Gender Is a Simulacrum

Let’s get some definitions in order.

The literal translation of simulacrum from Latin is: “I read some Baudrillard once and now I’m about to foist him on you.” If you see someone using this term, it’s a good idea to walk away, politely but briskly. I make no claim that this article is an exception to the rule.

Okay, so the word really means a representation of a thing. A statue of a person is a simulacrum of a person. It’s not an actual person. It’s a statue made of cheese or whatever.

Baudrillard (yes, I’m about to foist him on you) did take it a step further. To him, a simulacrum has two very important features. It is a misleading representation (so, a statue that doesn’t look like the person) AND a representation that people have come to believe is the actual thing that it was originally representing (so, people now think the weird cheese statue is the real person and not a statue at all).

When I say that gender is a simulacrum, I mean that gender is a misleading representation of reality and that people have come to accept this false representation as reality.

This is a bad thing.

Representations (or models) of reality are very important. We’d have a hard time getting around if we didn’t use models and classification schemes to make sense of the world around us. It’s extraordinarily helpful for us to have categories like “trees” or “cats” or “cheeses”.

Sometimes these classification schemes aren’t great. A sweet chestnut tree is more closely related to a green bean than it is to a horse chestnut tree. There’s a whole big mixup with butterflies and moths. And don’t get me started on genre fiction vs literary fiction.

The problems show up when the bad models are perceived to be the reality and when people cling tightly to this belief. Someone might think that a tree is a tree is a tree, but when you tell them about the green bean thing, they’re probably not going to get upset about it.

But a lot of people lose their minds when they get told that gender is straight-up nonsense. (They also seem to lose their minds when they get told that there’s no substantive difference between genre fiction and literary fiction. Yeah, I said it. Come at me, bro.)

This happens when a model is tied to a person’s sense of identity in an unhealthy way. People aren’t as emotionally invested in the taxonomies of trees as they are with their gender. They react very differently when their gender is questioned as opposed to when their preconceived notions about perennials are called out.

I guess if the Lorax popped up and you told him that he had to speak for the green beans too, he might get bent out of shape.

Along with gender identity, there’s a similar problem with sexual orientation. A lot of people get terribly and irrationally upset when their sexuality is questioned. (Ask a straight man if they’re gay and stand back.)

We have these words like “man”, “woman”, “feminine”, “masculine”, “straight”, “gay” — and we think they have some sort of intrinsic meaning. They don’t. These are imperfect categories within an imperfect classification scheme that is falling apart as more people take a closer look at it. They’re somewhat useful for ordering the world around us, but we have to recognize that the meaning they have is the meaning we give them.

Unfortunately, the meaning we gave them is a complete mess. Our entire system of gender is stupid. There’s no coherent definition of a “man” or a “woman”. There is no such thing as “masculine energy”. And being “straight” makes no sense when gender is meaningless. These terms cannot be defined, quantified, qualified, or measured in any kind of reality-based way.

Here are our definitions for a few sexual orientations: A straight person likes people of one sex/gender that is not their own. A gay person only likes people of their own sex/gender. A bi person likes people of at least two sexes/genders. (It might include their own sex/gender, it might not.)

When we were coming up with terms for sexual orientation, we only stopped to consider sex and gender. And for some insane reason, we lumped those two traits together as if they’re interchangeable. (They are not.)

Here’s the thing. Because sex and gender are not interchangeable, our definitions for sexual orientations make no sense.

For whatever set of characteristics you happen to prefer in a sexual partner, the group of people who embody those characteristics will include people who are men, women, or neither.

In other words, everybody’s queer. You can be sexually attracted to people of any gender. You just can. It’s okay. If it helps, keep in mind that just because you can be sexually attracted to people of any gender, it doesn’t mean you are sexually attracted to every person of a given gender.

Someone who calls himself a straight man is not sexually attracted to all women. There is a huge range of characteristics that people are attracted to. These include sex, height, weight, body type, and age. They also include fictitious constructs like race, gender, or political affiliation. They include styles for clothing, makeup, or hair. They include very specific traits like the ability to parallel park.

I’m not saying that you want to have sex with everybody. This isn’t a tactic to say that all guys really like penises (or whatever). I’m saying that our terms for sexual orientation make no sense because gender is such a poorly conceived social construct and because our terms for sexual orientations are wholly inadequate.

Also, these constructs are weird. It’s weird that we even have words for whether or not a person wants to have sex with someone who is the same sex/gender as them. It’s weird that we crammed sex and gender into a single category and expected it to make sense. It is a testament to humans’ ability to embrace the absurd that we’ve kept this going for as long as we have.

Really, it’s a testament to how we use these classification systems to oppress people.

I wish we could throw the whole thing out, but we can’t. I’m a straight-passing, man-passing person and it’s really easy for me to say, “Chuck it all into the trash!” But that ignores the very real discrimination that people in marginalized groups face every day.

We created these categories and then used them to hurt people. We taught ourselves that there was a hierarchy to these categories and we instilled that knowledge deep into our psyches. If we throw away the categories, the hatred and bigotry will still exist — we just won’t have the language to describe it. We won’t have the ability to measure the social damage that we will continue to create.

We need to recognize that these constructs serve some limited use in ordering the world around us, but also that they are very simple, sometimes misleading representations of a complex reality and have no intrinsic meaning on their own. We have to recognize that whoever people want to be and want to have sex with is fine, as long as everybody is a consenting adult.

It doesn’t matter if your sexual orientation or your gender identity is something you were born with or something you actively chose. It’s all fine. There is no value difference between a gay person and a straight person. There is no value difference between a cisgender person and a transgender person.

However you identify is fine. But always keep one thing in mind:

Gender is stupid and everybody’s queer.

—

Previously Published on medium

You Might Also Like These From The Good Men Project

Compliments Men Want to Hear More Often

Relationships Aren’t Easy, But They’re Worth It

The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex

..A Man’s Kiss Tells You Everything

—

Photo credit: unsplash