Heinz gets by with a mere 57 varieties, while the latest fashion in human sexuality purports to discern 112 strains of gender. What academics and activists won’t acknowledge is the injustice of conventional women being bulldozed by a 6’6″ ruckperson formerly known as Bruce.
These days you can find ‘educated people’ correcting you if you use the word ‘sex’ to refer to either of the two categories which divide humans (and most other beings) according to their reproductive function. Do you mean “gender” they will say. Hmm? The fairer gender?
You will read John Stuart Mill’s essay on The Subjection of Women without once coming across the word gender. Plenty of “sex” no “gender.” Gender is a modern construction when applied biologically to distinguish men from women. It has caught on because it lends itself to fragmentation. Sex is binary. Gender, apparently, can be a continuum of finely divided sexual orientations.
Those in the know claim there are many complex gender variations among folk on the planet. As I am not one of those in the know I Googled. Prominently, on the first page of search results, was a site, apath.org. It listed 63 genders broken down by physicality, personality, preference and descriptor. For example, number 57 was an “Androgyne, female-attracted hermaphromale.” Mindboggling.
Another site lifehacker.com.au was less ambitious in referring to a Queensland University survey which listed in less exotic terms 33 different genders. Even so, the meaning of descriptors such as neutrois, genderqueer, demigender, and trigender, are not immediately obvious (to me). I re-Googled with a slightly different query. Up popped Tumblr, wherein ambition knows no prosaic bounds. Tumblr is a social-network blogging site; which, I concede, heretofore, has escaped my attention. On my count, it lists 112 different gender types. Maybe it’s a spoof? I would like to think so. Take the first one on the list.
“Abimegender: a gender that is profound, deep, and infinite; meant to resemble when one mirror is reflecting into another mirror creating an infinite paradox.”
This and most other of their gender types are even more mysterious to me than are cryptocurrencies and blockchains. I am out of my depth and must move on.
What I am moving onto is men’s and women’s sports, which I do understand. Or I did. Now I have a deep sense of unease about the whole business of sex-segregated sports. Even mixed doubles in tennis is open to interpretation as to how mixed it is or has to be.