No, that makes total sense to me. My general feeling about gender is, "must we?" I just get exhausted at the insistence some have on dragging gender into everything.
I get that it was socially convenient (for some) to compress the multi-dimensional continuum into a binary. (Or in many other cultures, something more complicated.) But I think at this point we either add the extra bits or just stop fussing about it so much. Hopefully both.
That said, I think it's entirely possible to usefully reduce a multi-dimensional space to discrete labels without excessive harm. Look at the actual space we live in, for example. Naming places and regions can be both useful and helpful as long as we don't take the names too seriously. I suspect the same is true for the space of gender. But as with physical space, I'd rather let people self-organize and self-identify than for one group to try to impose their boundaries upon others.
As a geographer I completely appreciate the value of quantization. You’re right, it can be done and has value in the abstraction. Though it’s rarely free of issue, too. I’m thinking about border disputes. Gerrymandering. Square cows.
100% on your last point about self determination. If people want to define themselves, by all means!
I get that it was socially convenient (for some) to compress the multi-dimensional continuum into a binary. (Or in many other cultures, something more complicated.) But I think at this point we either add the extra bits or just stop fussing about it so much. Hopefully both.
That said, I think it's entirely possible to usefully reduce a multi-dimensional space to discrete labels without excessive harm. Look at the actual space we live in, for example. Naming places and regions can be both useful and helpful as long as we don't take the names too seriously. I suspect the same is true for the space of gender. But as with physical space, I'd rather let people self-organize and self-identify than for one group to try to impose their boundaries upon others.