Between the slashes

Only when we, as a society, move beyond the myopic distinctions of gender identity can we be open to the reality of gender fluidity, writes Sudarshan

It sounds like an easy question to ask any person, with an easy answer: what gender are you? You’d expect to hear either male or female. But then comes the hard part: what makes you that gender? The answer is not ‘body type’ any more.

Most people falsely equate sex and gender. Biology is the determinant for sex: the body type is usually one or the other, male or female. But along with biology come a vaguely defined set of social behaviours and roles: how one dresses, how one feels about others, what attracts, what frightens. These constitute gender, and this attribute is not as cleanly defined in humans as biology.

It comes as no surprise, then, that modern psychology is defining gender as belonging on a spectrum: one end definitely, completely ‘male’, and the other end ‘female’. Every human fits somewhere on that spectrum at an emotional level. More importantly, one’s place on that spectrum is not permanently fixed. Body composition, psychology, and social situations can alter one’s place over time. This conception of gender is more inclusive than the older binary one, and brings in those who have been traditionally marginalised and labelled transgenders.

More importantly, it also introduces the newly coined terminology of ‘gender fluidity’. There is a growing number of people who don’t feel comfortable with either end of the spectrum — but feel somewhere in the middle, and feel their place shifting frequently. Miley Cyrus, the actor and singer, has been one of several who have come out as gender-fluid in the recent past. “In an LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) centre, I saw one human in particular who didn’t identify as male or female. Looking at them, they were both: beautiful and sexy and tough but vulnerable and feminine but masculine. And I related to that person more than I related to anyone in my life,” she said in an interview.

The technical term for this type of feeling is ‘gender dysphoria’ — the sensation of being a different gender from what the body reflects. It includes the already wellknown phenomena of transsexualism, asexualism, gender neutrality and others.

More important than the technical classification, however, is the acknowledgement and support from society. It starts with the basics: gender neutral folks prefer to be addressed as ‘they/their/them’ rather than ‘him’ or ‘her’. Increasingly, schools and malls are setting up gender-neutral washrooms. Facebook has added a ‘Custom’ value for its ‘Gender’ attribute in user profiles, letting users set what they’d like. And adoption laws and marriage laws are updating to make definitions of parenthood and marriage more flexible. The acceptance of society has a catalytic effect: in a recent survey of teenagers, 81% said that gender doesn’t define a person as much as it used to in earlier times. Removing the categorisation from its pre-eminent place gives people the freedom to be what they want to be.

In India...
“I think gender fluidity has been gaining acceptance over the past few years in India,” says Amrita Chanda, an LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) activist and researcher. “It started with the understanding, in the late 90s, that human sexuality and gender need to be brought out in the open and discussed. Our laws were stuck in an older era. Over the last two decades, largely due to activists, the laws and society are becoming more accommodating.”

Chanda runs a pilot project called ‘Safe Spaces’ with a software company in Bengaluru. Once a week, she and a fellow activist take turns to hear out any employees who need to share their thoughts and feelings on gender and sexuality to a sympathetic ear. But gender fluidity is not a completely alien concept to India, she says.

“In Karnataka, there has traditionally been a sect of devotees of goddess Yellamma — members of this sect are called Jogappas. These include men who partly identify with the female gender, and who attribute this to the goddess channelling herself through them. Although some are physically transsexual, others lead a normal life except on specific days of the week, when they dress up like women and perform the goddess’s rituals.

“One interesting thing we saw in studying this community was that when they are thus ‘possessed’ by the goddess, the Jogappas become a sort of consultants to the neighbouring women — they sit down with anyone who wants domestic or relationship advice, and help them as best as  they can. A man would never be accepted by women as one of them, but when he’s taken on a woman’s gender identity, he’s included with no questions asked.

“Unfortunately, Jogappas and other sects of transsexuals are often marginalised and forced to activities like begging and prostitution. There are a few NGOs working in this regard… to help get them training and work opportunities, but progress is slow,” she adds.

In a recent crime thriller by Anita Nair, Cut Like Wound, a pivotal character was a Jogappa. It helped bring the sect to a new section of readers.

However, this whole approach towards the Jogappas and others turns it into an ‘us vs. them’ problem: ‘they’ are not of ‘normal’ gender, while ‘we’ are reassuringly either male or female. It is this distinction that the gender fluidity debate seeks to remove. This may be harder to achieve than it first looks — gender norms are insidious. Nearly all social behaviours — from eating out to taking up a job, to initiating a date, to dressing up — are subtly assigned gender norms and thus assumed to be done by either one or the other gender. When one does not want to be either male or female, how does one choose how to behave socially?

Regardless of the debate on gender fluidity being relatively new, there are several examples of the concept in our mythology, showing that it’s been around for a while. The gods, for example, are portrayed as above the limitations of gender. Religious symbology not only equates the gender roles with prakriti — nature (Female) and purusha — human endeavour (Male), but also allows for a mix of the two in the human form. Shiva has the Ardhanarishwara form which is half-man and half-woman. Vishnu has an alternate form of Mohini, who is portrayed as beautiful and ‘all woman’, but who is still the same god. To take the story further, Shiva falls in love with Mohini, and cannot be convinced to give up the infatuation though he knows who it is. In other words, love and affection are beyond the narrow definitions of gender. Other examples abound in the traditional texts. Shikhandi, a character in the Mahabharata, was born a woman but raised a man.

Responsible approach
What role can we as individuals play in this ongoing debate? First, we need to recognise the validity of the arguments for gender fluidity. Next, we need to withhold our judgement of anyone who does not identify with the traditional gender norms. People are who they are, and people change over time. Gender fluidity, though recognised formally only recently, is an intrinsic part of human psyche. The young boy who wants to dress up in ‘girl’ clothes, and the girl who feels most comfortable as a tomboy should not need to worry about what society thinks of them.

In the years to come, we will gain even more insights into the psychology of gender, helping us understand ourselves better. But the recognition of the ‘moving scale of gender’ and of gender fluidity are important milestones.