In a recent interview with the New York Times, Bella Ramsey remarked, “I guess my gender has always been very fluid,” explaining that he always enjoyed being mistaken for a boy, and that “being gendered isn’t something that I particularly like.” The rising star of HBO’s The Last of Us wore a chest binder while filming the hit show, receiving encouragement from co-star Pedro Pascal. Ramsey is the latest of many actors and other artists who are claiming non-normative genders like non-binary and genderfluid. Many people similarly remark on how their gender has always felt “very fluid.” Transgender comedian Suzy Eddie Izzard, for example, also claims genderfluidity, often talking about moving between “boy-mode” and “girl-mode” depending on what activities she’s engaged in. Actor Tilda Swinton similarly says they’ve never really felt like a girl and ”was kind of a boy for a long time,” clarifying that for them gender is a “transformative possibility.”
Gender fluidity can refer to how someone experiences their gender changing over time or to how they identify their gender (using genderfluid as a gender identity that falls under the non-binary or trans umbrella). Genderfluid people explain how their gender is unfixed and dynamic, feeling gender changes that move back and forth from moment to moment. This experience is metaphysically curious. If we think that gender is socially constructed and isn’t solely an internal thing, then it seems odd that one’s gender can change based entirely on internal fluctuations. How can gender be dynamic and unfixed and yet socially constructed? I suggest that we should think of genderfluidity not as internal changes but as contextual changes that alter one’s felt sense of gender. More importantly, recognizing how gender and genderfluidity is based on changing contexts and relations reveals why trans people often receive so much hostility in our culture.
I have always felt a kind of kinship with Suzy Eddie Izzard based on how she talks about gender in her stand-up comedy. When I read that Izzard defined this experience as being genderfluid it deeply resonated with me. Having that touchpoint for thinking through gender helped me with my own gender exploration, finding the transformative possibilities that led me to come out as trans.
But as a philosopher, I couldn’t help but recognize this experience of shifting gender as a puzzle. A wholly internal, felt sense of gender that is dynamic, changing its composition from moment to moment, seemed too essentialist to make sense of gender as an importantly social phenomenon. Simultaneously, I had myself experienced my gender changing! How could I square the way I experienced gender with what I take gender to be theoretically and politically? The solution to this puzzle is that—at least for me—my gender is in some sense fixed while the worlds or contexts I inhabit change, altering how I relate to others.
Let’s consider how this makes sense via an example. Lana Wachowski, creator of The Matrix, has endorsed a reading of the movie as a trans allegory, stating that the character Switch was specifically meant to be a man in the “real world” and a woman in the matrix. In the Wachowskis’ original vision for Switch, the character’s gender quite literally switches depending on where they are being realized, existing differently in different worlds. I believe we can think of this version of Switch as being genderfluid, as someone who exists uniquely in different worlds. They exist as a man in the “real world” that contains the underground resistant city of Zion, and they exist as a woman in the dominant oppressive world of the matrix. It is the context that changes for Switch, not some mental “gender” that is internal to them. This example has helped me understand something about how I relate to my gender.
As I’ve explored my queerness in more contexts, I feel pulled towards a certain kind of womanhood. There is a way that women exist and relate to each other in queer and trans contexts and subcultures that is incredibly natural for me in ways that feel right and make sense of how I experience gender. Queer womanhood is resistant to gender norms and patriarchal power, striving to find new ways to relate to others and create new forms of community among other queer women. It is multiplicious, not restrictive, allowing for multiple ways to exist as and relate to other women. I often feel my gender affirmed in my relationships with queer and trans women, finding a shared sisterhood that bonds us. In the queer world, I feel like I can live as a woman without any hesitation.
But when I’m outside of those queer contexts, I feel stifled by the constructions of “man” and “woman” that I am given. Nothing about my gender itself is changing. When I feel my gender change, I am feeling how I move from comfortable to discordant in that gender context. I find that I don’t want to be related to as a woman, but as something completely outside of the dominant gender system. In the words of Robin Dembroff, I find myself looking for an escape hatch.
But how do we make sense of the felt significance of these different contexts for an otherwise stable gender? Philosopher María Lugones provides us with a helpful resource with her discussion of worlds of sense. Lugones thought there are multiple “worlds” that many people—particularly people of mixed, intermeshed identities (e.g., Latin, woman, lesbian, etc.)—inhabit at once. These different “worlds” lead to people being constructed or understood differently. For Lugones, the dominant white-Anglo world in the U.S. constructs her one way, and resistant activist communities construct her another.
To illustrate this experience, she writes about how she is a very playful person, receiving widespread agreement with this description from her community of women of color activists. But when she asks white women colleagues if they think of her as playful, they disagree. On the contrary, they take her to be incredibly serious. Lugones wonders how these two different impressions of her personality could coexist. Her answer is that her personality does not change. Rather, these two different “worlds” just construct her differently. She is a playful person among close friends who are also women of color and activists, but as a Latina feminist in the white-Anglo world of philosophy, she is always perceived as serious. The dominant world is incapable of understanding how her behavior is playful because the dominant world limits the ways one can play, restricting what counts as playful behavior.
Gender is, of course, also part of these different “worlds.” There is a dominant world that defines gender as a binary related to dimorphic sex with no room for making sense of gender beyond binaries. In this context, gender is rigid and the performance of gender is restricted. Gender in the dominant “world” is immutable, hierarchal, and essential. These aspects of gender uphold status quo sexism by creating the “world” of sense that justifies gender oppression. In effect, this dominant conception of gender creates stifling conditions that leave many of us without a meaningful way to relate to other people. It is common to hear non-binary people say that they don’t want to be treated as a man or as a woman but as something outside of or beyond that, or that they don’t want people to interact with them with gendered expectations (to the extent that is possible). And in this dominant context, I feel the same. But when I “travel” to queer and trans worlds, I find myself relating to that resistant sense of queer womanhood. I find myself belonging in those communities and feeling affirmed in a way that is not possible in the dominant world. I find that something has changed.
Not all discussion of gender fluidity is about being genderfluid as a gender identity, though; some people speak of gender being fluid for them as a way of explaining their trans experience. We can say something similar for this understanding of gender fluidity. People discover they’re trans at different times in their life, and those of us who come out in adulthood are often left with a nagging question: what if I had discovered this when I was younger? I recently made this remark to my college best friend, saying that I wished I had realized I was trans in college. She replied that I simply wasn’t ready at that point.
Something about this is true; I wasn’t in a place where I could fully engage with and recognize my gender feels. Sometimes our context changes based on how we grow as individuals. As new contexts and situations in our life open, so does the way we experience and identify with gender. We encounter the freedom to feel gender differently, navigating our way to new ways of relating. We explore new worlds where gender can be something unlike the gender we were raised with as children—worlds existing outside of the dominant world of assigned gender and the socialization that occurs at puberty. Arguably, much trans activism is centered around removing the barriers that get in the way of freely experiencing gender.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of barriers to a free experience of gender in the dominant world, creating a lot of pressure on trans people to explain their experiences to others. Our experience is incredibly foreign to most people, leaving them with doubts about how we could really be a different gender than the one we were assigned at birth. Under such pressure, gender essentialism begins to look really appealing. It is often easiest for trans people to claim or believe that gender is some natural thing, that we were “born this way” and found ourselves in the wrong body. Or, for us genderfluid folks, that our gender is an internal, dynamic, changing thing unaffected by the outside world. This explanation is often accepted because it holds that we are not choosing to be trans but are naturally trans in the same way others are naturally cisgender. This is not to say that it is wrong for trans people to explain their experience as being “born in the wrong body.” But it is not the only explanation, and more importantly, it’s not the best way to theorize gender.
I think this story is so often accepted in wider society because it does not challenge the underlying gender essentialism that upholds status quo gender oppression and sexism, the very context that many of us are trying to escape. The explanation buys into the false dichotomy that something is either essential and natural or is a mere choice, but our social world is much more complicated than that. The essentialist narrative is not the best way to theorize about something as socially and politically complex as gender. Furthermore, I think the practical value of appealing to essentialism is ineffective. Those who deny us jobs, medical treatment, a place in sports, or our very lives do not care if we grant them gender essentialism. They will always come for us because as long as we are accepted, our existence poses a threat to how society is currently organized. We scare them precisely because our lives are a testament to the joy of change, a fluidity that exists for everyone, the transformative possibilities of how we can relate to each other.
Gender fluidity poses a special threat. Not only is gender not a fixed, essential thing that dictates a particular social structure, but it can be changed over and over. It can change as we grow older and learn new things about how we relate to the world. It can change moment to moment as we move through different contexts. It is a testament to the fluid nature of our existence that we don’t need to feel restrained by how things are.
As more beautiful, genderfluid people like Bella Ramsey, Suzy Eddie Izzard, and Tilda Swinton continue to talk openly about their fluid experiences of gender and are met with growing acceptance and love, two things happen. First, those committed to upholding oppressive, sexist gender structures become more aggressive. But second, newfound freedoms continue to open up for people to feel and perform gender. More people will realize that the ways we relate to each other can change and transform, creating endless new possibilities. We will continue to travel and discover new “worlds” of sense that are not hierarchal, stifling, and oppressive. There will be tough roads ahead as those uncritical of dominant gender ideology continue to block trans people’s paths. But we will continue to find each other, growing queer and trans communities—after all, it sure is nice to have travel companions. Would you like to come along?
Image source: The Gender Spectrum Collective (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
The Women in Philosophy series publishes posts on women in the history of philosophy, posts on issues of concern to women in the field of philosophy, and posts that put philosophy to work to address issues of concern to women in the wider world. If you are interested in writing for the series, please contact the Series Editor Adriel M. Trott or the Associate Editor Alida Liberman.
E.M. Hernandez
E. M. Hernandez is a University of California President’s Post-Doctoral Fellow writing on issues at the intersection of race, gender, and interpersonal ethics.
