Before I even begin this article, I want to acknowledge that I, as a cisgender-identifying woman, come from a place of privilege in regard to gender and its labeling. However, even from this privileged position, I recognize the importance of Facebook's inclusive list of 58 gender labels. Before the change (which took place in 2014), users were asked to choose between "male" and "female," or they could leave their gender unspecified.
Now, I've heard two distinct arguments against this inclusion that I want to address. The first is rather "traditional," often coming from members of older generations who do not understand and/or would prefer not to. This argument goes something along the lines of "back in my day, there were two genders. You were a boy or you were a girl, and that was that. Kids these days." To which I have to say: The way other people feel comfortable identifying or not identifying themselves and their bodies is none of your damn business. The fact that Facebook allows an oppressed demographic to exist even just a little bit more comfortably in a world that has historically given them very little space is in no way affecting anyone negatively, so really, I have very little patience for this kind of intolerance.
The second argument, however, is more complex. This is a point of view I have heard from people from all areas of the gender and sexuality spectrums, and for a while I was inclined to more or less agree with it: If gender is so fluid and varied (which I believe it is), why do we feel the need to label it? Why do we keep coming up with more and more words to describe gender? What is this need that we have to somehow differentiate ourselves, to create words for everything we are?
I've been thinking about these questions a lot, and I've come to the conclusion that it's only human to want to have words for the things we think and feel and know. We want to be able to communicate with each other, to have discussions about our different experiences, to relate to people who feel the same way as we do. Without the proper words, how can this be done?
All of this has prompted me to think about how important language is to me. I write constantly in an ongoing attempt to somehow quantify my human experience, and I can't imagine there not being words to express something as fundamental to that experience as my gender. I think a certain sense of validation lies in being able to say, "Look, this is who I am, this is how I identify. There is a term for it, and a definition. It's real, and it's important-- this word exists, and so do I." I truly believe that social justice movements cannot advance effectively without an open line of dialogue, and we cannot speak to one other in a language that doesn't exist.
