Binaries, Spectrums and Spheres

Fair warning first - although this page is short (I've tried to avoid going into the complexities of the issue) it is more 'academic' than the rest of this site. Skip it if you want!

Often within the transgender and gender variant communities you'll hear the traditional view of gender being described as the 'gender binary' or 'gender dichotomy'. This refers to there only being 2 possible genders in this view - man and woman.

It is becoming increasingly common however to describe gender as a 'spectrum' or 'continuum', particularly within organisations that work with LGBT people. This views sees gender as a continuous line of variation between men at one end and women at the other. People's gender's can and do exist anywhere along the spectrum. This view has a number of advantages, chiefly that it acknowledges the fact that gender variant people exist. It does have draw backs though. The main one is that everyone must exist on the line. This often means that nongendered people, bigendered people, androgynes and others all get lumped in at the same 'point' on the spectrum. Whilst this may seem logical at a first glance, it does mean that much of the distinctiveness of these diverse identities is lost to this view.

What model do we use then for gender? I prefer a spherical model; all genders exist somewhere within the 'gender sphere', none are more important than others and none are truly opposite to others. There is a certain beauty to this model.

It is only a model however and still loses some of the wonderful diversity that exists.

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