Mon, Oct 03, 2016 page6

• Loosening our binary thinking on gender

  • By Bih Herng-dar 畢恆達
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  With the growing awareness within society of the need to address gender identity beyond the socially constructed male and female binary framework, Facebook, after discussing with transgender groups, in 2014 expanded its users’ gender options to 58 categories, including agender, cisgender (non-transgender), gender fluid, intersex and neither, among others. Last year, a “blank” was added for users to fill in gender identities as they saw fit.

  Human nature is complicated. Should a person with a male body who lacks an Adam’s apple, or a person with a female body who can grow facial hair, be considered a man or woman? There are women who dream of being men with sexual desires for women. There are men who accept their bodies and have no desire to undergo sexual reassignment therapy, but they are attracted to women while identifying as women. Should they be regarded as lesbians or heterosexual men?

  There are also people who are agender and people who are attracted to both men and women. Whether they are “butch” or “femme,” or whether they are “macho queens,” they all have different body types, different gender identifications, different gender qualities and feel attracted to different types of people, all of which contribute to the diversity of this marvelous world.

  Since gender has so many faces, aspects and varieties, how should public policy be formulated in order to enable various gender groups, which have long suffered from oppression and enmity, to breathe freely?

  Some good examples are beginning to emerge: Harvard University allows new students to pick their own gender pronouns; US President Barack Obama ordered public schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms matching their gender identities; and after Shih Hsin University and National Sun Yat-sen University installed gender-neutral washrooms, National Taiwan University (NTU) also passed a resolution on gender-neutral washrooms, with plans to build at least one gender-neutral washroom in every school building.

  National Sun Yat-sen University is also mulling changing its fitness tests to “genderless” tests and planning dormitory spaces for transgender students.

  NTU has also set up female-first basketball fields and is launching special swimming cards with a 20 percent discount for women who are on their period. NTU students are also discussing challenges to the ballroom dancing stereotypes in the school’s physical education classes, in which male students can only learn the “men’s” role and female students the “women’s.” In some countries, the male and female roles have been replaced by “lead” and “follow” roles. However, in the track running category, male students have to pass the 800m tests, while women have to pass the 400m tests, and in basketball examinations, the minimum number of successful shots for men and women to pass are different, and this will only continue to widen the gap between male and female performances in sports.

  In most areas of people’s lives and learning endeavors, gender is not the only meaningful standard to divide people into different classifications. Loosening up the binary thinking of gender identities and encourage people to look at others’ brilliance, irrespective of their gender, requires a degree of thought on your part and mine.

  For instance, perhaps in the future when you have a chance to deliver a speech, you can begin with something other than “ladies and gentlemen.”

  Bih Herng-dar is a professor at National Taiwan University’s Graduate Institute of Building and Planning.

  Translated by Ethan Zhan
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