Let's pretend you've decided to become a pro-trans ideologue. You thought you knew what that meant: Trans Women Are Women, Trans People Are Valid, Protect Trans Kids. You've also heard that trans people believe there are eighty-seven different genders. Unfortunately, there is actually vigorous debate among transsexuals as to the actual count of existing genders, and to assimilate into the community you'll need to figure out what your answer is. So:
How many genders are there, really?
Zero
If you think there are zero genders you're probably a gender abolitionist. The idea of a gender abolitionist transsexual might sound absurd, but it makes a lot of sense. Gender norms are a source of pain for a lot of trans people; a near-universal story for them is having been bullied as a kid for not living up to the gendered expectations of their peers, either because they were gay and identified more with the opposite sex or because they were autistic and didn't know how to properly perform the role their peers demanded.
Early trauma like that leaves lasting scars, and cements a narrative of life that'll follow a person into adulthood. For the pro-trans gender abolitionist, transition is an act of rebellion against a society that hurt them by demanding they adhere to roles they couldn't or didn't want to fulfill, and supporting transition is siding with the people who want to tear down that society by any means necessary and put something new in its place.
One
If you think there's one gender, you're an imaginary person I made up while I was drunk at a house party in 2019. The attendees were a bunch of radical queers; a collection of trans women, trans men, and various flavors of nonbinary; and we somehow got onto the subject of Joe Biden having recently said there were “at least three” genders. We agreed that this response was, while not ideal, at least acceptable. Someone said the only answer that they wouldn't have been happy with was “two”, and that “zero” or “infinite” would have been ideal. The idea of a wacky character who thought there was only one gender came to me in a flash and I, paraphrasing a tumblr meme, declared: “There's one gender, and we all have to share it.” Someone followed that up with: “We're all one gender: the buman gender.”
I don't know if anyone has ever actually believed there's only one gender. If you're someone who does, please tell me all about it in the comments.
Two
If you believe there are only two genders but are also pro-trans, you're a filthy truscum transmedicalist who carries water for fascists. You believe there are two sexes, male and female, and occasionally an individual is born as the wrong one. The exact mechanism of this is up to you—maybe they have opposite-sex brains, maybe you buy into Blanchardian HSTS/AGP theories—but, fundamentally, your stance is that transsexualism is a medical condition which requires medical treatment in the form of hormones and surgery.
If you're in this camp, you're probably resentful of all the tucute transtrender fakers making a bad name for real transsexuals. There are people who are really suffering, and really need help, and their condition is being co-opted by a bunch of gender-transformation fetishists, delusional maniacs, and trend-hopping teens. The backlash against this influx of fake transsexuals is, you worry, going to make it harder for real transsexuals to get the help they need. You might have trans friends, and know from experience that they're sane, functional people; or at least no more insane than the average person. You don't want to see them suffer because of a bunch of crazies.
If you're particularly savvy, you might even want to hop trains entirely and become gender critical; that way you can get ahead of the crash and try to do damage control. This thing's gonna derail eventually. Do you really want to be in it when it all comes apart?
Three
If you believe there are three genders, you're probably down with the whole trans thing but not deeply into the specifics. In your mind there are men; there are women; and there are nonbinaries.
The only real difference between the three groups is what set of pronouns you need to use for them: he/him, she/her, or they/them. Occasionally you'll meet a woman who you're very tempted to call "he" and need to practice some serious self discipline; occasionally one of the they/thems will ask you to call them some insane shit you can't remember, but those types usually begrudgingly accept a "they"; occasionally you'll meet someone who claims to be fine with multiple pronouns and have to guess which one won't make them glare at you from behind their glass for the rest of the night. When you accidentally use the wrong pronouns--which happens all the time--you apologize sincerely and it's usually alright.
You go along with this--you believe it--because it's the right thing to do, and you're a good person. It's a little inconvenient sometimes, sure, but that's a small price to pay to exhibit basic human kindness. You don't get why some people make such a fuss about it. How hard is it to just be a decent person?
Four
If you believe there are four genders you're probably a fetishist.
This is more of a functional categorization than an ideology, and you may even claim to not believe there are four genders, but if you're hot for tranny then the four types you’ve got to worry about are dudes, chicks, dudes with pussies, and chicks with dicks. They can call themselves whatever they like, but you're a utilitarian; you're horny for weird freaks, you know it, and you classify them based on the features most pertinent to your interests.
Good for you, perv.
Eighty-Seven
If you believe there are eighty-seven genders then you're a rhetorical device used by a radical feminist or a conservative, meant to ridicule the absurdity of gender ideology, which you fail to do because no one actually believes this. Trans ideologues would, in fact, be way cooler if they held that there were exactly some arbitrary number of genders, and they had coherent descriptions for each individual gender, sorta like astrology or some esoteric fringe religion—but they don't. What a shame.
Infinity
The belief that there are potentially infinite genders seems like it would be the opposite of the zero-genders gender abolitionists, but in fact the two groups share pretty similar beliefs—one just has a lot more fun with it.
If you believe there are potentially infinite genders, then you see gender as a limitless avenue for free expression. The two-gender paradigm forces people, all of whom are unique, into one of two narrow boxes, and that's wrong. People should be free to express who they are inside: to wear what they want, do what they want, date who they want, and have the body they want. If you're cactusgender, and your pronouns are cact/cactus/cactself, then that's just who you are, and anyone trying to impose something else on you is a authoritarian bigot.
You agree with the abolitionists that gender as it exists is a patriarchal, coercive system that unfairly restricts and categorizes people, turning them from free humans into slaves whose labor can be mechanically assigned to create the most benefit for capitalism at the expense of individual liberty; you're just not a total killjoy.
Hey, thanks for reading. I’m at Genspect's Ireland conference this weekend, so if you spot my nametag feel free to say hi.
Andrea Long Chu is arguably a one-gender partisan, to wit: "Everyone is female, and everyone hates it."
What a clusterfuck. Much of it due to an inability or unwillingness on the part of many people to define exactly what they mean by the terms in question, primarily "sex" and "gender". See:
" 'If you wish to converse with me,' said Voltaire, 'define your terms.' How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task. Wil Durant"
https://quotefancy.com/quote/3001527/Will-Durant-If-you-wish-to-converse-with-me-said-Voltaire-define-your-terms-How-many-a
By which the most sensible definition for "gender" -- more or less that of Merriam-Webster, the British Medical Journal, the late Justice Scalia, and many other equally credible sources -- is personalities and personality types: billions and billions of them as Carl Sagan might have put it. Along with various body and/or atire modifications. Sort of a Mr. Potato Head.
The problem, or one of the main ones, is the bait-and-switch program by transactivists -- aided and abetted by various useful/useless idiots -- to conflate sex and gender, primarily by using "male"and "female" as genders. "Amusing" case of that -- particularly if one's predilection is for gallows humour -- is in a recent CNN "story" (AKA propaganda from the Ministry of Truth):
"... sought to implement restrictions related to gender-affirming care -- medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from the gender they were designated at birth to their affirmed gender, or the one by which they want to be known."
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/27/us/gender-affirming-care-restrictions-transgender-patients/index.html
NO one is "assigned" a personality at birth -- maybe midwives put on Rowling's Sorting Hat and divine that someone is to be an introvert or an extrovert? 🙄
What IS assigned at birth is -- by standard biological definitions -- a label denoting the sex that a child will probably acquire at the onset of puberty. Those definitions STIPULATE that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexLESS; see the Glossary here:
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990
Francis Bacon, probably predating Voltaire, quipped that "shoddy and inept uses of words lays siege to the intellect in wondrous ways". Seems to describe the transgender clusterfuck to a T.