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By Barbara J. Risman, Jesse Holzman, Mary Ann Vega, and Ningning Zhao
Do people with non-binary identities really reject gender because they believe men and women are really so different?
A recent article by Spencer Garrison claims that people who reject identities of being women or men, and instead identify as non-binary or genderqueer, explain their identity by calling on beliefs about the differences between women and men. This research suggests that non-binary people remember early-childhood preferences for being more like those of the opposite sex. The author suggests that non-binary people justify their identity to others by explaining that they do not fit into contemporary expectations of either masculinity or femininity and so cannot be women or men. The author claims that non-binary people use more essentialist beliefs about gender than do the transgender people in his study.
Such a finding turns common sense on its head. Aren’t young people who reject gender categories disrupting acceptance of gender stereotypes? How can it be, as this new research suggests, that those who reject a gender binary use gender stereotypes to justify identities that reject the categories themselves? For those of you not currently au courant on new language and gender politics let us start with some definitions. Sociological research today distinguishes between binary transgender people who leave the category they were assigned at birth and affirm their authentic category and those who reject gender labels entirely and do not identify as women or men. Those in the latter category identify "between or beyond" the man/woman binary, and identify with a variety of labels from non-binary to genderqueer to agender. By the time you read this, there may be new identities or at least new language for identities already springing up. Young people are experimenting with, perhaps even discovering, new ways to wrestle with the gender structure.
In my (the first author of this column) recent book, Where The Millennials Will Take US: A New Generation Wrestles with the Gender Structure, I interviewed people with genderqueer identities and describe them more as rebels than as true believers in the essential differences between women and men. Indeed in my book, some of the rebels strongly criticized gender stereotypes and endorsed an understanding of gender as fluid. One even talked about her journey through from identifying as a butch lesbian, to a trans boy, and now to genderqueer. In our current research project, we have interviewed 17 people who identify as genderqueer or non-binary and most endorse very social constructionist views of gender. What does that mean? They understand that we are all socialized into gender stereotypes, and they reject the constraints of what it means in our society to be a woman or a man, and so choose to identify between, or perhaps beyond those categories, to escape those expectations that do not feel comfortable to them. Philosopher Robin Dembroff argues that genderqueer people are gender critical ones, they reject gender categories both because those categories feel oppressive, and because they reject the inequality that gender structure involves, including the history of male dominance.
So how to explain the contradictions between the research article published by Garrison and my previous and ongoing research? We offer two possibilities, both of which are discussed in an academic response to that article. First, Garrett only recruited people who identify both as transgender and as genderqueer. But nowhere does he claim his conclusions are only about transgender identified genderqueer people. This research excludes from consideration the genderqueer people who do not also identify as transgender and ignores their voices in this conversation. But even worse, the new research is based on having interviewed only five people who identify both as transgender and genderqueer. This is too important a topic to allow research on such a tiny sample to stand unchallenged.
Here’s why this matters. We are seeing ever-increasing numbers of young adults discarding gender labels, refusing to use he/she pronouns, and choosing instead to identify as non-binary with they (or other) pronouns. In our analysis, many of them are today’s gender rebels, rejecting categories that previous generations have never managed to liberate from their oppressive constraints. Some identify as transgender, others do not. We need much more research on this new kind of gender rebellion. What we don’t need is research based on tiny exclusive samples suggesting that genderqueer people are true believers in men's and women’s essential, even natural, differences. We see the sand shifting under our feet with new pronouns and identities that go beyond a gender binary. We need to listen to their voices and not use small biased samples that allow researchers to fit new ways of being into old storylines.
