I had this thought about gender-fluidity, which on consideration may illuminate the subject of gender more broadly.

Having met people who assert a variety of non-binary gender identities over the years, I’ve always been a little puzzled by the concept of fluidity, compared to gender as a reasonably constant thing. (In the absence of some major event requiring transition, though that’s more often a long-term mismatch rather than a specific event obvious to others.) I had no reason to disbelieve anyone, but I somehow didn’t get it.

I have considered that perhaps a very neutral position on the hypothetical feminine-to-masculine spectrum could produce a variable gender identity, if external influences could then overcome the neutral state. But that doesn’t clearly explain why there are people with fluid and people with consistently neutral identities. I also tend to think that masculinity-to-femininity as commonly practiced is not a single-dimensional spectrum, but rather a very approximate two-dimensional aggregate of characteristics which derive much of their imagined grouping from social influences anyway. However:

Perhaps We Flow

It occurred to me recently that another way of looking at it is that fluidity might be the norm. That is to say, that ordinary humans don’t necessarily have a real permanent sense of gender identity to begin with, rather than intermittent ones which are assumed and reified in between times. As someone once put it, ‘I don’t wake up every morning and immediately think oh-my-god-I’m-a-woman.’

I may be behind on the research; but a model in which there exist momentary experiences of gender identity (for the sake of the argument, let’s assume a neurological basis for these), gender qualia if you will, which are filled in by habitual thought patterns, would seem compatible with the current understanding of a range of mental functions. It seems to be the way brains work. Loosely, you could say it’s analogous to cacheing, and probably fulfils similar functions. Every now and then you have to check and reload the cached data, but an efficient cacheing system (e.g. one with millions of years of evolution behind it) wouldn’t need constant reloading. Actual gender qualia might not need to occur very often. (Implying the possibility of pathologically excessive frequency, if a pathology could be identified. Or pathological infrequency, but I’m not sure that would be possible. ^[1])

On which basis, we could I think suggest processes by which divergent fixed and fluid identities could arise. One variable would be the frequency with which such moments occur. Since everything else does, it would be surprising if frequency didn’t vary between individuals or over time.

Others might be, for each quale, strength of identification, and its nature. The nature would I think be either positive or negative, masculine or feminine. This is rather more complex. I’m assuming here that positive and negative identification with each binary role function independently, though in some ways they may constitute inverse pairs. That may not be necessary for a model incorporating fluidity but I think it makes sense in terms of people’s apparent behaviour, though both these will still be aggregates of more basic characteristics. It is also possible that a neutral gender quale might be no quale at all — or possibly people experience very distinct ‘intergender’ qualia, both positive and negative? ^[2] More importantly, some of the real underlying characteristics are likely to be either positive or negative in effect. So both positive and negative generalised qualia should exist for any identity, if it’s valid to think of generalised qualia at all. (And if it isn’t you’d have to query the existence of any gender identity.) However, for current purposes I’m assuming only two basic roles. That may not be a demonstrable limit, but it still produces an interesting model even if it can be considered to be a social myth. ^[3]

So can we work with these five? We could in principle assign highly binary-identified people to positions reflecting strongly positive masculine or feminine identities and the inverse negatives, with a high qualia frequency. Whereas strongly agendered people might have both strongly negative identities at high frequency. And genderfluidity might then be the outcome of varying frequencies of both positive identifications, with diminished negatives. I can’t see any reason to assume that positive or negative identifications could not vary. But a tendency to both positives might produce a very different outcome to a tendency to both negatives. In summary, a genderfluid person might frequently experience positive identifications — a positive but varying sense of identity, whereas a permanently agendered person might experience both negatives and persistently respond with a “nope, not that either”. Interestingly, the frequency might vary in all four categories; and then perhaps a fifth distinguishable category of completely zero-gendered people might exist who rarely or never experience any moments of gender identification, positive or negative. But I would tend to think that, all other things being equal, low-frequency would not be as likely a producer of conscious gender-neutrality as persistently negative identification. Socially-approved gender identities tend to exert a pull, and I expect this would be the case even in a culture which fully accepted non-binary genders.

This diagram ^[4] shows qualia frequency as a radial scalar quantity on the surface rather than as an orthogonal dimension (which would have implied a variation of gender-zeroness by frequency, which isn’t what I’m suggesting). It might be best conceived as a conical surface. The rationale for this representation is that qualia frequency may be part of the source of an overall gender identity, but it should be noted that individual qualia in this model may vary in both positive and negative intensity, which would be other factors determining the outcome. The positive and negative identification dimensions should be distinct in principle, but are conflated here because I don’t know how to draw charts in 5D. Because they are distinct, however, the occurrence of people who count as maximally masculine and minimally feminine, or vice-versa, or maximally or minimally both, should be extremely rare, which I have attempted to represent with rounded corners, though in the absence of actual data I cannot specify a definite radius. ^[5]

One question this doesn’t address is how to interpret polygendered people ^[6], i.e. those who experience identifications (presumably positive) with both masculine and feminine, but not a variable identification. But this may be almost the reverse of the question that needs addressing; these could occupy the same average location on the graph as genderfluid people, but with less variability of qualia. And therefore we can also add that we have no reason not to expect a similar level of variability in all areas of the graph — but variability would be far more obvious in the ++ region than in either +− or −−. A small movement here should make more difference to how people think of themselves than in other areas, because social gender is usually constructed as a binary system, so if you feel able to identify with either role you are likely to do so, even if only temporarily. (If there are also genderfluid people who vary between binary gender identity and agendered, I haven’t met or heard of any; not that I’m completely up to date etc.)

This alternative view gets at least part of what I’m thinking over — this is a shallow approximately conical surface . . . a gender shield volcano. (Still no 5-D view here either.) We may assume that humans start out at birth, spat out of a fissure at the top of the mountain, and tend to roll down as we accumulate gender qualia in a partial feedback cycle leading to conscious gender identity. (The vertical scale here is cumulative intensity of gender identity.) Those who experience very few such qualia may remain near the mountaintop all their lives; those who experience many will approach the bottom at some angle, but probably not in one bound, or in completely straight lines.

My default assumption would be that descent follows a bell curve, so only very few remain at the top, but equally few ever reach the bottom. Angular distribution around the volcano, if all other things were equal, should probably be constant, but cultures will draw dividing lines between gender roles in different ways. In a binary-gender system there is no intergender stripe permitted, but in cultures that accept it, the stripe may be quite broad and the numbers (and here, contours) higher. In most cases though, even though any two individuals who are assigned the same gender may have greater differences in behaviour and self-perception than an arbitrary member of one binary gender and of an inter-gender, the majority of people will be counted as members of the normative genders. In practice because this process is socially enforced it may produce a distribution bias towards the ± corners as in the figure below, though again a precise assessment of its shape would require data which may never be available.

Putting that slightly differently, perhaps we are all gender-fluid, but if the average person varies in their position on the chart by say 20% in both directions over an arbitrary period of time, the majority of us will not notice the difference. Only people near the −− to ++ line would have any reason to think anything was different, and those nearer the −− corner would still have a general sense of dubiety (or worse) about both binary options.

This version of the diagram swaps to a co-ordinate system just to make the point. According to this model everyone throughout their lives will experience varying degrees of Brownian motion under the constant buffetting of social and biological existence, and even move uphill again a little occasionally, though the trend is likely to be downwards at least in the early years. Notice however that we are capable of larger, and lasting, shifts in location, with or without a change in frequency. Again, similar size shifts, if from say (m0·5,f0·1) to (m0·9,f0·5) or (m0·5,f0·9) to (m0·1,f0·5) — regions where the majority of the population exist — will not represent a notable change of social classification either as perceived by self or others, but if from (m0·3,f0·7) to (m0·7,f0·3), would — and may be accompanied by the challenge of dealing with social expectations, in a culture which does not accept these changes as common but of little broader significance. One of which is that changes along the black lines mean nothing other than a difference in your feelings and perhaps behaviour, which will pass without much notice — but if you have an equal degree of change along the cerise lines, suddenly you’re transgendered. And no-one knows why, in any of these cases. ^[7]

Such a model could support other interpretations, depending largely on how much detail you want to go into. It would be nice to be able to examine each individual underlying characteristic and tie it into a neurological reality or a purely social origin, but I’m not holding my breath. The important thing I think is that the underlying reality for everyone would be these odd moments in which our brains are doing something specific to our sense of self (not only in terms of gender). Whether we regard it all as real or illusion is another matter. People who never question what their brain is telling them will have problems there, no matter how they come to view themselves.

Experiencing Our Nature

Another issue not addressed above would be, what are these gender qualia? I could give one answer to that, but I expect there would be others which I haven’t grasped well enough to talk about. The one I can easily imagine is that they are responses to stimuli, for example you may be addressed by a gendered title such as “mister”, or referred to with a gendered term like “girl”, or in a more indirect but still contextually comprehensible sense, you are told you need to wear a tie or a skirt for your new job (or to keep your existing one), or to participate in a school event (with no option to refuse to participate). (There are probably one or more other layers of examples of gendered associations I wouldn’t recognise or haven’t understood, and all these will vary by culture, time and place.) Or without anyone else’s direct involvement, you may see a picture or read about a character in a novel.

When you experience these stimuli you will have a response, and if you recognise the stimulus as relating to gender you will experience a gender quale, variable in degree. That’s a simple model but I think it’s descriptive, though we should note that there may well be other ways of producing them, and that they will probably vary in nature. This is still an aggregate term, and there may be a great deal of detail I’m blithely skipping over. In all the cases quoted however, I think it likely that we acquire the habit of judging some of these stimuli as related, in context, to our current sense of personal gender, and as in some way appropriate or otherwise, producing what I’m referring to as positive or negative gender qualia. Polygendered people will experience more positive qualia, and agendered people, more negatives, for a wider range of stimuli which they interpret as gendered. And genderfluid people? I’m even less sure than for any of the above, but it seems then that the response will have greater frequency of variation than for others, perhaps related to a lower background awareness of ‘cached’ state, or perhaps for other reasons.

• Note that positive masculine experience does not necessarily equate to negative feminine experience and vice-versa. This is why polygendered people exist, and why many of them, and agendered people generally, may experience gratitude or what is sometimes called gender euphoria, on being recognised and accepted as being on the nonbinary stripe.
• This model would seem to predict that a wider range of people would count as genderfluid than polygendered, because for any particular way of drawing boundaries, there will be people whose average position is outside the boundary but who occasionally dip within it in the course of their variations. ^[8]

This says nothing about the origin of these responses, but in the absence of clear evidence from neurobiology I think the best working assumption is that most of us have a sort of rough instinctive template to recognise gender groupings and to associate ourselves with one; but of course, it’s only a rough template and all sorts of influences can and clearly do affect how it works out in practice.

However, it does seem likely that the composite of gender identity is constructed out of these qualia, probably including one or more feedback processes which eventually, in many but not all cases, produces a self-reinforcing dominant (but impermanent ^[9]) sense of gender or agenderedness. As with other aspects of mental function, the process is likely to take varying periods of time to occur, and may produce varying levels of stability, from a notional maximum (whatever that may be) to zero. This acquisition of stability is perhaps the real distinction between genderfluid and polygendered. If so, it is only a matter of degree.

Some Additional Questions:

• It is implied above that having a positive response to one gender qualia type and a negative response to another is reasonably compatible and harmonious. Can it also occur in a conflicting way? Well, one point not covered is that sometimes people have a clear sense of their own and others’ gender, but a very negative view of the others. Notably, misogynists, misandrists and transphobes. So possibly? (n.b. there’s an aspect of these personalities which often seems to be an attempt to reinforce their own sense of gender, rather than anything genuine, which could be taken to imply a weak sense of gender rather than a strong one, but I’m not sure that’s demonstrable.) That is, the existence of all genderphobic ^[10] responses could be taken to imply another aggregate dimension-pair of positive- and negative- appreciation versus phobia . . . but I don’t think it affects the current discussion as we’re talking about identification not phobia. A phobic response may be an outcome of negative identification amongst other things, but that’s a phobia quale not the gender quale.
• There may be a distinction to be drawn between polygendered and genderfluid people and agendered in terms of gender dysphoria. Could this even be testable? Perhaps people who continuously or variably respond to gendered stimuli with strong positives for both roles may experience less gender dysphoria than those who continuously or variably experience strong negatives for both? (Or alternatively, a constant experience of dysphoria in agendered people may be due to the lack of cultural acceptance and role-reinforcement which binary-gendered and to some extent poly/gender/fluid people may experience.)
• To what extent is it the case that those who are aware of intersex biology and intergendered identities actually see them as positive roles in their own right, thus tending towards the −−/++ stripe?
• Perhaps not all qualia are responses to external or even conscious internal stimuli? Response frequency as above would be determined by stimuli, but I seem to be asserting something happening in between stimuli too . . . What if some people do have ‘fundamental’ qualia which I don’t experience (or which became masked by experiences which did not produce a feedback system early on)? I may be biased in favour of an interpretation which favours response qualia. At least, I doubt there’s a way of disproving the existence of some innate qualia in some people, but nor (I think) could you prove in it all, and for practical purposes that’s probably what matters.

It is important to note that gender identity is not the same as behaviour which may be culturally assumed to be sex-determined, with varying levels of accuracy. People (like nonhuman animals) have a range of psychological drives to behaviours which they may then be socially encouraged to justify on the basis of their sex. Whether people advocate, engage in, or try to resist these behaviours is not the question being addressed here. Whether they result in a momentary sense of gender, and its reinforcement, and what the outcome of that might be, is.

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