Two Dimensionality

Men nor Non-Men

One of the problems that we have in our social dialogue on important issues is the tendency to classify people into two categories, and no matter how careful we are to avoid this we still fall into this trap.

I was at a Democratic local party convention last week, and in selecting delegates to the next level, we need to have a balance between the genders so that one sex doesn’t have a majority over the other. At one point, due to the insistence of some people that they are not in the sex binary, the party rules dictated that the affirmative action model reflect that we select an equal number of “men and non-men.”

And you just are left to wonder who the non-men are.

In specifying a split that doesn’t leave out non-binaries, women become secondary. I was wondering why no women objected to insist that women be spelled out rather than left in the “non-men” bucket. But I have been thinking about it, and I think that the reason is that women are so used to being secondary to men that it didn’t occur to any to object. Those who noticed may have thought that there would be no point. I can only guess.

Leaving out the idea that there are 72 “gender identities” because I think that’s stupid, I think that the idea that trans identifying men are women is a reflection of the binary thinking that is intractable in our thinking. If a man, or an adolescent boy, observes the expectations of being a male and realizes that his own personality is not masculine, he is getting a very loud and clear message from a multitude of sources that this means that he is a female trapped in a male body.

Trans.

And when he realizes this, there is an entire support system of fellow travelers who love bomb him and tell him that if anyone disagrees with this self-diagnosis they do so out of ignorance or hate. The masculine stereotypes are further enforced, and the world remains locked into concept that one is either a masculine male, or a non-male. Women, are left to be lumped in with all the other non-males.

To me this seems rather obvious, and especially so when I engage in a discussions in a Facebook group that my girlfriend shared with shortly after we began dating. It is “Dating Over 50 Discussion Group.” In this group, men and women in my age are stuck in the same stereotypical behaviors and roles for men and women that I have been seeing all my life, and it’s frustrating because people are happy being trapped in gender roles that are assigned to their sex. They talk about alpha and sigma males, talk about what women should do to be real women, men should do to be real men. It’s discouraging because I realize that the message that was as simple as Marlo Thomas’ “Free to be, you and me” has been kicked aside.

I don’t think people actually like freedom. It makes us uneasy. I think it causes anomie, uncertainty. We like to know what our limitations are, so we have guidelines on how to act in uncertain situations. So, even if a male has come to the conclusion that he is not masculine and so a “non-male,” he needs to be seen as a woman because then he can move from one set of expectations to another.

Gender is a trap that restricts our freedoms to express our individuality. Rather than give them the freedom to express their personality, men who believe themselves to be “not-men” want to move into a cage designed for women. The problem is, they are so conditioned that as males they have the right to treat women as secondary, they feel entitled to take Their Place. And if women object, they are seen as hateful, and deserving of whatever scorn is heaped on them.

Dr. Hillary Cass, who did a thorough review of the pediatric rush to medicalize children who believe themselves to be trans or non-binary, is now being advised not to take the tube nor buses in London beause she may be in danger. She’s a women who questioned the idea that males can be “non-males” but given drugs to make them appear to be non-males.

Just remember the rule: There are two kinds of people. Men, and non-men. And then non-men who are sexually male count more than the women who are non-men.