Gender Fluidity as a Norm Harms Men And Women

For instance, period-care companies advertise their products to “people who bleed”, instead of “women”. In doing so, they not only open this one experience to everyone, when it was previously exclusive to women, but they also objectify them, reducing them to a bodily function. The Endometriosis Network of Canada (ENC) chose to adopt gender-neutral language, going so far as to prohibit “addressing the group by feminine terms.” In doing so, ENC condemned the very reference to women in discussions centering around a serious struggle that has exclusively affected women for years. In both examples, the word “women” is replaced by a preferred gender-neutral term.

Men and masculinity have been subject to such trivialization as well; masculinity is defined as toxic by its very nature, so any problem related to men is just a result of their own masculinity. Some people go so far as to say that being feminine is not only beneficial for men but beneficial for everyone. Men, should they want to be traditionally masculine, are deemed to be dangerous to themselves, to women, and other men. Meanwhile, Western culture celebrates the male feminist and the effeminate man.

The trivialization of men’s and women’s traditional roles and experiences invalidates and minimizes them, effectively undervaluing contributions each sex has traditionally provided, and putting a bandaid on cultural and societal problems they may face. As a culture, we’ve trended towards doing both; increasingly favoring gender fluidity and issuing protections for gender identity, overriding protections issued on the basis of sex. We can see this with the House of Representatives passing the Equality Act, which aims to end discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity, and additionally “[prohibit] an individual from being denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual's gender identity.”

What Is Gender-Fluidity?

The answer to the question, “what does it mean to be gender fluid?” varies widely depending on who you ask. 

One PhD author Sabra L. Katz-Wise asserts in a Harvard Health blog post: 

“Gender fluidity refers to change over time in a person’s gender expression or gender identity, or both. That change might be in expression, but not identity, or in identity, but not expression. Or both expression and identity might change together.”

Lauren Booker described it for CNN simply as: 

“when gender expression shifts between masculine and feminine” and that it “can be displayed in how we dress, express and describe ourselves.”

American author Kate Bornstein, who was born male and later in life socially and medically transitioned to female, wrote in her book Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us: 

“Gender fluidity is the ability to freely and knowingly become one or many of a limitless number of genders, for any length of time, at any rate of change. Gender fluidity recognizes no borders or rules of gender.”

These three definitions create distinct and only loosely-overlapping boundaries around the term, and as you ask more people, the Venn-diagram only seems to grow in complexity. CNN’s piece describes gender expression shifting between masculine and feminine, which implies that there’s still some semblance of structure or “rules of gender” being followed. This contradicts Bornstein’s definition. CNN’s piece also fails to mention gender identity, and focuses only on expression; at the same time, both Katz-Wise’s and Bornstein’s definitions are explicit in their inclusion of “gender identity”. 

Meanwhile, the Equality Act defines “gender identity” as “appearance, mannerisms, or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, regardless of the individual’s designated sex at birth”. This definition isn’t any clearer than the ones above, and in fact, at least Bornstein’s definition includes a reference to time. Does the definition in this bill also allow for such an unrestricted time frame, allowing a biological man to identify as a woman for a few minutes, and then go back to identifying as a man? Such a definition is fine on a personal level when it comes to expressing yourself, but its ambiguity becomes frightening when legal protections are issued on the basis of it.

Preferring Gender Fluidity Harms Men And Women

The gender fluidity/expression debate becomes dangerous when one gender is preferred by society over another. In the case of what’s currently trending in the mainstream, gender fluidity, neither explicitly masculine nor feminine, is preferred and celebrated, and this only serves to hurt men and women; and worse still, boys and girls.

Men who are more feminine are celebrated more than feminine women; many of the most famous makeup artists and makeup influencers are men (such as James Charles and Jeffree Star) despite there being no shortage of women who are interested in makeup and pursue careers in makeup artistry. Vogue has had many women in dresses on their covers, but once Harry Styles donned one for the December 2020 issue, people were celebrating it.

Singer Lana Del Rey expressed her disinterest in feminism, sparking criticism and allegations of her setting women back with not just this sentiment, but with many themes in her songs; such as wanting to be submissive in her relationships.

Female protagonists in movies and shows are celebrated for fitting the accepted mold of “strong and independent,” even if they’re written as Mary Sues with no real portrayal of the struggles they’d have to go through in order to be strong and independent (think Rey in the recent Star Wars trilogy, or Captain Marvel in Avengers: Endgame). Additionally, if a woman (or a young girl) isn’t feminine enough, or if she feels uncomfortable in her own body (as many girls do while growing up), she’s often encouraged to identify as trans or gender-fluid, as if to be a girl or a woman should be easy, and if it isn’t easy for them, they aren’t truly a woman. One woman in the UK, Keira Bell, was encouraged to transition, and is now seeking legal action against an NHS gender clinic because she “should have been challenged on the proposals or the claims that [she] was making for [her]self.”

Masculinity itself is also often under attack. Learning For Justice (LFJ), an organization that works with educators, schools, students and communities, encourages teachers to “disrupt gender norms” in their classrooms because of toxic masculinity. LFJ chooses to define toxic masculinity as such: “a narrow and repressive description of manhood, designating manhood as defined by violence, sex, status and aggression … where strength is everything and emotion is weakness.” They then claim that this is the cultural idea of manliness.

They explain that toxic masculinity (again, the cultural idea of manliness) needs to be dismantled, citing instances of violence where the perpetrators were men; mainly mass shootings that have happened across the U.S. in the recent past. LFJ fails to acknowledge that the perpetrators generally had a harmful upbringing to begin with; it’s not as though they were all raised as ordinary boys, and were told that they need to be aggressive in order to be men.

In the case of the Sutherland, Texas church shooter, he had a substantial negative disciplinary record and signed up for a martial arts class in his youth because he was harassed by his peers and felt as though he didn’t fit in. In the case of the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay shooter, he didn’t have a strong father figure to begin with at all, seeing as his dad “was on the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted” list and was “described as psychopathic in an arrest warrant.”

When masculinity and femininity are both attacked, in favor of gender fluidity, it causes harm to men, women, and children who identify as masculine or feminine; whatever conforms traditionally to their gender. A woman who identifies as very feminine, who wants to be a homemaker or a mother, is often discouraged from pursuing that goal because it doesn’t fit with the liberation narrative of feminism.

The idea that masculinity in culture is toxic also hurts men. It discourages them from wanting to be strong physically and mentally, from not wanting to dwell on feelings for too long, from wanting to be self-sufficient. The fact that “toxic masculinity” and general “masculinity” in the scope of Western culture is defined so narrowly as “aggressive” reduces it to something that should be stamped out. In so doing, it invalidates and vilifies the identities of men who have not and would never commit acts of needless aggression.

Acceptance of Fluidity As The Default Enabled The Passing Of The Equality Act

The acceptance of gender fluidity, such that it’s almost a social norm, or even a social preference, resulted in the Equality Act passing in order to protect it. After all, if one’s gender identity is more important than the sex they were born as, that warrants protection, doesn’t it? Whereas previous protections were issued on the basis of immutable characteristics (i.e. race or sexual orientation) this sets a new precedent of offering protections for a characteristic that’s categorically mutable. What this ultimately does is endanger people whose gender aligns with the sex they were born with, particularly women and girls.

It’s important to make explicitly clear that transgender and transexual people exist, and being trans doesn’t mean they are harmful to society. Many of them transition socially and undergo medical procedures such that if you told them to go into the bathroom corresponding to their birth sex, it would result in people being confused, or telling them to kindly go into the other bathroom. The critique of gender fluidity isn’t aimed at them, but rather at the popularization and prioritization of fluid gender identities.

Transgender MMA fighter Fallon Fox broke one opponent’s skull in a fight, who then had to receive 7 staples to the head, while Fox claimed to have enjoyed it. A transgender weightlifter was allowed to compete in the women’s division, while they were still in the process of transitioning, and subsequently broke the women’s world records.

One transgender activist, Jessica Yaniv, sued a beauty salon for declining to wax her male genitalia. Yaniv then “filed various complaints against estheticians in the Vancouver area, causing two to go out of business, and she was seeking as much as $15,000 in damages from each place.”

One female teacher was charged with rape and sodomy of a 15-year-old male student. A special education teacher was charged with second-degree rape targetting a 16-year-old. One woman shared her story of abuse, detailing how as a girl she was raped and abused by her gymnastics coach, who was 20 years older than her.

These cases aren’t the first, and far from the last cases of harm being done to children and young men and women. And the majority of the perpetrators certainly weren’t trans. However, in allowing there to be no distinction between spaces for men and women, boys and girls, it breeds opportunity for bad actors to enter and do harm, as per the crime opportunity theory which “suggests that offenders make rational choices and thus choose targets that offer a high reward with little effort and risk.”

Closing Thoughts

Gender fluidity as a concept is fine; let individuals express themselves how they want to, in the ways they want to. However, making gender fluidity the norm, and proceeding to demonize anything that goes too far masculine or too far feminine on the spectrum is harmful to those who identify as traditional masculine or feminine. Issuing protections for gender identity, that trump protections for biological sex, will result in increased opportunity for harm to be done to individuals, both cisgender and trans.

Luna Salinas is a US-based writer at Lotuseaters.com with a focus on culture and society, and how they directly influence politics. She turned to writing in order to join the fight against misinformation, and in order to provide a voice that perhaps other young women could relate to. Her favorite drink is either pinot noir or whiskey, and her favorite view is one with mountains and forests.