If you’re not part of the LGBT+ community yourself, it might be difficult to understand why the simple statement “There are only two genders” can be unsettling. But there are many implicit ideas that come with this sentence that LGBT+ people and others react to.

Get informed before you open the next comment section or are asked about your position in the debate:

THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS … and we will force this idea onto reality

As Donald Trump has demonstrated this past week, the statement about two genders is usually linked to policies that undermine transgender rights. It’s not just a philosophical discussion about the number of genders, but an exercise of power that in the USA can mean severe restrictions on transgender people’s freedom in public spaces, freedom to travel, freedom from discrimination, and access to the job market (for example, all 15,000 transgender people in the military can expect to be fired).

THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS… so intersex people don’t exist

At a biological level, there are variations in bodies. Bodies are typically divided into two sex categories “male” and “female” based on chromosome composition and physiological sex characteristics (hormones, genitals, uterus, etc.) But the binary view with only two possibilities and an emphasis on reproduction is a simplification of the biological reality. When people say there are only two biological sexes, they completely write intersex people and their biology out of reality. This logic is also used to justify involuntary treatments that intersex people may be subjected to in order to make them fit into one of the two gender boxes.

THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS… and they are the only truth about human life

Feminists like Simone de Beauvoir and later Judith Butler have criticized the idea that biology is the first and final truth about people’s gender. Gender is indeed part of biological reality, but gender also has social, psychological, cultural, and political aspects. We cannot understand what humans are if we don’t look at gender with more nuance. The elevation of the two biological sexes as the only truth about human life is often used to devalue transgender people’s existential reality – although gender outside of biology class is mostly everything else and much more than chromosomes.

THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS … and that’s how it’s always been

Being transgender or non-binary is often portrayed as a new trend spreading among youth. But many cultures have had a more diverse understanding of gender – for example in India, where hijras have been recognized as a kind of third gender for centuries. In Denmark, the LGBT+ community has long had a more fluid perception of gender – for example, the community of “hanpiger” eg. “he-girls” in the early 1900s. In Denmark, transgender people have also received medical treatment since the 1920s and have been able to legally change their gender since the 1950s.

THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS … and so what?

For most people, gender is more than just biology – this applies to people who aren’t transgender and/or non-binary as well. The most important thing for us at LGBT+ Denmark is, that regardless of whether politicians and opinion makers use hurtful and simplifying rhetoric in the media, LGBT+ people can live the lives they wish and deserve. It is our hope that we can move beyond the somewhat tiresome conversation about biological categories or rhetorical duels about the number of genders – let’s instead focus on real solutions for real people. So we can all live as ourselves.
Men, women, and all the rest of us. 🌈❤