A new era of gender fluidity.

A cursory perusal of a recent newspaper or social media outlet shows us that gender, or lack thereof, has become central. It is a political, linguistic and social minefield. No one could ever profess to have all the right answers on gender binaries and transgender people; if they did, they would be setting themselves up for backlash and cognitive dissonance. Although a fairly new issue, gender fluidity has created a far-reaching dialectic. Moreover, being a modern issue, it continues to create echoed tip-toeing and hesitant discussion so as not to offend; the discussion of trans-men, trans-women and non-binary persons, in public and in private, is so fraught with potential harm.

Very few of us intend to offend, thankfully. Where offence and hurt do arise, it is more often than not a case of somebody using the 'wrong' term. The use of non-gendered pronouns has had deeply social, as well as linguistic, implications. It’s interesting to ask what a scholar like Wittgenstein would have made of the current semantic network of pronouns in the field of gender fluidity. Perhaps this is a useful place to begin.

There are two essential strands to the debate. Both of these are inextricably tied, however. The one concerns linguistics itself, or the science of language, and the other concerns moral philosophy. How do we attempt a summation here? The language aspects we employ would be a start.

The refusal to conform or adhere to any binary where one’s gender is concerned, or indeed to desire a different gender ‘assignment’ with language itself, is the first point of departure.

The obvious question is, how far do we extend this desire? Is it sufficient to talk reflexively using the ‘preferred pronoun’ yourself, or does this warrant a demand on all others to use the same pronoun? These questions are divisive. The second strand then enters the argument, probing moral inquiry.

Is it morally acceptable to restructure the public rules of linguistics inorganically? By this, I mean is it acceptable to actively ask of others that they change their own lexical boundaries to accommodate your world view? Normally, perhaps, the answer would be 'yes, of course it is'. For those things out of the ordinary, though, it is much more contentious.

Gender fluidity constitutes a leading example of something out of the ordinary, by definition. That is to say that it is not yet part of a linguistic and social status quo, nor part of a majority. In fact, it often exists for this very reason, i.e. to dissolve the relevant status quo. This does not mean it is a negative or insidious thing, by any degree. What it does mean, however, is that one cannot simply let the traditional responses to linguistic boundary changes (i.e. accepting them) become our default here.

If any attempt at reconciliation is at all possible, it warrants a complete rethinking and reflection surrounding what has come to form the realm of public language. For those of us familiar with Ludwig Wittgenstein, it is precisely this arena he wanted to explore with the fascinating concept of a language game.

The ‘non-binary’ language game, in the Wittgensteinian sense, is one without formal rules as of yet. That is exactly why it creates tension, division and disagreement. Take the rules governing language use when talking about careers or hobbies, for example. The lexis we expect to arise relates to education, skills, finance, upbringing, goals, family planning, leisure, house-hunting, training, salary and geography (obviously non-exhaustive). These are all, though not entirely, well-defined concepts;. The institutional furniture that has existed for many years and stood various tests of times obviously engender significantly less controversy.

Non-binaries and gender fluidity, however, do not operate within any clear biological or social box. That, fundamentally, is the issue. The term ‘box’ is perhaps rather ignorantly used at first, but we do not mean a box as in a pigeonholed category of assignment (i.e. the ‘don’t put me in a box’ rhetoric) . They do not exist in a box because the agents of use tend to want precisely the opposite of a box.

With transgender people, e.g. a man undergoing, or having undergone, reassignment as a woman (and vice versa), the boxes are there at the start, but they are subsequently dissolved through human will.

The linguistic, biological and social ‘boxes’ of man and woman, male and female, do indeed exist. One can refute this and hold it in disdain, but the terms male and female have relatively clear lay lines if you are we are talking genealogy. If you were born with a penis, you are - scientifically - born a male. If you were born with a vagina, you are - scientifically - born a female. Biologically, this is near impossible to refute.

However, the social and emotional realm does not necessarily exist as a corollary of the biological (in fact, it frequently does not, for many a good reason). To be socially and psychologically opposed to the genetic sex with which you were born is indeed possible, and deeply complicated therefore. The issue, in sum, is that there are no clear rules applicable to this gender language game, as of yet.

Humans – including subconsciously - rely heavily on rule-based systems. Indeed, politics, economics and international relations commonly allude to a global stage upon which different actors play different roles according to different rules. Shakespeare was correct, then.

There is no agreed system of game-rules in place for the circumscription of non-binary and transgender agents, and perhaps rightly so. Perhaps they desire to escape or discourage such rules because they intrinsically do not want to be part of the rule. We must respect that fully and be as considerate as we can.

To summarize, can we ever expect to reach a landscape of linguistic and ‘moral’ safety where gender fluidity is concerned? Quite possibly not. This is no negative conclusion, though. The language we use is inextricably predicated by and tied to biological, genetic, psychological, social and physical categories. It is from these that language acts as the vehicle of either truth or falsity.

Language does not define what is the case and what is not, contrary to Wittgenstein's early contention. Language acts as an instrument for exploring and discovering these truths and the reality itself. One may try as hard as they want to alter the rule boundaries of language where gender and sex are concerned, and one should allow another to experiment as much as possible where words are concerned.

However, what nobody should expect is that language will or should - in the foreseeable future - get rid of scientific, empirical, biological categories of human existence where sex and gender are concerned. These exist because we, whether one likes it or not, still use scientific method as a paradigm of truth and rationale (perhaps this may well change one day, who knows?). That is not to say, however, that one should disagree with the attempt to do just this. In fact, it may be appraised for the sake of language games and truth function.

Time will indeed tell just how far gender fluidity can - or should - change the way we talk about the empirical world surrounding us. Whatever the case, it is a deeply interesting and pertinent issue, and we should be free to discuss it as much as possible with one another.