Male or female? How many categories for “people” will we need?

Gender is not a fact about persons that we must take as fixed and essential (and then build our social institutions around that fact). Gender, for humans, is socially constructed; an externally imposed hierarchy: male or female. The human personality is a spectrum – and allows us to more or less conform to the gender norms associated with our gender, or not.

But, we do not need gender. We would be better off without it. Gender as a hierarchy with two positions operates to naturalize and perpetuate the subordination of female people to male people, and constrains the development of individuals of both sexes. And reconceiving of gender as an identity spectrum represents no improvement!

The solution is to not categorize it at all.