I’ve recently begun going through a bit of a personal renaissance regarding my gender, and I realized my numbers-focused brain needs something to quantify gender identity, both for myself and so I can better understand others. I also just don’t like socially-constructed labels, at least for myself.
So, using the Kinsey Scale of Sexuality as inspiration, and with input from good friends, I made up my own Gender Identity Scale.
- Three axes: X, Y, and Z
- X: Man (not necessarily masculinity), 0 to 6
- Y: Woman (not necessarily femininity), 0 to 6
- Z: Fluidity, 0 to 2
- X and Y axes’ numbers go from
0 - not part of my identityto6 - strongly identify as - Z axis’s numbers go from
0 - non-fluidto2 - always changing
Example: The average cis-man is 6,0,0, the average cis-woman is 0,6,0, and a “balanced” nonbinary person might be 3,3,1, or 0,0,0, or 6,6,2…
Personally, I think I’m about a 3,2,1 - I don’t have a strong connection to either base gender, but being biologically male, I do identify a bit more as a man. I also feel that I’m somewhat gender-fluid, but not entirely so. I honestly don’t fully understand gender fluidity yet, so the Z-axis may require some tweaking.
Does this make sense? Can you use this to accurately quantify your own gender identity? I wanna know!
It’s an interesting exercise. It made me think about several issues that I wish to discuss in the future. I don’t really agree with your presentation, but I have some suggestions.
You should quantify everything as either 0 or 1. This is a binary scale. There’s man and there’s woman, no third option, no in between. You can say X and / or Y is part of your identity and if it’s always the case or not, the Z.
I understand that you wanted to express that some people are not as much X or Y, but I believe that’s a reality for trans and cis people. Non binary, in my personal view, deconstructs genders and don’t really put them back together.
All that said, the moment we accept gender as a social construct, we have to accept individual definitions. I tried to work inside what I felt you were aiming to say. You be the judge.
You do bring up a good point - this is an exercise mostly for my own benefit, made using terms and concepts that help me to better understand my own relationship with gender.
And it’s working, thanks to people like you who challenge it and force me to think outside my own comfort zone.
This in particular really resonates with me. As someone discovering that I don’t really fit into any preconceived societal notions of gender, this has given me license to drop the idea altogether, and just make my own definition of my own gender (or lack thereof), irrespective of “man” or “woman”.