The Toronto Star ran an article on a family that is raising a gender-neutral infant. Not surprisingly, the article is a bit muddled on the distinction between sex and gender: gender neutrality is achieved by keeping the baby’s sex secret.

Given that the family’s two older children (2 and 5) identify as boys but cross-dress, I’m struck by the sense that being secret-sexed is actually less subversive of gender norms. But one of the experts interviewed for the article is a psychologist who speculates that being secret-sexed will deny the child the opportunity to identify as transgendered, which suggests than androgyny and genderqueering are rather more subversive. I suppose in the simpler case of transgender, it would be easy to tell people “he is a boy” or “she is a girl” without specifying sexual characteristics.

Much of the criticism of the family’s decision is based on the difficulty that ambiguous people have fitting into society. Heather Mallick kind of gets the point that that’s the family’s point: this difficulty needs to be removed for everyone to actually fit into society instead of just fake it. Obviously, keeping their baby’s sex secret for 4 months as a media stunt is quite effective at furthering that debate. (Fox News ran a surprisingly balanced article.)

Their eldest child has decided to homeschool kindergarten because, the article claims, he feels that going to school would restrict his gender expression. Regardless of how their parents construct their gender identities, I think being raised in a gender-critical environment will have a larger impact on these kids.

One of my classmates, a male, is being allowed into a female-only space (for abused women) to shoot part of a documentary. He’s been instructed that he represents “men” as a group and that he’s to be on his best behaviour — that seeing a man in a “normal” role might actually help people.

Many people prefer their friends to be of a particular gender. Heterosexual cisgendered people tend to be homosocial.

The genders in a relationship define the characteristics of that friendship. Man-man homosocial friendships are typically characterized by activities. Woman-woman homosocial friendships are typically characterized by talking. Both of these friendships have distinct psychological benefits.

It turns out that man-woman heterosocial friendships are much more like woman-woman friendships than man-man friendships. As a result, men who make friends with women benefit disproportionately (because women already have lots of woman friends).

I’m a strongly gynosocial man. I have some good friends that are men, but I have trouble building and maintaining acquaintanceships. I’d like to think I’m gynosocial because I like talking more than doing, but maybe I’m just using chicks for the emotional intimacy?

I am definitely not an expert on this. I’m writing about it to clarify my own understanding. And perhaps my analytical skills can make the material more accessible.

Sex is a biological characteristic. Sex is a spectrum between male and female. Intersex people fall between those poles due to atypical* chromosomes or development. Intersexed people often receive medical treatment to push them to one end of the spectrum.

Gender is a social characteristic. Gender is a combination of two independent attributes: masculinity and femininity. An androgynous person is high on both, a neuter person is low on both.

One can distinguish between introspective gender and gender presentation. Someone may “feel like” one gender but be identified by their signs in society as another. Bigendered people (eg: crossdressers) switch between two genders depending on context.

Gender identity is a combination of sex and gender, forming a 3-dimensional space. There are widespread terms for four corners of that space: cisman and ciswoman for the majority of people, and transman and transwoman for the majority of the transgender minority. Everyone else is intergender, “genderqueer” or self-identified using jargon.

* Intersex people are not “abnormal”, they’re non-cissex.