The Binary is Bad For Women.
CW: sexual assault, homicide
Why is it important to know some stranger’s gender? What impact does it actually have on you?
The only non-curiosity-based reason (outside of my clinical practice), for me as a woman, is safety, since cis men are far more likely to harm me than anyone else.
Cis Men Harm Women
Yeah okay, #notallmen. And it’s well-established that cis men cause the majority of interpersonal harm. People in power (cis men, coincidentally) don’t want to do anything about that; they prefer to point at trans women, distracting from the real danger.
(Melissa Corrigan goes into thorough analysis on this issue in her pieces on the gender Executive Order.)
It’s well-documented that women are most likely to be assaulted by men they know. And when it comes to strangers, men already harass, grab, grope, and assault us in perfectly public places that are not restrooms. We know this. We have lived it. Not to mention, men also commonly abuse women in church settings, as Corrigan points out. So, do cis men really need to go to the trouble to dress in feminine outfits and go into a public women’s restroom to try to harm women? Obviously not. But even if they did, those are cis men, not trans women, causing the harm.
Cis men want us to believe that it’s scarier OUT THERE in the world for women than it is in their company. Never mind that men rape their partners - over half of all rapes occur in the context of a relationship. 76% of murdered women are killed by someone they know and 34% are by an intimate partner. In pregnancy, your highest risk of death in the US is via homicide, and that isn’t because of strangers either. I won’t even get into domestic violence statistics in general.
But you know, bathrooms, I guess.
Definition Keeps People In Their Place
Clearly, these are not serious attempts to “protect” women. Attempting to marginalize and demonize trans and gender-diverse folks - or preventing them from peeing, anyway - is not actually about keeping women safe. What is it about?
Well for one, it’s about scapegoating a small minority to try to unite the masses against a common “enemy.” Just normal authoritarian stuff. But undocumented immigrants are also being scapegoated. So why the focus on gender issues?
You can’t have a patriarchy if you don’t clearly define who the patriarchs are and aren’t. Without compulsory conformity to your assigned side of a gender binary, it’s difficult to know whether you get to be a subjugated person, or free and in power. And the people with the power (cis men, and a few cis women who are benefitting from the hierarchy) do NOT want us messing with the rules.
They want women to stick to woman things and men to do the man things, with everyone sticking to one of two gendered scripts. Patriarchy is incompatible with silly ideas like letting individuals chart their own course or express unique identity, or wild ideas like treating one another with respect, dignity and true equality, regardless of gender identity.
Women Do the Woman Things So Men Can Be Men
If we “don’t know” who the women are, or if gender is fluid or changeable or subjective, who will be the default childcare provider, and for whom will it be an optional, commendable bonus task? (Will women even keep having babies if men don’t force them to?) Who will remember that the kids need watching when it’s Presidents Day or remind men to call mom on her birthday or make sure he doesn’t run out of his protein shakes, and who will spend his day off golfing and complaining to his buddy about being nagged? Who will get laid regularly with low effort, and who will lie there and give him access to her body even when she’s exhausted and over it and just wants to watch Golden Girls reruns?
We wouldn’t want any confusion over who does what, now would we?
Cis men generally rely on the unpaid physical, emotional and intellectual labor of women to stay in power, and they need them to know their place at home to keep the status quo. Most dudes would never say it like that, of course. But try asking the following questions of the dads you know and see what you think: ask them the name of their kids’ pediatrician and when the kids last had a check up, or how often they regularly meal plan and grocery shop for the family (being handed a prepared list and simply buying those items doesn’t count), or if they’re in charge of making sure the entire house stays clean and how they make it happen (whether that’s doing it themselves - and making sure cleaning supplies are in the house - or, for the more privileged set, hiring and coordinating a housekeeper). Yes, some dads are exceptions who will have great answers to these questions, thank goodness. They are not the rule.
In addition to all of the unacknowledged-but-expected labor, the binary also asks women to continue spending what little remaining time, money, and mental energy they have to modify and control their natural appearance. Much is required, after all, to perform femininity correctly: skin care, makeup, body hair removal, hair care and styling, dieting, nail care, exercise, and clothes shopping, to name a few. (Can’t let women have too much free time or feel too good about themselves.)
For gender being so “biological,” it sure does take a lot of unnatural shit for someone to look like a “real woman.” Isn’t that interesting?
You Don’t Have to Care About Trans People To Care About This
Enforcing a made-up gender binary is obviously terrible for trans and gender-diverse folks. And. The larger purpose of persecuting trans and nonbinary folks is to keep the binary firm. The binary tells us which people will be in the submissive, supportive, reproductive, too-busy roles, and which people will be the men, free to keep manning. In Corrigan’s part II of her analysis on the gender executive order that’s allegedly for protection of women, she states that the order “is obviously using ‘protection of women’ as a very thin veil to subjugate and define women as the reproductive bearers.” If we can’t sort everyone into two “biological” boxes, and if trans, non-binary, and intersex people exist (which they fucking do, regardless of what the government or anyone says), it really just ruins the whole patriarchal deal.
But this EO is only one manifestation of the general movement to keep gender binary, the purpose of which is to disempower anyone who is not a cis male. It is also seen in tradwife content, “embracing the divine feminine” nonsense, and complimentarianism in evangelical culture.
You may not know any trans people. I promise you, trans folks are suffering, but if that seems too abstract for you, you need to know that enforcement of traditional gender definitions is oppressive for everyone who does not qualify as a cis man. Fight for trans rights. It’s a fight for the rights of all women. Of nearly all humans, actually.