I’ve recently begun going through a bit of a personal renaissance regarding my gender, and I realized my numbers-focused brain needs something to quantify gender identity, both for myself and so I can better understand others. I also just don’t like socially-constructed labels, at least for myself.
So, using the Kinsey Scale of Sexuality as inspiration, and with input from good friends, I made up my own Gender Identity Scale.
- Three axes: X, Y, and Z
- X: Man (not necessarily masculinity), 0 to 6
- Y: Woman (not necessarily femininity), 0 to 6
- Z: Fluidity, 0 to 2
- X and Y axes’ numbers go from
0 - not part of my identityto6 - strongly identify as - Z axis’s numbers go from
0 - non-fluidto2 - always changing
Example: The average cis-man is 6,0,0, the average cis-woman is 0,6,0, and a “balanced” nonbinary person might be 3,3,1, or 0,0,0, or 6,6,2…
Personally, I think I’m about a 3,2,1 - I don’t have a strong connection to either base gender, but being biologically male, I do identify a bit more as a man. I also feel that I’m somewhat gender-fluid, but not entirely so. I honestly don’t fully understand gender fluidity yet, so the Z-axis may require some tweaking.
Does this make sense? Can you use this to accurately quantify your own gender identity? I wanna know!
I just need to pick a bathroom don’t make me do linear algebra on vectors, I gotta go so bad
Okay so this was created as a joke, but take a look at
The deeper and longer you think about gender the more you realize it’s all made up words to try and describe a feeling. It’s meant as a joke but like these can all be gender too. Some people have strong feelings, others don’t. If ascribing numbers helps you quantify that feeling, that’s super fucking cool and I’m happy for you!
On your scale I’m solidly a 0 for male and female. I’m not sure how to interpret fluidity in this context either, meaning I’m probably not a good fit for your model. But that’s okay, I’m super weird and enjoy breaking everyone’s preconceived notions, in fact few things make me more euphoric than opening people eyes to the diversity and beauty in the world! 🎉💜
When it comes to representing gender graphically, i like to think that gender is best represented as an n dimensional graph, where as n approaches infinity the graph approaches “true” (whatever that means) representation of gender.
If we wanted to represent it mathematically, it could probably be represented by a multinomial logistic equation, but I think what we need to keep in mind is that the equation at best would give you an estimate of probability that someone would identify with a particular gender. How much each weight would matter for each person would be highly individual as some may view particular traits such as assertiveness with one gender identity or another even under very similar circumstances (similar location of birth, cultural background, education, etc.). We would also need to keep in mind that some genders are much more likely to be identified as within certain cultures as they do not exist directly within other cultures (Hijra or Māhū for example) and that there would be different equations for gender identity, gender expression, and gender privacy/openness.
You might have a look at the “Genderbread Person”. It gets at some of the variables you’re considering. https://www.itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/genderbread-person/#gp4
It has become someone fashionable over the years to slag off the “genderbread person” as overly focused on the binary. However, long before there was an infographic (or honestly before anyone had coined the word infographic), this was floating around the west coast as a workshop exercise called Gender Gumby, and part of the point was that framing things as a spectrum between two poles doesn’t really work and it’s a fairly futile exercise–no one, cis or trans, is going to end up being able to place themselves on these lines and explain their choices without resorting to gender stereotypes.
without resorting to gender stereotypes
How do you figure that?
Gender stereotypes aren’t related to my own experience of my identity or how I talk about it
Have you tried doing the exercise, including the part where you have to explain to others why you have positioned yourself where you did? Particularly the one about how others perceive your gender. At a minimum, you have to talk about other people’s understanding of gender stereotypes and how it relates to your presentation.
There are routinely people who say “this line is stupid, I’m putting myself somewhere not on the line”, and I should have mentioned that (because it’s a possibility often discounted in the dismissal of the activity), and you may well be one of them. (I mean, I have been running the damn workshop and stuck myself not on the lines, not least because I genuinely don’t know how others perceive my gender.)
Have you tried doing the exercise, including the part where you have to explain to others why you have positioned yourself where you did?
I have. And it boils down to women/girls are “like me”.
If I were in a room with a group of men and a group of women, it’s the women that I feel the sense of “sameness” with.
At a minimum, you have to talk about other people’s understanding of gender stereotypes and how it relates to your presentation.
Sure, but that’s presentation, not identity. I perform what I call “practical femininity”. It’s the femininity that I have to perform to minimise social pushback. I have no sense of it connecting to who I am, or my identity however.
I think ultimately, I’m being nitpicky here. We all have to navigate stereotypes, and we all have some sort of relationship with them. I just don’t agree that we all need them to talk about out sense of self and our own identities, because my sample size of 1 shows me that it’s not the case for me
Just want to add you now have a sample size of two - I’ve read your comments on this post and I feel the same as you. I get so frustrated when people think I’ve gone through everything I have just so I can perform femininity - hello? I could have been a feminine guy if that’s who I was but it wasn’t. Sure I wear women’s clothes now, but I did a lot before too and I’m too lazy asf to be any kind of fashionista. Every woman (and every man and everyone else too) finds their own place of personal style and comfort. The main impact re: my transition and its relation to aesthetics - for some reason it’s now a very bad thing to show my chest in public, because now it’s shaped differently. Weird to think about logically. A bra is basically just underwear for nipples.
Anyways, I didn’t break out of one box that didn’t fit me only to climb into another, is what I’m trying to say.
I didn’t break out of one box that didn’t fit me only to climb into another
I love this. I’m stealing this.
Thanks :)
You misunderstand me, I think. I’m not suggesting that you’re relying on stereotypes to conclude your gender is “woman” (I assume)–part of the exercise is explaining how your gender is perceived by others, which is both about presentation and how that presentation interacts with society.
It’s been a long time since I’ve run Gender Gumby. I used to answer the “presentation” question with “I don’t know”, because I didn’t – so much of my day-to-day was occupied by trying to figure out how people were reading my gender for the sake of safety. These days it’s unambiguous–I get assumed to be a man. But my gender identity is the same–it’s off doing its own thing, getting put into a box by society.
I don’t understand how the experience you describe there relates to our previous discussion though. Where in this experience did you have to navigate other people’s understanding of gender stereotypes and how it relates to your presentation?
That’s really the crux of what I was addressing in my first reply to you. To me, presentation doesn’t have anything to do with it, and it hasn’t ever been part of my discussion with other people when talking about my own identity.
Wow, this reflects precisely how I view human gender and sexuality. Thank you for showing me this! 💖
I’ve always preferred the gender unicorn which it appears inspired both v3 and v4 of the genderbread person.
OP here.
Wow, there has been some really excellent, insightful discussion here. Thank you, everybody, for bringing your own perspectives and pulling me further away from my intellectual comfort zone and towards my emotional comfort zone.
When I came up with this idea, I thought it was genius - a perfect translation of gender identity into a nice, easily-understood series of numbers. I’m beginning to understand now that gender is too complex a subject and too subjective a complex to define in any one specific, consistent way.
That being said, I’m a dad, and for the sake of my daughter, I’ll always be Dad, no matter what. But that doesn’t mean I have to be a man. I still think I want to raise my kid with the concept of gender, but I’ll let her see by example that that concept needn’t define her in any way if she doesn’t want it to or feel it should/does.
“I’m a Dad, but I don’t have to be a man” is just beautiful.
You might find the idea of time-varying functions to a hilbert space a useful modification to this concept of gender :)
It makes sense, if we’re only talking about midbinary genders. But as someone with a lot of abinary genders, no, I wouldn’t be able to use this scale to quantify most of my genders.
They all would end up with 0,0,0, which in no way quantifies the differences in quality and intensity between them.
a lot of abinary genders
It’s people like you who give the trans community beauty and complexity. How dare you!
I’m no masochist, but I love hearing about how ill-conceived this scale is. I love seeing how nuanced and personal the subject of gender is.
The best ways for me to learn are through mistakes (this post) and conversations with others with viewpoints different from mine (most comments in this post). So, thank you for sharing your perspective. 💖
For me, 0-5-0, maybe 0-4-0?
And I’d suggest that you should probably add another axis to represent genders that don’t fit the man/woman binary. Not every non binary person sits on that man/woman spectrum
Hmm, I really don’t want to make it too complicated, though. Would 0-0-0 with maybe one additional label suffice? I guess at that point, the numbers become irrelevant and only the label matters, which defeats the whole purpose.
I don’t know enough yet about nonbinary folks (even though I’m pretty sure that’s what I am). Do you have any suggestions for additional/modified axes? Maybe we could make the X and Y axes go into the negatives, with different meaning ascribed to anything below zero. 🤔
Hmm, I really don’t want to make it too complicated, though.
I mean, we’re talking about gender. Complicated is unavoidable :)
😂 Good point!
That’s why I wanted to simplify it. It clearly needs more work, but I do think I’m onto something here, at least for those of us who find numbers easier to understand than labels. There are dozens of us!
Forget complicated, make it complex and add the imaginary axis i
Excuse my ignorance, but how do you define a difference between “man” and “masculinity”? Is it just how you see yourself? Like you might present as fem but think of yourself as a man, or present as masc but think of yourself as a woman?
I’m a woman. I don’t understand femininity though and it plays no part in making me who I am
Thanks, that helps!
Exactly that, yes. I used to think of myself as a 100% man who just has some feminine qualities, until I had a mind-and-eye-opening experience that helped me to better understand myself. But I know there are plenty of men who present as feminine, yet still identify as men.
And I’m a trans woman, yet I have no connection to femininity.
It’s a performance I can do, and sometimes even enjoy, but I have no sense of it being related to who I am
Ya, I am a man that doesn’t mind being seen as feminine sometimes. I’ve never thought of myself as a woman or wished I was a woman, but I have wished people cared less about gender and presentation.
That’s been exactly my concern, too. It’s why I never considered my own gender past my birth sex. That being said, I’ve wished throughout my life that I could switch from man to woman and back, but never thought of it as more than fantasy until I had a life-changing experience a few days ago.
I still wish people didn’t care so much about it, which is why I like using a numerical scale; it removes the social construct of labels and their myriad implications/connotations, and allows us to just use simple, universally-understood numbers.
It’s an interesting exercise. It made me think about several issues that I wish to discuss in the future. I don’t really agree with your presentation, but I have some suggestions.
You should quantify everything as either 0 or 1. This is a binary scale. There’s man and there’s woman, no third option, no in between. You can say X and / or Y is part of your identity and if it’s always the case or not, the Z.
I understand that you wanted to express that some people are not as much X or Y, but I believe that’s a reality for trans and cis people. Non binary, in my personal view, deconstructs genders and don’t really put them back together.
All that said, the moment we accept gender as a social construct, we have to accept individual definitions. I tried to work inside what I felt you were aiming to say. You be the judge.
You do bring up a good point - this is an exercise mostly for my own benefit, made using terms and concepts that help me to better understand my own relationship with gender.
And it’s working, thanks to people like you who challenge it and force me to think outside my own comfort zone.
Non binary, in my personal view, deconstructs genders and don’t really put them back together.
This in particular really resonates with me. As someone discovering that I don’t really fit into any preconceived societal notions of gender, this has given me license to drop the idea altogether, and just make my own definition of my own gender (or lack thereof), irrespective of “man” or “woman”.
It seems weird to track the movement of the points on an additional axis. Generally you get that by taking the derivative instead you should express your gender as a parametric equation and obtain the fluidity by getting the derivative.
You could think of the 3rd number qualitatively giving a margin or error or standard deviation. The center is at (x,y) but the exact value fluctuates within a radius of z. But if that’s the case, then it should not be capped at 2.
it’s an interesting start, but i’m not sure how to fit in things like xenogenders and therian-gender identity intersections.
if the zero-point is meant to allow for bigender folks, then some kind of dimension/measure for overall intensity regardless of masculine/feminine/fluidity would be handy to accomodate demigender and agender folks, or the other way around if the zero-point is meant to be a point of reference for overall intensity vs the intensity of individual attributes.
maybe individuals having multiple points or ranges within the overall space could help, too? idk
The zero point is for agender. The maximum (6,6) is bigender.
I’m gonna be honest: I’m unfamiliar with most of those terms. This is all very new to me, and I made this scale as a way to better understand myself (and others, should they choose to use it). I also tried to keep it as simple as possible, for ease of use.
But it looks like I have some reading to do.
I’ve definitely used vector space to conceptualize my gender identity before, but definitely 3 axes is too limiting. There’s a difference between the presence/lack of genders and the “method” in which they are experienced, after all. A binary woman and a genderfluid person who is currently a woman have the same (current) gender, but their fluidity is obviously different.
For me, personally, I would need at least two additional axes for genders; I’m bigender, but neither of them are man or woman, so your scale would look like (0,0,1) for me, which would match a mostly-agender person which I’m definitely not. Other people would probably want an axis for gender intensity i.e. how much presence of a gender one experiences. Some people feel their gender very strongly while for others it’s just sorta there in the background. Some people would definitely want to use negative numbers.Then there are all the people who describe their gender as “orbiting” or “parallel to” a binary gender, introducing the possibility of using vectors to describe gender rather than points in space…
I’d probably describe myself as (0,0,1,5,6), where the 4th axis is juxera and the 5th axis is mavrique. I have felt gender fluidity in the past but it’s been pretty solid for a few years now.
NB genderfluid checking in here.
Find it interesting that you say that as biologically male you identify more as a man.
Though I do fall that way on occasion, when I lean away from a neutral they position I tend to lean towards she/her more often than not despite being born male.
Honestly, I’m still figuring myself out. I’ve identified as 100% man most of my life, and it’s only very recently that I’ve started to understand myself well enough to question that.
In the few days since i posted this, my transformation into the person I want to be/truly am has continued. If I were to use this inherently flawed scale now, I’d be more of 1-0-0. I can’t deny that the testosterone in my body exceeds the estrogen, and I really like having a beard and a penis, so I’m undoubtedly physically male. That’s the only real tie I have to gender; otherwise, I’m now certain that I’m nonbinary.
Right now, because I’m trying to bolster my femininity to achieve more of a balance that reflects how I feel about myself, I very much prefer she/they. But once I’m fully who I want to be, I think I’ll be comfortable with any pronoun.
Thank you for sharing your perspective. The more I learn about others who’ve shrugged off societal preconceptions of gender, the closer I get to understanding myself and my relationship therewith.
I’ve thought about this myself a bit, and I took the “binary” part a bit more literally. If a man were 0 and a woman is 1, I’d consider myself about a 0.4, which is non binary. Someone who isn’t midway or in the binary at all might be a 2, or -1, but this is about the limit of what I’ve conceived.
