Gender Identity and It’s Labels by Ivan

Our experiences shape who we are. They also dictate the way we perceive the world. They tell us who we are. They are what our thoughts are based on. They are everything and anything. They could have happened or could have been imagined. Yes, even events that may have never happened are experiences. Every thought, every feeling, everything that makes you who you are has been implanted in you and decided by your experiences.

What is an experience?

Well, according to the dictionary it is “the process or fact of personally observing, encountering, or undergoing something.” This makes sense, but what about ideas, thoughts, and beliefs that we learn from other people? Are these parts of our experiences? The philosophy definition of experience goes more along the lines which I believe is experience. It is “the totality of the cognitions given by perception; all that is perceived, understood, and remembered.” So, if experience defines everything we are what give each experience its importance? In my opinion, it is other experiences. Cultural and societal environments have unsaid rules that the mind learns unconsciously about what acceptable experience is and what is not. The less acceptable an experience is, the more shunned the experience becomes. Upon being shunned both by the person and the culture and society, the type of experience may show up in the unconscious where it is either expressed without the person’s knowledge or is hidden until revealed. But, culture and society constantly change, and what was not acceptable before can be acceptable now, what was not acceptable before can be acceptable now, or what was done normally before now is considered unacceptable. Culture and society dictate what experiences will prevail in the openness for everyone to notice and when it changes it is up to people to either tap into their unconscious and accept the change based on that or built new experience.

Experiences infinitely vary and none is alike; every person has millions, billions of experiences that can be arranged in infinite patterns to form an identity from which one identifies oneself. Society or culture then labels this and although no label is suited for such a variance, society needs to separate the continuum of identities and draw the line somewhere. Gender/sex is one of those identities which carry a continuum. The standard is male and female, but where the line is drawn is being redefined. The extremes are the norms and that is slowly changing along with everything that has to do with gender like sexual orientation. Before our society only allowed the extremes to be expressed and the array of what gender one could be was set as female male. Now, there are labels all throughout the continuum like gay, lesbian, straight, bi, transmale, transsexual… Upon closer examination gender is not a continuum but a universe and the continuum could not apply to everyone. The idea of gender identity being a whole universe relates back to the infinite possible patterns of experiences one can form an identity from. This “gender” is just another identity which for the mind to rationalize must be placed under a label or a simple continuum of a label. The true language that can capture the true label for gender can never be acquired due to the fact that new experiences are constantly being added to our “logical” pattern of experiences which identify our identities. I sympathize with those that upon being asked their gender are confused or decide that it’s none of the above, but to make our society viable, everything must be labeled or at least tried to be labeled according to the current collective experience of the society.