Tag Archives: politics

Putting it all together – finally some gender definitions!

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Probably the most polarizing thing in transgender discourse has been the debate about the definition of a woman (strangely never couched in terms of the definition of a man!). The basis for exclusion of trans women from such definitions is supposedly based on incontrovertible biological facts, though, as posted previously, sexual biology is highly complex and not entirely binary. The basis for inclusion of trans women is social and thus relates to gender. These two perspectives seem to lack any connecting ground: either it’s all biological and binary or it is entirely based on self-identification of desired social role. However, we can and must do better than this. Therefore, I have developed definitions which are kind to, and inclusive of, trans people whilst not disregarding sexual biology, and which I hope represent a good practical starting point for further discussion. They build the connecting ground.

Though I have shared most of what follows with several folk (cis and trans) individually over the last 2-3 years (who generally found it lucid) I decided not to share it more widely whilst self-declaration of gender (which I broadly support[1], with some caveats) was still a realistic possibility in the UK. However, the UK Supreme Court ruling on Weds 16th April has abruptly changed the landscape and I view the ideas that I share below as now being ripe to provide a framework or foundation to build back most of what trans folk currently appear to be losing.

However please be clear that I am not writing about legal definitions here, though the definitions I provide could be deployed to develop clearer, fairer and more inclusive legal definitions which are surely now needed.

A necessary concept at this point is that of intention. The intention (whether of nature, i.e. that of the human organism or maybe even society, or whether of God) is what is often in mind when trying to allocate ambiguous cases to a sex or gender and is the (normally implicit) basis of much anti-trans argumentation: people thinking they know the intention of some higher authority and then using it to curtail other peoples’ freedom and sense of self. However, the intention of the human organism clearly continues developing after birth, including the ‘self’, and is honoured when we recognise bodily autonomy. Recognition and honouring of such organismic intention is key to understanding and including trans people.

My answers to the questions ‘What is a man?’ and ‘What is a woman?’ are as follows:

A man (boy) is a human person who demonstrates consistent organismic intention to maintain or adopt a set of gender characteristics that best correlate with male biological sex.

A woman (girl) is a human person who demonstrates consistent organismic intention to maintain or adopt a set of gender characteristics that best correlate with female biological sex.

These definitions have the following benefits:

  1. they are trans friendly – a person of female biological sex can be a man, and a person of male biological sex can be a woman, if they adopt appropriate characteristics which contains the recognition that gender and sex are imperfectly correlated[2]
  2. they retain the idea of biological sex
  3. they don’t require the difficult task of biological sex being precisely pinned down since, however it might be defined, e.g. by chromosomes or by birth genitalia, the distribution of gender (social) characteristics associated with it will be very similar.
  4. unlike the pure self-identification model they do not (seem to) float free from biology but they do contain self-identification inherently through the idea of intention and could include ‘identifying as a woman (man)’ as part of any set of gender characteristics

Naturally I recognise that these definitions are more complicated than either the attempt to use biological sex only or the attempt to use self-identification. However, given the complexity of the field of human sex and gender, they are still remarkably succinct.

Socially it may be difficult to evaluate consistent intention and, as is frequently the case in practice, we assess or extrapolate this from a necessarily more momentary evaluation. Note also that consistent intention could be useful legally and that intention (to adopt gender characteristics) should generally be honoured even if the individual does not ‘pass’ as their intended gender.

A non-binary person (perhaps including bi-gendered or significantly genderfluid individuals) could then be defined by either:

A non-binary person is a human person who demonstrates consistent organismic intention to maintain or adopt a set of gender characteristics that do not strongly correlate overall with either male or female biological sex.

OR

A non-binary person is a human person who does not demonstrate consistent organismic intention to maintain or adopt a set of gender characteristics that strongly correlate with either male or female biological sex.

The need for both of these definitions arises as some non-binary people are more drawn to the middle ground and some are more repelled by the poles.

Please note that an intersex person could be gendered as a man, a woman or non-binary under this framework. Whether such a person would view themselves as transgender or not would very much depend on the individual’s circumstances (including perhaps the degree of transition undertaken).

Whether an endosex (non-intersex) non-binary person would additionally view themselves to be transgender or not would also very much depend on the individual’s circumstances (including perhaps the degree of transition undertaken).

[1] Support shared by the 2022 UK Unitarian General Assembly in a landmark trans rights resolution.

[2] As indicated in my previous post I recognise that such gender changes may also change some aspects of sex. Some transgender people would view them as changing their sex whilst gender critical folk would not. The beauty of these definitions is that this does not need to be resolved.

Sex and Gender are Imperfectly Correlated

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Let us be clear that, regardless of any philosophical theory or statements by any political or legal body (including the UK Supreme Court), there is no widescale consensus about what sex and gender are and how they relate to each other.[1] In the absence of consensus, I am primarily going to present my own framework. As it makes something of an appeal to common ground, and could perhaps even be seen as a golden mean of different positions, it has plenty of claims on legitimacy. Nevertheless, I am sure that some will see it as contentious.

I contend that sex and its classification is fundamentally about physicality. This means we need a word for things that are correlated (imperfectly) with sex i.e. social roles and so forth and the word gender is used to capture that. However, if the scope of gender is restricted to that, then it is unable to encompass those aspects of physicality that provide indication of the individual’s likely social role. Thus, gender necessarily extends into those aspects of physicality (visible secondary sex characteristics) which are definitely also part of our understanding of sex, as well as into borderline things that are physical and social such as clothing, voice, mannerisms, and deportment.

Recognising the limits of normal social interaction we thus have a conservative estimate of the bounds of gender. However, it is not unreasonable, considering the desire for living as full a human life as possible, to extend the idea of the social into the intimate domain, and thus to include what could be observed by a sexual partner or by a relatively cursory medical examination. This would then include the primary sex characteristics, particularly the visible sex organs.

Thinking along these lines it is clear that it is impossible to define a boundary between sex and gender. Consequently, a typical resolution of other thinkers is either to extend gender ‘all the way in’ so that drills down into the biology or alternatively to extend sex ‘all the way out’ beyond my assumed physical definition to include the social aspects that (imperfectly) correlate with the physical. This leads to a situation where gender and sex can then be superficially viewed as being identical in their coverage though springing from entirely different paradigms! To be clear I do not take this approach as the potential for confusion in terms of communication and understanding is enormous. Yet another approach that has been taken is to use the boundary definition for sex as physical but to then disregard all non-physical aspects and leave them unclaimed, with the word gender either abolished or, perhaps if used at all, as a synonym for sex. However, for as long as we are an embodied and social species, we will always observe the (imperfect) correlations that exist between sex and social behaviour.[2] Consequently the social idea of gender will always re-assert itself if the attempt made to abolish it.

Meanwhile my own conception of sex and gender does not attempt to completely disentangle them and instead leaves them to overlap but with different emphases and imperfect correlation.

I contend it is then possible to change gender by adopting another social role and changing physical gender cues as much as possible. This potentially also changes some aspects of sex (e.g. hormones, secondary and maybe primary sex characteristics) but leaves open the possibility that, for example if you (unlike me) define sex by chromosomes or by gonadal tissue or by genitalia at birth, that you will not view sex as fundamentally changed. From a trans perspective, and for the definitions I will ultimately present, this actually doesn’t matter as long as gender as a bio-social idea is respected as the commonality typically desired by trans people and is viewed as a meaningful idea by society at large. It does however matter from an intersex perspective: as previously posted actually defining biological sex is more complex than simply sex chromosomes or gonads/birth genitalia.

However, the gender critical position is that of bio-essentialism i.e. only biology matters in terms of making a judgment of sex and that gender is either meaningless (in the social sense) or is simply another word for sex. Therefore we see that the gender critical position is to completely deny the very commonality (gender) that trans people identify with and yearn for. When looked at clearly it is an attempt at erasing trans people by removing the foundation of our identity.

Having said that, an expressed concern in much gender critical thinking seems to be that the concept of gender was supposedly being used to erase the concept of biological sex, with the definition of a man/woman becoming ‘whoever identifies as one’. The fact that such self-identification seemingly floats free of biology would be problematic if it were the totality of such definitions. In reality, it is simply an operational definition (given an implicit understanding of what a man/woman is) but this does still mean that explicit definitions that reference biological roots could be very helpful and will be introduced in my next post. Please note then that I continue to use biological sex as part of my own framework despite the other glaring difficulty that we approach, and have already mentioned in the previous post: namely that there is no single characteristic that uniquely and unerringly determines biological sex. There is no characteristic that is both necessary and sufficient. This applies even before we admit trans people into consideration or consider those properties that can be changed by human means. As previously posted it is most obviously demonstrated through various intersex conditions. Given these difficulties it could well seem strange to some readers that I do retain the idea of biological sex. However, it does not need to be precisely defined if deployed in the fashion that I will do in my next post.

[1] For this reason ‘common sense’ is sometimes a tempting recourse. However, this is not at all satisfactory, as we may most obviously discover now that our society starts to grapple with how we include (or, sadly, exclude) trans people who ‘pass’ extremely well.

[2] Unless of course no one could know anyone else’s sex or, alternatively but frighteningly (as it feels a logical extrapolation of the current anti-trans sentiment), absolute gender conformity was ruthlessly enforced.

Biological Sex is not Simple: Intersex people exist and Deserve Dignity and Respect

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It is not my intention to go into great detail critiquing the UK Supreme Court judgement of Weds 16th April 2025 on sex/gender. I do not intend to fight a legal battle that I lack the resources, or skill, to even begin but rather, given the now increasingly muddled and discriminatory nature of the law resulting from this ‘clarification’ I hope to lay the ground for a better attempt at getting trans rights properly established in UK law next time (whenever that is!) by attending to the underlying philosophical issues in as even-handed a way as I can (whilst acknowledging my strong investment in the issues).

Having said that there are certain aspects of the judgment which are clearly highly problematic and the one that is most obviously so regards biological sex and the decision to treat it as entirely binary. To be fair to the Supreme Court they were mainly trying to make laws work that were/are themselves quite binary but I am not sure that completely justifies their approach.

Specifically, it is important to note that human sex is bimodal and not binary. This means that there are two highly common sets of sex characteristics and then a number of much rarer conditions that do not neatly fit. We should recall that these conditions are experienced by people of worth and dignity who should not be treated as collateral damage in society’s seemingly growing desire to curtail and control transgender people. Intersex people are often overlooked, even by trans people, but however inconvenient it might be for some, their existence is clearly indicating that we have not got our sex (and thus gender) classification right, as a society, and that justice demands greater flexibility. The existence of intersex people has been perhaps most visible in the sporting arena but I am pretty repelled by a culture that tries to make villains of Imane Khelif and Caster Semenya who have clearly been raised as women.

The bio-essentialism that underpins the Supreme Court’s approach is highly problematic as there is no single characteristic that uniquely and unerringly determines biological sex. There is no characteristic that is both necessary and sufficient. This applies even before we admit trans people into consideration or consider those properties that can be changed by human means. This is obviously demonstrated through intersex conditions. To understand this firstly note that the kinds of things that we typically might wish to consider to indicate biological sex include both genotype (i.e. genes and specifically chromosomes) and phenotype (which simply means the physical characteristics of the organism that can be observed). The latter can be further broken down into sub-categories (sex organs, secondary characteristics e.g. breasts or facial hair, and sex hormone production and response) and all of these have more than two different human instantiations.

There is a body of opinion that is keen to make chromosomes the arbiter of sex. However in going down that route consider firstly, without making any cross-gender/sex claims, that not everyone has XX or XY chromosomes. For example, people with Klinefelter syndrome have XXY chromosomes, those with Jacob’s syndrome has XYY chromosomes and that there are also people with three or more X chromosomes (trisomy). Still there is only one gene on the Y chromosome (called the sex determining region of the Y chromosome or SRY gene) that is relevant to sex. Having one of these could cause one to be view oneself as genetically male. But a Y chromosome can lack the SRY gene which would mean that physically (phenotype-wise) the individual is female but chromosomally they are male and genetically (as no SRY) arguably female!

Also some women (including some contentious sportswomen) are likely to have XY chromosomes (the Y presumably with SRY gene intact) and naturally elevated testosterone levels due to internal testes, but will generally be viewed as being a woman due to secondary and primary sex characteristics. This is likely to be caused by androgen insensitivity syndrome (i.e. her body has not responded to the androgens it produces). Then there is the case of the Guevedoces (meaning ‘penis at twelve’), mainly originating from a small town in the Dominican Republic where there have been multiple cases of children seemingly born as girls (having no visible penis or testes) and being brought up as such, then developing a penis and having testicles descend at puberty. It seems these children have XY chromosomes who due to an enzyme deficiency did not respond to the pre-birth testosterone surge but do so with the second surge at puberty. Most of these go on to live as males but some have an operation to remain female. Nature is messy!

In thinking about sex hormone quantities it is also worth noting that some females have more male hormones than some males, and some males have more female hormones than some females!

And in the search for a definitive biological sex we can delve ever deeper or wider and still not find one that perfectly matches our social needs, perceptions and prejudices, meaning that decisions become necessary (for those who really must classify – though I ask do we really have to?) for ambiguous cases.

Trans Folk are Real and Not Mad, Bad or Sad

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Before I really dive in, as promised in my previous post, I have some foundational ideas to mention.

What I mean by saying that trans people are real is that there are people (for whatever reason, and there are several reasons – all valid – that could combine to contribute) who feel consistently alienated from the physicality and/or social expectations hitherto typically associated with their birth genitalia and/or who feel consistently more comfortable with the physicality and/or social expectations hitherto associated with different genitalia,[1] and who are not able to resolve this purely through the lens of sexual orientation.[2] In support of the idea that trans people are real are thousands of years of observations from different cultures. For example the Jewish legal tradition (the Talmud), notwithstanding the use of the biblical book of Genesis by biblical literalists to support a binary gender system, actually recognises between six and eight different genders.[3] Meanwhile the indigenous American peoples had at least four and maybe five genders and the case of at least a third gender is well illustrated by the hijras of India. Gender variation is clearly ancient and its expression in its current Western form is surely a phenomenon that is as old as the binary conceptualisation it rebels against.[4] It is most certainly not a new phenomenon, though clearly modern medical science has provided new routes for treatment. While the availability of those treatment routes will have had an impact on the way that trans people have pursued solutions to their difficulties they are not the root cause of our transness.

With this in mind I would also ask readers to appreciate, that in this essential transness, that trans people are not deluded – we are not mad.[5] We are very aware that our feelings and/or our behaviours do not conform to social expectation (or wouldn’t if we expressed ourselves as we ideally would like) and we have a very distinct awareness of what we have actually been dealt biologically. We might choose to work around our situation, or directly to change it in some way, which are potentially rational responses to it, though how we do so may seem drastic to someone who does not have our circumstances. But rest assured we know our situation only too well.

It might be possible to conclude that on average trans people perceive and think about the world differently in general. Certainly there is growing support for the observation that many trans people are neurodivergent, though by no means all (and of course not all neurodivergent people are trans). But, even if this observation could be applied to trans people universally, it would simply substantiate an area where we differ from the majority, and either way surely such difference itself should not be pathologized but celebrated.[6]

Continuing to focus on our essential transness I hope most people, aside from some religious zealots, will also recognise that trans people are not evil – we are not bad because of our transness (though we of course have our fair share of character defects, just like everyone else). Those who find evil in the transness of trans people are mostly bringing that perception with themselves due to their own baggage and dogma. We have not ‘become trans’ in order to be disruptive and cause problems with the current structure of society. However, our essential transness does cause us (and others) to question that society so of course trans people do have the potential to be disruptive as our very existence causes people who are attached to certainty to feel uncomfortable. But the problem for that lies firmly with those inflexible people who cannot, or refuse to, admit this issue as a valid consideration for how we organise society.

One thing that is axiomatic for me as a Unitarian is the inherent worth and dignity of each human person. Trans people, simply by being, possess this no more and no less than anyone else. We are not intrinsically pathetic or ‘sad’ individuals. We could get into a long philosophical tangent as to where this worth and dignity comes from. We may even see it as aspirational because it is clear society does still treat some people far better than others based upon certain characteristics. Whilst trans people have inherent worth and dignity it is entirely possible, in fact let’s be clear that it happens, due to the behaviour of individuals and/or human social systems, for us to be ridiculed and marginalised just for our essential transness (if we dare to name it or to take the teensiest steps towards expressing it).

[1] Please note that I view the alienation described to be relative i.e. while the definition most naturally lends itself to interpretation as gender dysphoria it equally applies to trans people who prefer to talk in terms of the gender euphoria they experience when transitioning (or cross-living, or taking steps towards these things) by virtue of the fact that their apparent starting or default position is not now the one they wish to be in.

[2] Clearly transgender and sexuality issues have overlaps and connections, and it is unsurprising that common cause is found, but being trans and being LGB are not the same thing (i.e. I reject the idea that someone claiming to be trans is simply finding a different way of saying that they are LGB (though they may be both) and equally, of course, I would make no claim that someone who is LGB should necessarily be claimed as trans).

[3] We might also dispute the binary perspective of biblical literalists noting that Genesis 1:27 including “male and female he created them” could actually indicate a range in the same way that “near and far” does not exclude an intermediate distance and “old and young” does not exclude the middle aged. Though, as I am not a biblical literalist, I am untroubled if detailed analysis of the text “proves” me wrong here.

[4] And even in the West it can be argued that we have not always been quite so binary in how we handle sex/gender as our current system is.

[5] Our mental health is, however, far from perfect: family and social rejection are rife and it is difficult to engage on trans matters online without getting a sense of the hatred that has been kindled against us and which sometimes spills out into day-to-day life. Trans suicide rates are considerably higher than those of non-trans people.

[6] It would be nice to be celebrated – the only ‘pity’ we consistently seek for our situation is not for the condition itself but for how we are still treated by too much of society.