Identifying Gender and Sexuality

Do We Need New Ways to Identify Gender and Sexuality?

By KATHERINE SCHULTEN

Non-binary, intersex, neutrois, androgyne, agender, gender questioning, gender fluid, gender variant, genderqueer: these are among the 50 possibilities and permutations of gender identification Facebook will now include in a drop-down menu for people who feel the binary choices “male” and “female” aren’t enough.

What do you think? Do we need new ways to identify gender and sexuality differences, whether on Facebook or on official forms like driver’s licenses and passports?

In a 2013 article, “Generation LGBTQIA,”Michael Schulman wrote:

If the gay-rights movement today seems to revolve around same-sex marriage, this generation is seeking something more radical: an upending of gender roles beyond the binary of male/female. The core question isn’t whom they love, but who they are — that is, identity as distinct from sexual orientation.

But what to call this movement? Whereas “gay and lesbian” was once used to lump together various sexual minorities — and more recently “L.G.B.T.” to include bisexual and transgender — the new vanguard wants a broader, more inclusive abbreviation. “Youth today do not define themselves on the spectrum of L.G.B.T.,” said Shane Windmeyer, a founder of Campus Pride, a national student advocacy group based in Charlotte, N.C.

Part of the solution has been to add more letters, and in recent years the post-post-post-gay-rights banner has gotten significantly longer, some might say unwieldy. The emerging rubric is “L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.,” which stands for different things, depending on whom you ask.

“Q” can mean “questioning” or “queer,” an umbrella term itself, formerly derogatory before it was appropriated by gay activists in the 1990s. “I” is for “intersex,” someone whose anatomy is not exclusively male or female. And “A” stands for “ally” (a friend of the cause) or “asexual,” characterized by the absence of sexual attraction.

In a recent article, “Who Are You on Facebook Now?,” Aimee Lee Ball writes:

On his driver’s license and passport, at his doctor’s office and insurance company, for online dating and social media, and on every application or document that requires checking a box for gender, 24-year-old Ryley Pogensky is a “male.” But to his friends on Facebook, he is now a “trans man.”

Facebook recently announced that it would offer users 50 different possibilities and permutations of gender identification. In the gender category under “Basic Information,” the drop-down box now includes such “custom” choices as non-binary, intersex, neutrois, androgyne, agender, gender questioning, gender fluid, gender variant, genderqueer and neither.

The gender project was developed at a “hackathon” — an all-night coding fest at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. — with input from Glaad in New York. “Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of requests for additional terms,” said Allison Palmer, former vice president for campaigns and programs at Glaad. “It speaks to how important Facebook is in people’s lives. Having only two options was a big problem.”

Some of the terms are not found in standard dictionaries. “Cisgender” is officially defined as someone who identifies with his or her societally recognized sex, but it has come to have a more L.G.B.T.-supportive subtext: I’m O.K. with what it says on my birth certificate, but I realize that’s not true for everyone.

“Other people might see one of these terms and think it’s a typo,” said Sasha Kolodkin, a 19-year-old student at Purchase College in New York, who chose to be identified as a gender nonconforming transsexual female. “It’s sort of a secret language that not everyone will understand. I was born male and feel that I should have been female. But use of the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ is very confining. When you have to choose between the two, the complexities of your identity are lost. It’s like looking at a painting in black and white instead of color.”

NOW YOU GO: Read both of the articles, then tell us …

— Is this a new idea for you, or have you encountered words like “cisgender” and “intersex” and heard the arguments for them before? What is your reaction to what you read?

— Do you agree with people like Sasha Kolodkin who say that “the complexities of your identity are lost” for some who must choose between only “male” or “female” as gender identifiers?

— Do you know, or have you read or heard about, anyone who is struggling with this issue? What light do these articles shed on that struggle for you? What questions do the articles raise?