June 22, 2016 • 46 mins
Society's concepts of sex and gender are mutable. How have those concepts changed throughout history? Could future changes help alleviate social issues affecting us today? Raquel Willis joins the team to discuss the past, present and future of gender.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hello, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcasts
that looks at the future and says, I'm not a woman,
I'm not a man. I am something that you'll never understand.
(00:21):
I'm Lauren Volgabon and I'm Joe McCormick. And our regular
host Jonathan Strickland is not with us this week. He
is off running around somewhere in Europe doing doing who
knows what. I certainly don't know, but Jonathan's place. Today,
we are joined by our excellent co worker Raquel. Raquel,
could you please introduce yourself to our listeners. Sure, Um,
(00:44):
my name is Raquel Willis. I am a digital publisher
here at how Stuff Works dot com and I'm also
a writer and activists. Yeah. We wanted to invite Raquel
onto the show today because we are talking, if you
perhaps cottoned onto our prince lyric about the future of
gender and this is a topic that we that we
had a listener request for, and so I kind of
(01:05):
wanted to to read this email. It is from Gemma.
She says, hi, and that said something really nice about
us that I'm not going to repeat because it's embarrassing.
I am delighted to say that you guys have helped
influence my decision to study artificial intelligence at university next
year and to do further and to further do research
in the field. As well as being excited about the technology,
I try to think of how larger social issues will
(01:27):
be dealt with in the future, such as what impact
computers and AI could have on developing countries, possibly largely
through education, and if capitalism will ever crumble a bit
like the politics you talked about in the Star Trek
Economy episode. Yeah, yeah, that that's that's one of the
fan favorites I think. Yeah, we hear about that a lot. Yeah, yeah,
I enjoyed it. Um Gemma says, I try to fight
(01:49):
against all kinds of inequalities and am an enthusiastic feminist
us too. There are some interesting ideas about the future
of gender specifically, such as gender neutrality and genderism linked
with trans humanism. I think it would be really awesome
if you guys could touch on some of these ideas
sometime or just look into it. Thanks for your time
and awesomeness. And then there's a really cool, cute little
(02:10):
emoticon thing. Well, thank you, Jimma, because I think that
is a really interesting idea to talk about on this show.
It's a fascinating topic to look at because it occurs
at the intersection of a bunch of different things that
we do talk about a lot and and touches all
of them kind of equally. It includes biology, technology, and culture.
(02:31):
And uh, now, there's obviously no way we can come
even close to saying everything there is to say about
a concept is huge and important as gender. Oh yeah, yeah,
we we we already delayed recording this podcast once because
we were like, oh, we have too many things to
say for this to occur today. Yeah, but I think
(02:52):
one thing that we can try to do is just
look at a few indications of trends in how humans
have been understanding gender, especially in our culture here in
the West, and how those trends might continue into the future,
and then touch on Jemma's idea of post genderism towards
the end, which is which is a really interesting concept
that frankly, I think we should have explored on this
(03:14):
show sometime before, given all the ways it interacts with
topics we talk about all the time, like trans humanism. Well,
there's a lot of future out there, Joe, and we
only have two episodes a week. Umuh. And I did
want to put in here that, uh, of course gender
doesn't exist in a vacuum. Um, I mean by necessity,
because it's a cultural and social construct. So so, like
(03:35):
Joe said, and kind of in the in the interests
of our heads not exploding totally, we're going to be
talking mainly today about gender in the West and in
the United States specifically, and we're going to be speaking
in some generalized terms. But of course keep in mind
that you know, the United States is a multicultural society
and gender gender interconnects with like race and religious beliefs
and all of these other big, huge factors that certainly
(03:58):
cannot be ignored. But we might be glossing over a
tiny bit. But hey, speaking of generalized terms, let's lay
out some definitions because there seems to be some confusion
sometimes when people are talking about the terms sex and
gender and as a side note, sexuality. So yes, so
(04:19):
we're going to start off with some generalized terms, just
kind of breaking it down for you guys a little bit.
These are concepts that we live with throughout our entire lives,
but of course, unless you really really have to, you
might not look at them too closely. So starting with sex,
So sex is generally what we think of biologically wise,
(04:40):
it's what's going on with your body. So you may
have always heard that sex is binary, right, it's male
versus female, But of course we know with the rise
of genetics and the study of hormones and chromosomes and
all these different sex therapies, that there's a range. There's
male female, inter sex, and actually you can change your sex.
(05:06):
Then we'll get into gender. So gender is socialized. It's
kind of the person's personalized version of your sex and
how you were present to the world. Right, So going
back to that binary, that's a little iffy because not
everyone identifies as masculine or feminine or either one of those.
In a strict sense, you can transcend gender, right, You
(05:28):
can be anywhere on what we consider a continuum or
the gender spectrum. And then just at a side note,
a lot of times people conflate sexuality with the with
your biological sex or with your gender, but these are
all really independent factors. So if you want to break
it down, you can kind of think of it as
(05:50):
you know, sex is basically what you are signed with
at birth or what you are um said to be
born as. Gender is often how you feel. It's what
you go to bad as. And sex and sexuality can
be thought of as who you may want to go
to bad with. Putting it absolutely uh And historically all
(06:13):
of these definitions have have kind of slid and changed.
The concepts of sex and gender are not solid as
much as kind of like like. Tradition dictates that they
have to have been this way all of the time. Um,
they haven't been. Certainly, the medical definition has changed a
whole lot in the past hundred years or so. It
wasn't until the eighteen nineties that humanity first started figuring
(06:37):
out that there are chromosomes. The chromosomes exist um chromosomes,
of course, being the winded up bits of DNA that
helped determine your biological sex. There was a German biologist
by the name Herman Hanking who was studying sperm formation
in wasps you know like you do and he u
(06:57):
He noticed that some of the sperm cells had a
even chromosomes while others had twelve. He called this X
chromosome the X element, hence eventually X chromosomes um the
X element and hypothesized that it had to do with
sex determination. His hypothesis was then later supported by two
American zoologists who are working with grasshoppers around nineteen o two.
(07:19):
Not sure why it was all insects, but anyway, um uh.
It was eventually the subject of of one paper that
that that I read caused a lively debate for a
few years. I'm not positive what in like Victorian ish
times like lively debate precisely means, but I'm but I'm
(07:40):
delighted by that, so okay. Prior to these studies, though,
it was thought that environmental factors determined the sex of
an embryo. Oh like like fikeets warm while the embryo
embryo is developing or something exactly. Yeah. Uh. And eventually
we realize that there are a number of chromosome all
conditions and humans not just X X and X why
(08:00):
but extra xes or wise can be present or a
single X can exist all on its own and um,
and and that's the the intersex category that that raquel
was talking about a second ago. And estimates of the
rate of inter sexuality and the population range from like
zero point zero two percent to about one point seven percent,
depending on exactly how you define it. So so biologically speaking,
(08:25):
there are not just dudes and ladies like that's that's
not that's not what's up. Um, And just the fun
fact you cannot always just assume what your chromosomes are.
You know, there are a lot of different factors that
can go into your chromosome will makeup and you really
can only know if you get tested exactly. Yeah, I've
read stories about that where people so your your your phenotype,
(08:47):
your your what what your genes have produced in your
body doesn't necessarily make a difference or it doesn't necessarily
indicate that you have an XX or an x y UM.
And it happened to be around the same time that
that researchers began realizing the roles that hormones play in
(09:08):
our bodies. To um that there was some animal research
in the mid eighteen hundreds establishing the idea that organs
in the body can communicate with each other via chemicals
like communicate in like a big hilarious eighteen hundreds scare quotes, um.
And and then uh, we got the word hormone. It
was coined in nineteen O five and of course, you know,
(09:29):
since then, we've we've been able to synthesize hormones in
the lab and develop hormone therapies to help people who
were either born with um with a with a genetic disorder.
I mean also technically like insulin is a hormone, so uh,
that's pretty great that we can synthesize that in labs,
or of course people who are choosing to change their
(09:51):
their bodies with hormone therapy. So we've come a long way,
but we're really still figuring out how individuals bodies regulate
their own hormones and for the more how those hormones
interact with with other bodily processes. Yeah, and so that's
getting us closer to where we are today in terms
of our understanding of biological sex and uh and intersex conditions.
(10:11):
But there's also a sort of cultural history that we
should look at it in terms of received ideas about gender,
because with this distinction we made earlier, sex is biology,
gender is identity, and identity involves culture, values, norms, expectations, behaviors,
and so I guess we should look at how those
(10:33):
things have changed in the past. I think a lot
of people would just assume that, you know, the traditional
position as they would see it in the West in
the twentieth century or something like that has always been
the case everywhere. Well, we just always believed that there
are men and women, and that men should be masculine
and women should be feminine, and that the definitions of
(10:53):
masculine and feminine have been the same. Yeah, but it
hasn't always been that way everywhere. So, yes, many of
the world's cultures, historically and even today recognize more than
just two genders. Um. The idea of a male or
female role as the only options really is in a
lot of way, it's very um, let's just say, a
(11:16):
lot of cultures have been very creative. Um. So, even
here in the United States, if we think historically among
Native Americans, the role or the idea of a third, fourth,
or fifth gender, often called to spirit has been widely documented.
Children who may have been born physically male or female,
(11:37):
but showed an interest or proclivity for another gender role
within their societies were often encouraged to live out those
gender roles and and see what fit them best. So,
you know, when you think about these roles and and
how they were regarded within a lot of Native American cultures,
(11:57):
we won't say all um, these the roles were given
a lot of respect, and they were often thought of
as very spiritually powerful. So people who were two spirits
were often shamans and teachers and caretakers. And it's very
important to remember that there are many two spirit identified
people around today. And of course there are many cultures
still throughout the world to view gender in a different
(12:20):
way than we do here in the United States, and
the and the the history. I mean, like like we
could do an entire, ridiculously long episode about the changes
in in this kind of cultural perspective that have happened
over the past few centuries, let alone the past few millennia,
and UH that it's it's it's really interesting, And that's
(12:40):
not what we got into today. But what we did
get into is, um, some of the modern attitudes and
definitions that we that we ascribe to gender and sex
here in the United States, like like like legally and
culturally speaking. Yeah, that's right, because I think looking at
law is a good way to sort of get a
(13:03):
gauge for the level of acceptance something UH is encountering
in the society at large. So you know, how does
the law treat gender? Does the law even recognize this
idea of gender identity as something different than just what
genitalia you have or what sex chromosomes you have? And
(13:25):
in US law, traditionally the answer was mostly no, until
more recently that there was a sex distinction in the law,
any laws that pertain to how men and women should
be treated or treated differently or not treated differently. Just
we're trying to use biological distinctions as understood at the time. Ay, yeah, exactly.
(13:47):
They were reverting to the biological binary as they understood it.
For example, in US law, Title seven of the Civil
Rights Act of nineteen sixty four prohibits, among other things,
employment discrimination on the basis of sex. So you're not
supposed to, under this law hire a man when there's
you know, a more qualified woman that really you you
(14:09):
should be hiring, but you just would rather have a
man working for you. So traditionally this was interpreted by
US courts to refer to biological sex, not gender identity.
But this is changing and through the accumulation of many
changes in law and judicial interpretation over time. So I
want to talk about one example I read about in
(14:31):
two thousand twelve, the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or
the e o C, set this important precedent relating to
the legal status of gender identity in a case called
Macy versus Holder, and the holder was Air Culture the
Attorney General suit being brought to the government about about
(14:51):
gender discrimination. And so the plaintiff was a police detective
as she was a ballistics expert who applied for a
job at a crime hi lab while still presenting as male,
and she seems to have been offered the job pending
a background check, but then after she announced to change
in her listed name and gender, the tentative job offer
(15:14):
was retracted. And then she reported receiving contradictory explanations for
why this happened. One person told her budget cuts eliminated
the position, and a different person told her, you know, well,
we went with a different candidate who was farther along
in the process. According to the plaintiff, and in the end,
the equal point that the e s C ruled that
(15:34):
Title seven should apply to gender identity, that was one
of the things that was taken away from the ruling
in this case. So they wrote, quote, if Title seven
prescribed only discrimination on the basis of biological sex. Then
only prohibited gender based disparate treatment would be when an
employer prefers a man over a woman, or vice versa.
(15:56):
But the statutes protections sweep far broader than that, in
part because the term gender encompasses not only a person's
biological sex, but also the cultural and social aspects associated
with masculinity and femininity and so yeah, so this is
one legal precedent for understanding there's a distinction here and
(16:18):
sort of recognizing that distinction. And of course when courts
recognize the distinction, it begins to to gain a level
of leverage essentially over what what can be done with
the law in the society. And UH, some jurisdictions have
actually tried to put gender identity into specific terms so that,
for example, it can be demonstrated in the court in
(16:39):
the case of, for example, an employment discrimination suit on
the basis of gender identity. Just one example is a
two thousand eleven Massachusetts state law UH that tried to
offer one of these definitions, and it said, quote, gender
related identity may be shown by providing evidence, including but
not limited to, medical history, hair, or treatment of the
(17:01):
gender related identity consistent and uniform assertion of the gender
related identity, or any other evidence that the gender related
identity is sincerely held as part of the person's core identity,
which seems reasonable. Yeah, So I think legal definitions like
this provides sort of like additional bricks in the edifice
of mainstream acceptance of the idea of gender identity is
(17:24):
something distinct from biological sex and thus something that could
contribute to this post gender idea that we're going to
talk about eventually here. Right. So, one of the reasons
or one of the main reasons that gender identity is
kind of this term that we needed to to describe
um our experience as a gender is that there are
(17:45):
so many people who may not identify with the gender
that they were assigned at birth. Right, So we often
think of um people who may be transitioning from a
male gender to a female gender or vi versa. But
of course there are many ways in which people can
kind of trans egenter. People can identify with gender on
(18:08):
the spectrum or off of the spectrum, in the middle
of the spectrum, on different ends of the spectrum. There
are so many different ways to identify and and we
often associate this with transgender people. And so there actually
is a report that came out in two thousand eleven
from the Williams Institute in California. The estimated that there
(18:29):
are about seven hundred thousand transagender Americans. I would dare
to say that there are many, many more. Yeah, that
number sounds slow to me, it does, I mean, but
but maybe maybe I'm also including in my mental calculation, uh,
non gendered people like like people who do feel that
they fall outside of the spectrum and aren't necessarily in
(18:51):
our in our living just however they want to, but
wouldn't necessarily identify as trans right. And I would imagine,
you know, since two thousand even there has been such
an upset invisibility and just understanding. I mean, there are
new ways in which people describe themselves, um, within the
transgender community. So there's definitely got to be more out there. Um.
(19:16):
But going into uh recognition, right, so it's important that
people can get that legal recognition of how they identify.
And so one of the things we're seeing lately is
an expansion of legal gender definitions and options. Recently, an
Oregan court ruled in favor of a person identifying as
(19:40):
neither sex option or or traditional sex option or traditional
gender option, and and so that they can really assert
their identity as a non binary individual. And so historically
oregan law. UM it didn't necessarily specifically limit gender options
to male or female, but that was kind of the
(20:01):
unspoken idea or rule. It's like the checkbox likes right.
When rules are unspoken, people sort of default to their prejudices.
I suppose yeah, right. And then of course, so for
decades that legal process really only involved this idea of
changing from one sex to another or changing from one
(20:24):
gender to another UM. And so that process really was
very much like changing a name. You know, you submitted
papers and and and the petition and the petitioner would
submit that paperwork, you would pay a filing fee, and
then you know, get a notice of your proposed change.
And so this judge in particular was like, Okay, you know,
(20:46):
you've got all the paperwork here. If this is how
you identified, then this is valid. And so this is
really one of the first cases within the United States
of of legal representation of people who don't identify a
strictly male or strictly female. And of course there are
other countries around the world that have kind of tackled
this issue or have some kind of uh built in
(21:10):
mechanism legally that that encompasses people who identify with the
gender that isn't just male or female, places like Singapore, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
and then of course there are other places like Australian
Germany that have stipulations on intersex children or people who
are born as intersex identifying um in different ways. Right,
(21:36):
So there really does seem to be a trend, a
trend towards more recognition of of gender as a separate
category from sex and of non binary sex identification in
illegal framework. And it doesn't mean that there's not resistance
to this trend. It's obviously no surprise that people have
lots of opinions about gender and how things are supposed
(21:59):
to be when it comes to sex and sex related concepts.
But I have noticed that on the internet once or twice. Yeah,
so so fairly stated. We all know that people have opinions.
But I would say, from a from as close to
we can get as a point of neutral observation, it
does seem undeniable that in the United States things are changing,
The law is moving toward a more general recognition of
(22:20):
gender identity as a category separate from sex and a
potentially protected class under laws like the sixty four Civil
Rights Act. UM just one more example in an article
for the American Bar Association, which mentions the things that
that I was talking about the last time I spoke
and more. Evan Schlack predicts that this trend of increasing
(22:40):
legal recognition for gender gender identity will continue into the future.
And to illustrate the sort of single directionality of the trend, uh,
he points out that only three states recognized and prohibited
employer discrimination based on gender identity between nineteen and two
thousand three, but that expanded to thirteens states plus the
(23:01):
District of Columbia during the next ten year period up
to So that does seem like a pretty strong trend
we can observe there. Uh. And the trend, of course
in law is mirrored in culture at large is something
that's probably less strictly codified and enforceable, but you can
kind of get a gist of generally how gender is
(23:25):
perceived among you know, in movies and on TV, and
what what people talk about on the internet. Absolutely absolutely
all of that that that fascinating pop culture stuff. Yes, yes,
So getting out of the kind of nitty gritty legal
world and we're gonna step into the culture. And if
you're like everyone in the world and you follow some
(23:46):
kind of entertainment and media, um, there has always kind
of been this playground of gender expression. You can think
about what a lot of who a lot of people
consider this kind of gender nonconformed any goddess, Grace Jones,
you can think of the late David Bowie, and of
course the also very very recently late Prints. But more
(24:11):
recently there have been a lot of young mouth celebrities
like Will Smith's son Jaden Smith and Magic Johnson's son E. J. Johnson. Um,
pushing the envelope for a new generation with closets that
are a bit more unabashedly feminine. And then, of course
women have transcended gender in fashion for a long time.
(24:32):
I mean you can just think of days long ago
when women could not wear pants, and and of course
the women wear pants all the time. We have someone
running for president who always wears pants in the most
we are both wearing pants right now. It's true, Joe,
It's all true. Pants for everyone or not, you know,
(24:56):
or whatever you want. Yeah, yeah, and it's it's a
little bit more except I think or it's been more
acceptable in women, so it's kind of exciting to see
men having the opportunity to do that as well. But
um but yeah, yeah, there there's been uh, certainly in
high fashion for a long time, this this trend towards
breaking those rules, right, definitely, Yeah, breaking the rules is
(25:19):
all the rage in fashion world, and of course androgyns
models have been involved at various points. However, there's been
a reluctance for a long time to actually feature models
that may really identify outside of the bounds of a
binary gender, right, people who weren't like like playing in
with it. But we're serious about it, right right, Yeah,
(25:42):
so not just necessarily a woman breaking norms and in
a suit or a man breaking norms than a scart,
but actually people who identify outside of the binary. Um So,
within the past ten years or so, maybe more, I guess,
maybe a bit more. Uh, there's been an increase our
(26:04):
interest in gender variant and transgender models. Um So, in
two thousand eight, there is a model on America's Next
Top Model, of course, a Tyra Banks masterpiece. Uh, and
her name is Isis King. She kind of became a
household name and really um gave a face and a
(26:24):
start to trans models in a mainstream sense. And then
we can kind of flash forward to now, um, almost
a decade later, and there are so many other trans
models covering magazines all the time, people like Andrea Pejik,
who really kind of transient transitioned in front of the
fashion world from from Brilliann androgenus model before to now
(26:49):
like claiming her identity as a woman. And then Leah
t Aidan Dowling was on the cover of ment Health
a trans man um and then Laife Ashley and and
some other models. There's actually a transgender model agency in
New York. Yeah, it opened a few months ago. So
we're really seeing this um continuing trend even in culture,
(27:13):
and then as well with some specifically gender neutral fashion lines. Um,
there's also been this huge emergence. There are some lines
like Vicia, Tillian William, Claire Barrow, Claire Barrow and sixty nine,
amongst so many other gender neutral fashion lines. But of
(27:35):
course it doesn't seem that culture as a whole is
going gender neutral, right. Not everyone's going around wearing nondescript
gender clothing, but it's kind of undeniable that the options
from men, women and folks who may identify otherwise are
kind of expanding, respectively, and and that the cultural acceptance
of wearing those kind of clothes out out about in
(27:58):
the world is expanding. It's still I mean, depending on
what what area you live in. Absolutely, we're We're very
lucky here in Atlanta, I think to have a very
diverse community who is who is, who is comfortable and
and accepting of of people's self expression. Yeah, I think
that's true about our city. Uh. It's funny how I
(28:18):
for some reason, my brain did not even go to
this place when I was thinking about this episode. I didn't.
It did not even cross my mind to think about
clothing um as such a fundamentally gendered part of our
everyday experience. Oh yeah, it's the language. Ye oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
We we had we had Holly on a few months
(28:38):
to a year ago to talk about the future of
fashion and uh and and yeah, it's it's it's such
it's crazy, especially when when I think we decided during
that episode that that Joe is of the like what
is what is what can I wear? To be the
least obtrusive visually speaking in the world um and and
(28:59):
Holly and I were like more sequence on everything um
or you know, for for sometimes and so yeah, yeah,
it's it's very very much um a thing that I
certainly think about, like every day, like how am I
going to be perceived as a lady human when I
put this particular outfit on? Huh, I mean I worry
about how I'll look. But I guess, yeah, I mean
(29:22):
which is which is also part of part of that,
like like unfortunate gender binary Uh, oppression, oppression. Oppression is
a strong word. But but it's but but I'm but
I'm kind of you and serious like it's it's a
it's a very interesting thing where like the amount of
policing that we do of how men are supposed to
look versus how women are supposed to look. Well, I'm
(29:43):
okay to live in that future where everybody wears identical
jumpsuits muchallic ambolishments or no, yeah, that's the expression. You
can pick a color. Everybody's got identical jumpsuits and you
can pick you know, I want a green one. Can
I just have to wear that color all the time? No,
you can wear whatever color you want can I pick
(30:03):
sequin colors to go on. I would never force anybody
else to wear a jumpsuit. Uh. So, okay, the future
of gender may not be jumpsuits. But but but we
but we do have a discussion about about what it
might look like and what some people are theorizing. Yeah,
because so everything we've talked about now kind of gets
(30:25):
us gets us up to now, right, so that there
there are these trends in legal recognition and ideas about gender.
They're there are trends and what's accepted culturally. But in
the future, how much could these things change? Uh? And
here's where we want to come to the future ology
concept of post genderism, which our our listener, jim Jimma
(30:46):
brought up in the email she sent us. I think
this is a really interesting concept and I didn't know
that much about it before I started doing the research
for this episode. But I think maybe I'm a post
genderous now. I think maybe I'm convinced by the argument. Yeah,
I think. I think I didn't have a word to
put on my my opinions before, but I think this
absolutely sums up how I feel about stuff. Um, we
(31:11):
should at this point put in a hat tip to
a to a really useful overview of the topic. Yeah,
it was a paper I found published through the Institute
for Ethics and Emerging Technologies in two thousand and eight.
It was called post Genderism, Behind or Beyond the Gender
Binary by George Davorski and James Hughes, and it essentially
just tried to, in a very tight space condense a
(31:33):
lot of historical and cultural and technological trends that would
that have led up to where we are with gender
now and how technology might be changing that. Yeah. So
so if you guys are are, if you're if you're
appetite as wetted by this conversation, then maybe go check
out that article and uh and go through its source
list because there's a lot of really interesting gender theory
(31:54):
that they that they referenced. So all that stuff earlier
we mentioned that we could not possibly explore today. There's
a lot of gender theory in there. People have a
lot of thoughts. People do have a lot of thoughts, Joe,
that's accurate, But we should define it. So what is postgenderism? Essentially,
post genderism is a movement that predicts or advocates, So
(32:16):
you could you could think of it just as like
I'm saying this is most likely to happen, or you
could think of it as saying I think this is
what should happen. But either way, it either predicts or
advocates the voluntary erosion or elimination of gender distinctions and
human beings or their descendants. And it's associated with trans humanism.
(32:37):
Now we've talked about trans humanism on the show before,
but real quick refresher, it's essentially the movement advocating technology
that fundamentally changes capabilities of the human animal mentally and
or physically. So if you want to become a cyborg
with huge, powerful robot arms and claws on the end
of them, and yet clamps, powerful clams, supersensitive, yes, supersensitive hearing,
(33:04):
listen through the walls, see if anybody is coming to
discover you with your clamps whatever you're doing with them.
Or you want night vision, you want to be the predator,
any of that. If you want any of that stuff,
or if you want hey upgrade to your brain, how
about that. If you want to upgrade your own processing power,
maybe some onboard memory implants, any of that. Sign up
(33:26):
for any of these things. You are at some level
of trans humanist. You want to transcend or modify biologically
determined aspects of your animal nature. Wait, so do my
contacts count? Yeah, in a mild form, I think you
could say that the various pros theses we have today,
like glasses and hearing aids and stuff like that, surgery,
(33:50):
I mean, yeah, absolutely, yeah, I think I think those
are a little bit more than human things. Our cell
phones are like actually to third arms and oh yeah, yeah,
it's it's a useful end defector. It certainly is. I
think there's actually an interesting case to be made about
what how we come to think about certain tools that
(34:11):
we use very often as a part of our body.
But uh, I we digress. So yeah, So post genderism
applies essentially this trans humanist concept to the desire to
modify and transcend our our basic nature, uh, to the
naturally determined distinctions of sexual dimorphism in the species, and
(34:36):
also just to culture broadly, to gender norms that flow
from them. In the words of Dvorsky and Hughes quote,
post genderists argue that gender is an arbitrary and unnecessary
limitation on human potential, and foresee the elimination of involuntary
biological and psychological gendering in the human species through the
(34:58):
application of neurotechnolog gy, biotechnology, and reproductive technology. So now
if even if you're not like a very traditionalist person,
you might be getting a little freaked out there, things
like wait a minute, you know, there are armies of
radical postgenders that are gonna come try to turn me
into an androgenous creature while I'm asleep with their transhuman
(35:21):
robot clamps. Right. Uh, No, we should point out the
fact that this is a voluntary movement, right, So it
says essentially that in the future, to whatever extent you
display dimorphic sexual characteristics or gendered social behaviors, that's going
to be up to you. It's not something determined for
you without your consent by biology or by social expectations. Yeah,
(35:45):
the choice is really the operative thing here. Consent will
always be sexy, yes, yes, yes, so even thinking about
the societal expectations expanding, right, So, so when we're and
we're kind of put into these boxes, right, so kind
of taking this um idea of post genderism and thinking
(36:08):
about how it will play out for someone born into
a post gender world. Um, So, today there are already
intersex activists who are really challenging this idea about children
being born intersex being pressured into picking one gender or
one sex and going with it. Yeah, and that's often
(36:28):
been the case leading up to now. So children born
intersex are often they're either it's chosen for them at birth,
you know, well, we're gonna do some kind of therapy
to you to try to make you more typically male
or more typically female and usually a surgery, yeah, um.
Or they're later in life sort of encouraged to just
embrace one or the other. Right. And so according to
(36:51):
this position, you know, why should they Why should we
put all of these expectations on a human being who
may realize that that doesn't really fit them. So what
is really inherently wrong with having some anatomical sex characteristics
that don't match what we're expected to see based on chromosomes, right,
(37:13):
Or what's inherently wrong with some ambiguous genitalia? According to
these activists, Um, you know, if intersex people don't feel
naturally inclined to embrace one half of the gender binary
or the other, they shouldn't really be pressured to do so.
In a sense, the position is really seen as one
(37:34):
of the earliest forms of fully realized post genderism. People
are born not fully conforming to a typical sex profile
of male or female, and it's okay if they want
to say that way or not. In these cases, the
gender binary already kind of lies more or less fully vanquished.
And while it might seem unusual, for example, in America
(37:58):
in the century, there are precedents of this all over
the world and in many cultures throughout history. Right. So,
the the intersex birth cases, I think are one case
where you're sort of already posed to be in a
post gender position. All it really requires is the changing
of attitudes. In that case, like if you are an
(38:19):
intersex person and you live in an environment where that
is fine and that you know nobody's telling you you
well you really should be picking one. Uh you, you've
already in some sense become post gender there. But there
are other cases where technology could play a big role
in changing what's what options are available to people. Oh yeah,
(38:42):
and and this isn't it's not just future technologies. This
has already been going on for a couple hundred years. Honestly,
because the move towards a post gender society, I would argue,
has already begun, and it started with industrialization, the stratification
of our economy, you know, the the creation of a
middle class, and the slow but but widespread inclusion of
(39:05):
women in the workforce has changed society's roles for men
and women moved, moving away from a strict binary Yeah.
And I think that's very true in that work has
very often been one of the main lines upon which
gender distinctions and gender oppression occurred throughout history. Sure, And
and the communication age, the information aged, changed that even further. Uh,
(39:28):
you know, it's it's giving more people the option to
balance work and child care as they desire, which, of course,
child care being one of those like typically gendered kind
of roles in society. Also on the on the ideological end,
this whole digital revolution has been wonderfully speeding the exchange
of both scientific information and also personal experiences about sex
(39:52):
and gender. And it's allowed for the for the creation
of support communities for people outside of the gender norm
who don't live in areas our such support exists, which
is so critical for for for changing um quality of
life and and and changing people's minds eventually. And now
I had a question for you guys that I just
(40:13):
kind of wanted to toss out there. How how do
how do you guys think that the communication technology is
going to continue changing gender in the future, Like, not
not biotechnology and stuff like that, but just the computers
and internet stuff we got right, Yeah, not your sexy,
sexy modem. But but uh yeah, well, I mean one
(40:35):
thing that occurred to me. I wonder what y'all think
about this is virtual gender performance. So uh oh yeah.
So already we do a lot of our social interaction online,
but in the future, just imagine a future where we
do even more of it, there's even less face to
face social interaction. I mean, whatever you think about that.
That might sound kind of scary, but let's say we're
(40:55):
as we're as comfortable with that in the future as
we are with using Twitter all day on our phone
is right now, Um, how much of our social interaction
and public face is going to be mediated by technology,
including social media, online forums, online video games, virtual worlds.
Um if these venues end up representing the like a
(41:15):
really large or even totally dominant percentage of our interactions
with others, will physicality as in, you know, the biological
or physical aspects of your body play a smaller and
smaller role in how your gender traits are expressed, to
whatever extent they are. Uh So, it's just like so
(41:36):
much of our thinking about gender always ends up being
about bodies. But in a in a space where you
have no body or your body is literally a virtual
construct construct, does gender disappear or become less important to
you as a person? I think? I think also there's
a really interesting trend in social media lately, uh with
(42:01):
with that has to do with the creation of profiles
and the the construction of of like a brand for
yourself online. Like I think that we're all being suddenly
like like not even encouraged, but but kind of forced
into like curating a brand for ourselves. And uh and
so the way that we present ourselves to the world
(42:22):
is more careful perhaps today, like like more thought out,
because you you can you can look and evaluate your
own and other people's profiles and see see how you
want to be presenting yourself, and and gender is absolutely
a part of that, you know, I would definitely say,
of course, with social media and and access to just
(42:42):
information in general, that kind of levels the playing field, right.
I think a lot of the conversations that we have
online around gender are so interesting right now. I think
about Twitter and how we how a lot of feminists
use Twitter and talk about the inequality these talk about
their experiences and and then also maybe people who don't
(43:04):
identify as them to talk about their experiences too, And
it's really kind of giving us an inside glimpse at
how we all kind of have thought about gender all along,
or or have moved throughout society, maybe not knowing how
people who identified a different way felt. I mean, I
wonder if if these virtual environments and virtual social circles
(43:28):
give us the ability to experiment with non binary or
non traditional gender roles in a way that a lot
of people wouldn't if it had to involve their body
and face to face contact. So a person, for example,
who's biologically male might not feel comfortable uh, performing as
female in person, but maybe would on the internet. And
(43:52):
I don't know how prevalent something like that is, but
but it's interesting that that that kind of venue might
open up new possibility is for what people can decide
they like and who they are, right, yeah, I think
it might be a lot more common than we think.
I mean, catfish, yeah, absolutely, Yeah, I laughed, but I
(44:16):
don't know what catfish is. You have to Oh, okay,
that that's one. UM. That's when someone presents as someone
who they are explicitly not online um. And it's it's
usually a negative connotation in which someone is is taking
someone in, is trying to extort someone for money, or
something like that by presenting the story of this person
(44:38):
this this this completely made up human uh and and
it is not infrequently been used cross cross gender. That
makes sense to me. Hey, sudden insert that you probably
weren't expecting our record scratch. Yes, our conversation with Riquel
Willis here on the future gender ended up going very long,
(45:01):
so we are splitting it up into two episodes, and
that is going to be the end of part one
of the episode. But if you want to hear the
conclusion of this discussion about the future of gender, you
can join us again next time. Yes, so we we
hope that you will stay tuned across time and space
for that one. UM. In the meanwhile, Hey, if you
(45:23):
guys would like to get in touch with us, we
would like that too. Our email address is fw thinking
at how Stuff Works dot com. Our profile handle name
on Twitter and Facebook is also fw thinking. Uh. Search
around Google US, you'll find us. Uh. We will have
Raquel's contact information at the end of the second episode.
Although I believe off the top of my head that
(45:44):
if you would like to find her website, it is
Raquel Willis dot com. That is our a q U
E l w I L l I s dot com.
I think I can spell. I think that's correct. So yeah,
get in touch with us. We hope to hear from
you either away. You will hear from us again very soon.
(46:08):
For more on this topic in the future of technology,
visit forward Thinking dot Com, brought to you by Toyota.
Let's Go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hello, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcasts
that looks at the future and says, I'm not a woman,
I'm not a man. I am something that you'll never understand.
(00:21):
I'm Lauren Volgabon and I'm Joe McCormick. And our regular
host Jonathan Strickland is not with us this week. He
is off running around somewhere in Europe doing doing who
knows what. I certainly don't know, but Jonathan's place. Today,
we are joined by our excellent co worker Raquel. Raquel,
could you please introduce yourself to our listeners. Sure, Um,
(00:44):
my name is Raquel Willis. I am a digital publisher
here at how Stuff Works dot com and I'm also
a writer and activists. Yeah. We wanted to invite Raquel
onto the show today because we are talking, if you
perhaps cottoned onto our prince lyric about the future of
gender and this is a topic that we that we
had a listener request for, and so I kind of
(01:05):
wanted to to read this email. It is from Gemma.
She says, hi, and that said something really nice about
us that I'm not going to repeat because it's embarrassing.
I am delighted to say that you guys have helped
influence my decision to study artificial intelligence at university next
year and to do further and to further do research
in the field. As well as being excited about the technology,
I try to think of how larger social issues will
(01:27):
be dealt with in the future, such as what impact
computers and AI could have on developing countries, possibly largely
through education, and if capitalism will ever crumble a bit
like the politics you talked about in the Star Trek
Economy episode. Yeah, yeah, that that's that's one of the
fan favorites I think. Yeah, we hear about that a lot. Yeah, yeah,
I enjoyed it. Um Gemma says, I try to fight
(01:49):
against all kinds of inequalities and am an enthusiastic feminist
us too. There are some interesting ideas about the future
of gender specifically, such as gender neutrality and genderism linked
with trans humanism. I think it would be really awesome
if you guys could touch on some of these ideas
sometime or just look into it. Thanks for your time
and awesomeness. And then there's a really cool, cute little
(02:10):
emoticon thing. Well, thank you, Jimma, because I think that
is a really interesting idea to talk about on this show.
It's a fascinating topic to look at because it occurs
at the intersection of a bunch of different things that
we do talk about a lot and and touches all
of them kind of equally. It includes biology, technology, and culture.
(02:31):
And uh, now, there's obviously no way we can come
even close to saying everything there is to say about
a concept is huge and important as gender. Oh yeah, yeah,
we we we already delayed recording this podcast once because
we were like, oh, we have too many things to
say for this to occur today. Yeah, but I think
(02:52):
one thing that we can try to do is just
look at a few indications of trends in how humans
have been understanding gender, especially in our culture here in
the West, and how those trends might continue into the future,
and then touch on Jemma's idea of post genderism towards
the end, which is which is a really interesting concept
that frankly, I think we should have explored on this
(03:14):
show sometime before, given all the ways it interacts with
topics we talk about all the time, like trans humanism. Well,
there's a lot of future out there, Joe, and we
only have two episodes a week. Umuh. And I did
want to put in here that, uh, of course gender
doesn't exist in a vacuum. Um, I mean by necessity,
because it's a cultural and social construct. So so, like
(03:35):
Joe said, and kind of in the in the interests
of our heads not exploding totally, we're going to be
talking mainly today about gender in the West and in
the United States specifically, and we're going to be speaking
in some generalized terms. But of course keep in mind
that you know, the United States is a multicultural society
and gender gender interconnects with like race and religious beliefs
and all of these other big, huge factors that certainly
(03:58):
cannot be ignored. But we might be glossing over a
tiny bit. But hey, speaking of generalized terms, let's lay
out some definitions because there seems to be some confusion
sometimes when people are talking about the terms sex and
gender and as a side note, sexuality. So yes, so
(04:19):
we're going to start off with some generalized terms, just
kind of breaking it down for you guys a little bit.
These are concepts that we live with throughout our entire lives,
but of course, unless you really really have to, you
might not look at them too closely. So starting with sex,
So sex is generally what we think of biologically wise,
(04:40):
it's what's going on with your body. So you may
have always heard that sex is binary, right, it's male
versus female, But of course we know with the rise
of genetics and the study of hormones and chromosomes and
all these different sex therapies, that there's a range. There's
male female, inter sex, and actually you can change your sex.
(05:06):
Then we'll get into gender. So gender is socialized. It's
kind of the person's personalized version of your sex and
how you were present to the world. Right, So going
back to that binary, that's a little iffy because not
everyone identifies as masculine or feminine or either one of those.
In a strict sense, you can transcend gender, right, You
(05:28):
can be anywhere on what we consider a continuum or
the gender spectrum. And then just at a side note,
a lot of times people conflate sexuality with the with
your biological sex or with your gender, but these are
all really independent factors. So if you want to break
it down, you can kind of think of it as
(05:50):
you know, sex is basically what you are signed with
at birth or what you are um said to be
born as. Gender is often how you feel. It's what
you go to bad as. And sex and sexuality can
be thought of as who you may want to go
to bad with. Putting it absolutely uh And historically all
(06:13):
of these definitions have have kind of slid and changed.
The concepts of sex and gender are not solid as
much as kind of like like. Tradition dictates that they
have to have been this way all of the time. Um,
they haven't been. Certainly, the medical definition has changed a
whole lot in the past hundred years or so. It
wasn't until the eighteen nineties that humanity first started figuring
(06:37):
out that there are chromosomes. The chromosomes exist um chromosomes,
of course, being the winded up bits of DNA that
helped determine your biological sex. There was a German biologist
by the name Herman Hanking who was studying sperm formation
in wasps you know like you do and he u
(06:57):
He noticed that some of the sperm cells had a
even chromosomes while others had twelve. He called this X
chromosome the X element, hence eventually X chromosomes um the
X element and hypothesized that it had to do with
sex determination. His hypothesis was then later supported by two
American zoologists who are working with grasshoppers around nineteen o two.
(07:19):
Not sure why it was all insects, but anyway, um uh.
It was eventually the subject of of one paper that
that that I read caused a lively debate for a
few years. I'm not positive what in like Victorian ish
times like lively debate precisely means, but I'm but I'm
(07:40):
delighted by that, so okay. Prior to these studies, though,
it was thought that environmental factors determined the sex of
an embryo. Oh like like fikeets warm while the embryo
embryo is developing or something exactly. Yeah. Uh. And eventually
we realize that there are a number of chromosome all
conditions and humans not just X X and X why
(08:00):
but extra xes or wise can be present or a
single X can exist all on its own and um,
and and that's the the intersex category that that raquel
was talking about a second ago. And estimates of the
rate of inter sexuality and the population range from like
zero point zero two percent to about one point seven percent,
depending on exactly how you define it. So so biologically speaking,
(08:25):
there are not just dudes and ladies like that's that's
not that's not what's up. Um, And just the fun
fact you cannot always just assume what your chromosomes are.
You know, there are a lot of different factors that
can go into your chromosome will makeup and you really
can only know if you get tested exactly. Yeah, I've
read stories about that where people so your your your phenotype,
(08:47):
your your what what your genes have produced in your
body doesn't necessarily make a difference or it doesn't necessarily
indicate that you have an XX or an x y UM.
And it happened to be around the same time that
that researchers began realizing the roles that hormones play in
(09:08):
our bodies. To um that there was some animal research
in the mid eighteen hundreds establishing the idea that organs
in the body can communicate with each other via chemicals
like communicate in like a big hilarious eighteen hundreds scare quotes, um.
And and then uh, we got the word hormone. It
was coined in nineteen O five and of course, you know,
(09:29):
since then, we've we've been able to synthesize hormones in
the lab and develop hormone therapies to help people who
were either born with um with a with a genetic disorder.
I mean also technically like insulin is a hormone, so uh,
that's pretty great that we can synthesize that in labs,
or of course people who are choosing to change their
(09:51):
their bodies with hormone therapy. So we've come a long way,
but we're really still figuring out how individuals bodies regulate
their own hormones and for the more how those hormones
interact with with other bodily processes. Yeah, and so that's
getting us closer to where we are today in terms
of our understanding of biological sex and uh and intersex conditions.
(10:11):
But there's also a sort of cultural history that we
should look at it in terms of received ideas about gender,
because with this distinction we made earlier, sex is biology,
gender is identity, and identity involves culture, values, norms, expectations, behaviors,
and so I guess we should look at how those
(10:33):
things have changed in the past. I think a lot
of people would just assume that, you know, the traditional
position as they would see it in the West in
the twentieth century or something like that has always been
the case everywhere. Well, we just always believed that there
are men and women, and that men should be masculine
and women should be feminine, and that the definitions of
(10:53):
masculine and feminine have been the same. Yeah, but it
hasn't always been that way everywhere. So, yes, many of
the world's cultures, historically and even today recognize more than
just two genders. Um. The idea of a male or
female role as the only options really is in a
lot of way, it's very um, let's just say, a
(11:16):
lot of cultures have been very creative. Um. So, even
here in the United States, if we think historically among
Native Americans, the role or the idea of a third, fourth,
or fifth gender, often called to spirit has been widely documented.
Children who may have been born physically male or female,
(11:37):
but showed an interest or proclivity for another gender role
within their societies were often encouraged to live out those
gender roles and and see what fit them best. So,
you know, when you think about these roles and and
how they were regarded within a lot of Native American cultures,
(11:57):
we won't say all um, these the roles were given
a lot of respect, and they were often thought of
as very spiritually powerful. So people who were two spirits
were often shamans and teachers and caretakers. And it's very
important to remember that there are many two spirit identified
people around today. And of course there are many cultures
still throughout the world to view gender in a different
(12:20):
way than we do here in the United States, and
the and the the history. I mean, like like we
could do an entire, ridiculously long episode about the changes
in in this kind of cultural perspective that have happened
over the past few centuries, let alone the past few millennia,
and UH that it's it's it's really interesting, And that's
(12:40):
not what we got into today. But what we did
get into is, um, some of the modern attitudes and
definitions that we that we ascribe to gender and sex
here in the United States, like like like legally and
culturally speaking. Yeah, that's right, because I think looking at
law is a good way to sort of get a
(13:03):
gauge for the level of acceptance something UH is encountering
in the society at large. So you know, how does
the law treat gender? Does the law even recognize this
idea of gender identity as something different than just what
genitalia you have or what sex chromosomes you have? And
(13:25):
in US law, traditionally the answer was mostly no, until
more recently that there was a sex distinction in the law,
any laws that pertain to how men and women should
be treated or treated differently or not treated differently. Just
we're trying to use biological distinctions as understood at the time. Ay, yeah, exactly.
(13:47):
They were reverting to the biological binary as they understood it.
For example, in US law, Title seven of the Civil
Rights Act of nineteen sixty four prohibits, among other things,
employment discrimination on the basis of sex. So you're not
supposed to, under this law hire a man when there's
you know, a more qualified woman that really you you
(14:09):
should be hiring, but you just would rather have a
man working for you. So traditionally this was interpreted by
US courts to refer to biological sex, not gender identity.
But this is changing and through the accumulation of many
changes in law and judicial interpretation over time. So I
want to talk about one example I read about in
(14:31):
two thousand twelve, the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or
the e o C, set this important precedent relating to
the legal status of gender identity in a case called
Macy versus Holder, and the holder was Air Culture the
Attorney General suit being brought to the government about about
(14:51):
gender discrimination. And so the plaintiff was a police detective
as she was a ballistics expert who applied for a
job at a crime hi lab while still presenting as male,
and she seems to have been offered the job pending
a background check, but then after she announced to change
in her listed name and gender, the tentative job offer
(15:14):
was retracted. And then she reported receiving contradictory explanations for
why this happened. One person told her budget cuts eliminated
the position, and a different person told her, you know, well,
we went with a different candidate who was farther along
in the process. According to the plaintiff, and in the end,
the equal point that the e s C ruled that
(15:34):
Title seven should apply to gender identity, that was one
of the things that was taken away from the ruling
in this case. So they wrote, quote, if Title seven
prescribed only discrimination on the basis of biological sex. Then
only prohibited gender based disparate treatment would be when an
employer prefers a man over a woman, or vice versa.
(15:56):
But the statutes protections sweep far broader than that, in
part because the term gender encompasses not only a person's
biological sex, but also the cultural and social aspects associated
with masculinity and femininity and so yeah, so this is
one legal precedent for understanding there's a distinction here and
(16:18):
sort of recognizing that distinction. And of course when courts
recognize the distinction, it begins to to gain a level
of leverage essentially over what what can be done with
the law in the society. And UH, some jurisdictions have
actually tried to put gender identity into specific terms so that,
for example, it can be demonstrated in the court in
(16:39):
the case of, for example, an employment discrimination suit on
the basis of gender identity. Just one example is a
two thousand eleven Massachusetts state law UH that tried to
offer one of these definitions, and it said, quote, gender
related identity may be shown by providing evidence, including but
not limited to, medical history, hair, or treatment of the
(17:01):
gender related identity consistent and uniform assertion of the gender
related identity, or any other evidence that the gender related
identity is sincerely held as part of the person's core identity,
which seems reasonable. Yeah, So I think legal definitions like
this provides sort of like additional bricks in the edifice
of mainstream acceptance of the idea of gender identity is
(17:24):
something distinct from biological sex and thus something that could
contribute to this post gender idea that we're going to
talk about eventually here. Right. So, one of the reasons
or one of the main reasons that gender identity is
kind of this term that we needed to to describe
um our experience as a gender is that there are
(17:45):
so many people who may not identify with the gender
that they were assigned at birth. Right, So we often
think of um people who may be transitioning from a
male gender to a female gender or vi versa. But
of course there are many ways in which people can
kind of trans egenter. People can identify with gender on
(18:08):
the spectrum or off of the spectrum, in the middle
of the spectrum, on different ends of the spectrum. There
are so many different ways to identify and and we
often associate this with transgender people. And so there actually
is a report that came out in two thousand eleven
from the Williams Institute in California. The estimated that there
(18:29):
are about seven hundred thousand transagender Americans. I would dare
to say that there are many, many more. Yeah, that
number sounds slow to me, it does, I mean, but
but maybe maybe I'm also including in my mental calculation, uh,
non gendered people like like people who do feel that
they fall outside of the spectrum and aren't necessarily in
(18:51):
our in our living just however they want to, but
wouldn't necessarily identify as trans right. And I would imagine,
you know, since two thousand even there has been such
an upset invisibility and just understanding. I mean, there are
new ways in which people describe themselves, um, within the
transgender community. So there's definitely got to be more out there. Um.
(19:16):
But going into uh recognition, right, so it's important that
people can get that legal recognition of how they identify.
And so one of the things we're seeing lately is
an expansion of legal gender definitions and options. Recently, an
Oregan court ruled in favor of a person identifying as
(19:40):
neither sex option or or traditional sex option or traditional
gender option, and and so that they can really assert
their identity as a non binary individual. And so historically
oregan law. UM it didn't necessarily specifically limit gender options
to male or female, but that was kind of the
(20:01):
unspoken idea or rule. It's like the checkbox likes right.
When rules are unspoken, people sort of default to their prejudices.
I suppose yeah, right. And then of course, so for
decades that legal process really only involved this idea of
changing from one sex to another or changing from one
(20:24):
gender to another UM. And so that process really was
very much like changing a name. You know, you submitted
papers and and and the petition and the petitioner would
submit that paperwork, you would pay a filing fee, and
then you know, get a notice of your proposed change.
And so this judge in particular was like, Okay, you know,
(20:46):
you've got all the paperwork here. If this is how
you identified, then this is valid. And so this is
really one of the first cases within the United States
of of legal representation of people who don't identify a
strictly male or strictly female. And of course there are
other countries around the world that have kind of tackled
this issue or have some kind of uh built in
(21:10):
mechanism legally that that encompasses people who identify with the
gender that isn't just male or female, places like Singapore, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
and then of course there are other places like Australian
Germany that have stipulations on intersex children or people who
are born as intersex identifying um in different ways. Right,
(21:36):
So there really does seem to be a trend, a
trend towards more recognition of of gender as a separate
category from sex and of non binary sex identification in
illegal framework. And it doesn't mean that there's not resistance
to this trend. It's obviously no surprise that people have
lots of opinions about gender and how things are supposed
(21:59):
to be when it comes to sex and sex related concepts.
But I have noticed that on the internet once or twice. Yeah,
so so fairly stated. We all know that people have opinions.
But I would say, from a from as close to
we can get as a point of neutral observation, it
does seem undeniable that in the United States things are changing,
The law is moving toward a more general recognition of
(22:20):
gender identity as a category separate from sex and a
potentially protected class under laws like the sixty four Civil
Rights Act. UM just one more example in an article
for the American Bar Association, which mentions the things that
that I was talking about the last time I spoke
and more. Evan Schlack predicts that this trend of increasing
(22:40):
legal recognition for gender gender identity will continue into the future.
And to illustrate the sort of single directionality of the trend, uh,
he points out that only three states recognized and prohibited
employer discrimination based on gender identity between nineteen and two
thousand three, but that expanded to thirteens states plus the
(23:01):
District of Columbia during the next ten year period up
to So that does seem like a pretty strong trend
we can observe there. Uh. And the trend, of course
in law is mirrored in culture at large is something
that's probably less strictly codified and enforceable, but you can
kind of get a gist of generally how gender is
(23:25):
perceived among you know, in movies and on TV, and
what what people talk about on the internet. Absolutely absolutely
all of that that that fascinating pop culture stuff. Yes, yes,
So getting out of the kind of nitty gritty legal
world and we're gonna step into the culture. And if
you're like everyone in the world and you follow some
(23:46):
kind of entertainment and media, um, there has always kind
of been this playground of gender expression. You can think
about what a lot of who a lot of people
consider this kind of gender nonconformed any goddess, Grace Jones,
you can think of the late David Bowie, and of
course the also very very recently late Prints. But more
(24:11):
recently there have been a lot of young mouth celebrities
like Will Smith's son Jaden Smith and Magic Johnson's son E. J. Johnson. Um,
pushing the envelope for a new generation with closets that
are a bit more unabashedly feminine. And then, of course
women have transcended gender in fashion for a long time.
(24:32):
I mean you can just think of days long ago
when women could not wear pants, and and of course
the women wear pants all the time. We have someone
running for president who always wears pants in the most
we are both wearing pants right now. It's true, Joe,
It's all true. Pants for everyone or not, you know,
(24:56):
or whatever you want. Yeah, yeah, and it's it's a
little bit more except I think or it's been more
acceptable in women, so it's kind of exciting to see
men having the opportunity to do that as well. But
um but yeah, yeah, there there's been uh, certainly in
high fashion for a long time, this this trend towards
breaking those rules, right, definitely, Yeah, breaking the rules is
(25:19):
all the rage in fashion world, and of course androgyns
models have been involved at various points. However, there's been
a reluctance for a long time to actually feature models
that may really identify outside of the bounds of a
binary gender, right, people who weren't like like playing in
with it. But we're serious about it, right right, Yeah,
(25:42):
so not just necessarily a woman breaking norms and in
a suit or a man breaking norms than a scart,
but actually people who identify outside of the binary. Um So,
within the past ten years or so, maybe more, I guess,
maybe a bit more. Uh, there's been an increase our
(26:04):
interest in gender variant and transgender models. Um So, in
two thousand eight, there is a model on America's Next
Top Model, of course, a Tyra Banks masterpiece. Uh, and
her name is Isis King. She kind of became a
household name and really um gave a face and a
(26:24):
start to trans models in a mainstream sense. And then
we can kind of flash forward to now, um, almost
a decade later, and there are so many other trans
models covering magazines all the time, people like Andrea Pejik,
who really kind of transient transitioned in front of the
fashion world from from Brilliann androgenus model before to now
(26:49):
like claiming her identity as a woman. And then Leah
t Aidan Dowling was on the cover of ment Health
a trans man um and then Laife Ashley and and
some other models. There's actually a transgender model agency in
New York. Yeah, it opened a few months ago. So
we're really seeing this um continuing trend even in culture,
(27:13):
and then as well with some specifically gender neutral fashion lines. Um,
there's also been this huge emergence. There are some lines
like Vicia, Tillian William, Claire Barrow, Claire Barrow and sixty nine,
amongst so many other gender neutral fashion lines. But of
(27:35):
course it doesn't seem that culture as a whole is
going gender neutral, right. Not everyone's going around wearing nondescript
gender clothing, but it's kind of undeniable that the options
from men, women and folks who may identify otherwise are
kind of expanding, respectively, and and that the cultural acceptance
of wearing those kind of clothes out out about in
(27:58):
the world is expanding. It's still I mean, depending on
what what area you live in. Absolutely, we're We're very
lucky here in Atlanta, I think to have a very
diverse community who is who is, who is comfortable and
and accepting of of people's self expression. Yeah, I think
that's true about our city. Uh. It's funny how I
(28:18):
for some reason, my brain did not even go to
this place when I was thinking about this episode. I didn't.
It did not even cross my mind to think about
clothing um as such a fundamentally gendered part of our
everyday experience. Oh yeah, it's the language. Ye oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.
We we had we had Holly on a few months
(28:38):
to a year ago to talk about the future of
fashion and uh and and yeah, it's it's it's such
it's crazy, especially when when I think we decided during
that episode that that Joe is of the like what
is what is what can I wear? To be the
least obtrusive visually speaking in the world um and and
(28:59):
Holly and I were like more sequence on everything um
or you know, for for sometimes and so yeah, yeah,
it's it's very very much um a thing that I
certainly think about, like every day, like how am I
going to be perceived as a lady human when I
put this particular outfit on? Huh, I mean I worry
about how I'll look. But I guess, yeah, I mean
(29:22):
which is which is also part of part of that,
like like unfortunate gender binary Uh, oppression, oppression. Oppression is
a strong word. But but it's but but I'm but
I'm kind of you and serious like it's it's a
it's a very interesting thing where like the amount of
policing that we do of how men are supposed to
look versus how women are supposed to look. Well, I'm
(29:43):
okay to live in that future where everybody wears identical
jumpsuits muchallic ambolishments or no, yeah, that's the expression. You
can pick a color. Everybody's got identical jumpsuits and you
can pick you know, I want a green one. Can
I just have to wear that color all the time? No,
you can wear whatever color you want can I pick
(30:03):
sequin colors to go on. I would never force anybody
else to wear a jumpsuit. Uh. So, okay, the future
of gender may not be jumpsuits. But but but we
but we do have a discussion about about what it
might look like and what some people are theorizing. Yeah,
because so everything we've talked about now kind of gets
(30:25):
us gets us up to now, right, so that there
there are these trends in legal recognition and ideas about gender.
They're there are trends and what's accepted culturally. But in
the future, how much could these things change? Uh? And
here's where we want to come to the future ology
concept of post genderism, which our our listener, jim Jimma
(30:46):
brought up in the email she sent us. I think
this is a really interesting concept and I didn't know
that much about it before I started doing the research
for this episode. But I think maybe I'm a post
genderous now. I think maybe I'm convinced by the argument. Yeah,
I think. I think I didn't have a word to
put on my my opinions before, but I think this
absolutely sums up how I feel about stuff. Um, we
(31:11):
should at this point put in a hat tip to
a to a really useful overview of the topic. Yeah,
it was a paper I found published through the Institute
for Ethics and Emerging Technologies in two thousand and eight.
It was called post Genderism, Behind or Beyond the Gender
Binary by George Davorski and James Hughes, and it essentially
just tried to, in a very tight space condense a
(31:33):
lot of historical and cultural and technological trends that would
that have led up to where we are with gender
now and how technology might be changing that. Yeah. So
so if you guys are are, if you're if you're
appetite as wetted by this conversation, then maybe go check
out that article and uh and go through its source
list because there's a lot of really interesting gender theory
(31:54):
that they that they referenced. So all that stuff earlier
we mentioned that we could not possibly explore today. There's
a lot of gender theory in there. People have a
lot of thoughts. People do have a lot of thoughts, Joe,
that's accurate, But we should define it. So what is postgenderism? Essentially,
post genderism is a movement that predicts or advocates, So
(32:16):
you could you could think of it just as like
I'm saying this is most likely to happen, or you
could think of it as saying I think this is
what should happen. But either way, it either predicts or
advocates the voluntary erosion or elimination of gender distinctions and
human beings or their descendants. And it's associated with trans humanism.
(32:37):
Now we've talked about trans humanism on the show before,
but real quick refresher, it's essentially the movement advocating technology
that fundamentally changes capabilities of the human animal mentally and
or physically. So if you want to become a cyborg
with huge, powerful robot arms and claws on the end
of them, and yet clamps, powerful clams, supersensitive, yes, supersensitive hearing,
(33:04):
listen through the walls, see if anybody is coming to
discover you with your clamps whatever you're doing with them.
Or you want night vision, you want to be the predator,
any of that. If you want any of that stuff,
or if you want hey upgrade to your brain, how
about that. If you want to upgrade your own processing power,
maybe some onboard memory implants, any of that. Sign up
(33:26):
for any of these things. You are at some level
of trans humanist. You want to transcend or modify biologically
determined aspects of your animal nature. Wait, so do my
contacts count? Yeah, in a mild form, I think you
could say that the various pros theses we have today,
like glasses and hearing aids and stuff like that, surgery,
(33:50):
I mean, yeah, absolutely, yeah, I think I think those
are a little bit more than human things. Our cell
phones are like actually to third arms and oh yeah, yeah,
it's it's a useful end defector. It certainly is. I
think there's actually an interesting case to be made about
what how we come to think about certain tools that
(34:11):
we use very often as a part of our body.
But uh, I we digress. So yeah, So post genderism
applies essentially this trans humanist concept to the desire to
modify and transcend our our basic nature, uh, to the
naturally determined distinctions of sexual dimorphism in the species, and
(34:36):
also just to culture broadly, to gender norms that flow
from them. In the words of Dvorsky and Hughes quote,
post genderists argue that gender is an arbitrary and unnecessary
limitation on human potential, and foresee the elimination of involuntary
biological and psychological gendering in the human species through the
(34:58):
application of neurotechnolog gy, biotechnology, and reproductive technology. So now
if even if you're not like a very traditionalist person,
you might be getting a little freaked out there, things
like wait a minute, you know, there are armies of
radical postgenders that are gonna come try to turn me
into an androgenous creature while I'm asleep with their transhuman
(35:21):
robot clamps. Right. Uh, No, we should point out the
fact that this is a voluntary movement, right, So it
says essentially that in the future, to whatever extent you
display dimorphic sexual characteristics or gendered social behaviors, that's going
to be up to you. It's not something determined for
you without your consent by biology or by social expectations. Yeah,
(35:45):
the choice is really the operative thing here. Consent will
always be sexy, yes, yes, yes, so even thinking about
the societal expectations expanding, right, So, so when we're and
we're kind of put into these boxes, right, so kind
of taking this um idea of post genderism and thinking
(36:08):
about how it will play out for someone born into
a post gender world. Um, So, today there are already
intersex activists who are really challenging this idea about children
being born intersex being pressured into picking one gender or
one sex and going with it. Yeah, and that's often
(36:28):
been the case leading up to now. So children born
intersex are often they're either it's chosen for them at birth,
you know, well, we're gonna do some kind of therapy
to you to try to make you more typically male
or more typically female and usually a surgery, yeah, um.
Or they're later in life sort of encouraged to just
embrace one or the other. Right. And so according to
(36:51):
this position, you know, why should they Why should we
put all of these expectations on a human being who
may realize that that doesn't really fit them. So what
is really inherently wrong with having some anatomical sex characteristics
that don't match what we're expected to see based on chromosomes, right,
(37:13):
Or what's inherently wrong with some ambiguous genitalia? According to
these activists, Um, you know, if intersex people don't feel
naturally inclined to embrace one half of the gender binary
or the other, they shouldn't really be pressured to do so.
In a sense, the position is really seen as one
(37:34):
of the earliest forms of fully realized post genderism. People
are born not fully conforming to a typical sex profile
of male or female, and it's okay if they want
to say that way or not. In these cases, the
gender binary already kind of lies more or less fully vanquished.
And while it might seem unusual, for example, in America
(37:58):
in the century, there are precedents of this all over
the world and in many cultures throughout history. Right. So,
the the intersex birth cases, I think are one case
where you're sort of already posed to be in a
post gender position. All it really requires is the changing
of attitudes. In that case, like if you are an
(38:19):
intersex person and you live in an environment where that
is fine and that you know nobody's telling you you
well you really should be picking one. Uh you, you've
already in some sense become post gender there. But there
are other cases where technology could play a big role
in changing what's what options are available to people. Oh yeah,
(38:42):
and and this isn't it's not just future technologies. This
has already been going on for a couple hundred years. Honestly,
because the move towards a post gender society, I would argue,
has already begun, and it started with industrialization, the stratification
of our economy, you know, the the creation of a
middle class, and the slow but but widespread inclusion of
(39:05):
women in the workforce has changed society's roles for men
and women moved, moving away from a strict binary Yeah.
And I think that's very true in that work has
very often been one of the main lines upon which
gender distinctions and gender oppression occurred throughout history. Sure, And
and the communication age, the information aged, changed that even further. Uh,
(39:28):
you know, it's it's giving more people the option to
balance work and child care as they desire, which, of course,
child care being one of those like typically gendered kind
of roles in society. Also on the on the ideological end,
this whole digital revolution has been wonderfully speeding the exchange
of both scientific information and also personal experiences about sex
(39:52):
and gender. And it's allowed for the for the creation
of support communities for people outside of the gender norm
who don't live in areas our such support exists, which
is so critical for for for changing um quality of
life and and and changing people's minds eventually. And now
I had a question for you guys that I just
(40:13):
kind of wanted to toss out there. How how do
how do you guys think that the communication technology is
going to continue changing gender in the future, Like, not
not biotechnology and stuff like that, but just the computers
and internet stuff we got right, Yeah, not your sexy,
sexy modem. But but uh yeah, well, I mean one
(40:35):
thing that occurred to me. I wonder what y'all think
about this is virtual gender performance. So uh oh yeah.
So already we do a lot of our social interaction online,
but in the future, just imagine a future where we
do even more of it, there's even less face to
face social interaction. I mean, whatever you think about that.
That might sound kind of scary, but let's say we're
(40:55):
as we're as comfortable with that in the future as
we are with using Twitter all day on our phone
is right now, Um, how much of our social interaction
and public face is going to be mediated by technology,
including social media, online forums, online video games, virtual worlds.
Um if these venues end up representing the like a
(41:15):
really large or even totally dominant percentage of our interactions
with others, will physicality as in, you know, the biological
or physical aspects of your body play a smaller and
smaller role in how your gender traits are expressed, to
whatever extent they are. Uh So, it's just like so
(41:36):
much of our thinking about gender always ends up being
about bodies. But in a in a space where you
have no body or your body is literally a virtual
construct construct, does gender disappear or become less important to
you as a person? I think? I think also there's
a really interesting trend in social media lately, uh with
(42:01):
with that has to do with the creation of profiles
and the the construction of of like a brand for
yourself online. Like I think that we're all being suddenly
like like not even encouraged, but but kind of forced
into like curating a brand for ourselves. And uh and
so the way that we present ourselves to the world
(42:22):
is more careful perhaps today, like like more thought out,
because you you can you can look and evaluate your
own and other people's profiles and see see how you
want to be presenting yourself, and and gender is absolutely
a part of that, you know, I would definitely say,
of course, with social media and and access to just
(42:42):
information in general, that kind of levels the playing field, right.
I think a lot of the conversations that we have
online around gender are so interesting right now. I think
about Twitter and how we how a lot of feminists
use Twitter and talk about the inequality these talk about
their experiences and and then also maybe people who don't
(43:04):
identify as them to talk about their experiences too, And
it's really kind of giving us an inside glimpse at
how we all kind of have thought about gender all along,
or or have moved throughout society, maybe not knowing how
people who identified a different way felt. I mean, I
wonder if if these virtual environments and virtual social circles
(43:28):
give us the ability to experiment with non binary or
non traditional gender roles in a way that a lot
of people wouldn't if it had to involve their body
and face to face contact. So a person, for example,
who's biologically male might not feel comfortable uh, performing as
female in person, but maybe would on the internet. And
(43:52):
I don't know how prevalent something like that is, but
but it's interesting that that that kind of venue might
open up new possibility is for what people can decide
they like and who they are, right, yeah, I think
it might be a lot more common than we think.
I mean, catfish, yeah, absolutely, Yeah, I laughed, but I
(44:16):
don't know what catfish is. You have to Oh, okay,
that that's one. UM. That's when someone presents as someone
who they are explicitly not online um. And it's it's
usually a negative connotation in which someone is is taking
someone in, is trying to extort someone for money, or
something like that by presenting the story of this person
(44:38):
this this this completely made up human uh and and
it is not infrequently been used cross cross gender. That
makes sense to me. Hey, sudden insert that you probably
weren't expecting our record scratch. Yes, our conversation with Riquel
Willis here on the future gender ended up going very long,
(45:01):
so we are splitting it up into two episodes, and
that is going to be the end of part one
of the episode. But if you want to hear the
conclusion of this discussion about the future of gender, you
can join us again next time. Yes, so we we
hope that you will stay tuned across time and space
for that one. UM. In the meanwhile, Hey, if you
(45:23):
guys would like to get in touch with us, we
would like that too. Our email address is fw thinking
at how Stuff Works dot com. Our profile handle name
on Twitter and Facebook is also fw thinking. Uh. Search
around Google US, you'll find us. Uh. We will have
Raquel's contact information at the end of the second episode.
Although I believe off the top of my head that
(45:44):
if you would like to find her website, it is
Raquel Willis dot com. That is our a q U
E l w I L l I s dot com.
I think I can spell. I think that's correct. So yeah,
get in touch with us. We hope to hear from
you either away. You will hear from us again very soon.
(46:08):
For more on this topic in the future of technology,
visit forward Thinking dot Com, brought to you by Toyota.
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