Gender is something people claim, not only something imposed on them

The argument

The case against begins with a distinction between a constraint and a description. Opponents argue that gender in ordinary life is not only an expectation handed to people but a way people understand and present themselves, and that the two are easy to conflate because the same word covers both. The expectations are imposed; the self understanding is held. Opponents argue that a proposal to abolish the category does not distinguish between them, and so would remove something many people rely on in order to remove something many people resent. The mechanism opponents emphasise is the role of vocabulary in recognition. To be recognised as something, there has to be a word for it, and opponents argue that the people with the most at stake in the existence of gender as a category are precisely those who have had to insist on their own: those whose gender was denied, dismissed or legally refused, and whose claim was made in exactly these terms. Abolishing the category would not grant that claim; it would make it unstatable, and opponents argue that a change which removes the language of a hard won recognition is not obviously an improvement for the people who won it. Opponents accept that gender norms cause real harm and argue that the target has been misidentified. What constrains people is the rigidity of the expectations and the penalties for departing from them, not the existence of a way to describe oneself. Opponents argue that the rigidity is what has actually been loosening, through dispute, and that this is the available route: keep the description, discard the obligations attached to it.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those who favour abolition reply that the self understanding the premises defend was formed inside the system they want dismantled, so appealing to how much people value it does not settle whether they would value it had they never been sorted. They argue that recognition could be secured on other grounds, such as the right to present and be addressed as one chooses, without a category that also distributes roles. They add that keeping the description while discarding the obligations is the reform that has been attempted for generations, and that its slow and reversible progress is itself the case for a more fundamental change.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The self understanding was formed inside the system of expectations, so the distinction between imposed and held is less clean than the premise assumes. [Rejecting P2] Recognition of how a person wishes to present and be addressed could be secured without a category that also distributes social roles. [Rejecting P3] Loosening the expectations while keeping the category is the reform long attempted, and its slow and reversible progress is evidence that the category is the problem. [Rejecting C] The premises show that abolition would have costs for people who value the category, which has to be weighed rather than treated as decisive.