Non-binary genders exist in all cultures

The argument

This argument draws on the existence of cultures whereby gender roles are dissimilar to the traditional binary model held in western society, and uses the existence of such societies as proof of the role culture plays in constructing gender. The logic is comparative: if gender followed directly from biology, the categories recognised by different societies would be broadly the same wherever one looked. They are not. Not all cultures have strictly defined gender roles, and various cultures have more than two specific recognized genders. The Dineh culture of the Southwestern US acknowledges four: feminine woman, masculine woman, feminine man, and masculine man. That scheme is instructive because it is not a binary with exceptions appended to it. It crosses two dimensions — the body a person is born with and the disposition they express — and treats each combination as a category in its own right, which amounts to dividing the same human material along different lines rather than tolerating deviation from an assumed norm. The pattern is not confined to one society. The term "third gender" has also been used to describe hijras of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who have gained legal identity, fa'afafine of Polynesia, and sworn virgins of the Balkans. These are widely separated communities with no shared history that would explain the resemblance, and in some cases the recognition is formal rather than customary — the hijra case involves legal identity, which means a state has had to define the category and administer it. If the number and the content of gender categories vary in this way between societies, then what a gender is cannot be read off biology alone. The categories are made by the cultures that use them, which is what it means to say that gender is a social construct.

Context

Globally, non-binary gender roles exist across all habitable continents with evidence dating back to Ancient Egypt. Discovered pottery list three human genders: tai (male), sht ("sekhet") and hmt (female), estimated to have existed approxmately 2000–1800 BCE.

Premises

Counter-arguments

There is very little variation of gender roles among cultures internationally, suggesting there is an innate definition of gender role characteristics. Gender roles among most cultures follow variations of a traditional masculine gender, and a feminine gender. Such universal similarities suggest gender has strong ties to biological sex.

Rejecting the premises

Similarities among cultures would suggest genders roles are not entirely socially constructed.