sense, thank God the answer is ‘yes.’
If you are interested in my definition of gender, tune in next time!