Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act... a "doing" rather than a "being". There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results. If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.
Someone who is experiencing gender dysphoria would be someone who feels that his biological sex doesn't match up with the gender that he feels. So, I might feel like I am a woman trapped in a male body, and you can imagine how horrible that would be to have that kind of experience or to think that you're a man trapped in a woman's body. It must be just a terribly difficult experience for those who experience gender dysphoria. But this is not anything to do with homosexual attraction or activity. It's a matter of one's self-perceived identity.
... that gender is a choice, or that gender is a role, or that gender is a construction that one puts on, as one puts on clothes in the morning, that there is a 'one' who is prior to this gender, a one who goes to the wardrobe of gender and decides with deliberation which gender it will be today.
Stopped as attribute of a person, sex inequality takes the form of gender; moving as a relation between people, it takes the form of sexuality. Gender emerges as the congealed form of the sexualization of inequaltiy between men and women.
Sometimes there are ways to minimize the importance of gender in life, or to confuse gender categories so that they no longer have descriptive power. But other times gender can be very important to us, and some people really love the gender that they have claimed for themselves.
I sort of throw away the definitions of gender - that boys are 'supposed' to wear blue and girls are 'supposed' to wear pink - and those gender roles and gender presentations. I do it on my own terms rather than based on what other people say I should do.
I am a men's liberationist (or "masculist") when men's liberation is defined as equal opportunity and equal responsibility for both sexes. I am a feminist when feminism favors equal opportunities and responsibilities for both sexes. I oppose both movements when either says our sex is THE oppressed sex, therefore, "we deserve rights." That's not gender liberation but gender entitlement. Ultimately, I am in favor of neither a women's movement nor a men's movement but a gender transition movement.
I think growing up, the assimilation of most cultural conventions typically encouraged by a heightened awareness of gender and sex encourages a sort of separation of the self. What's so special about 'Hanna' is that her upbringing has negated this indoctrination; she's almost absolved of the pressures of gender or gender itself.
Gender is used as a control mechanism that's just wrong. Gender is never anything to struggle with; gender is something to play with. Once you're free of the rules that all these hierarchical, oppressive systems place on gender, that's the tricky part.
It's my view that gender is culturally formed, but it's also a domain of agency or freedom and that it is most important to resist the violence that is imposed by ideal gender norms, especially against those who are gender different, who are nonconforming in their gender presentation.
I have always firmly believed that every director should be judged solely by their work, and not by their work based on their gender. Hollywood is supposedly a community of forward thinking and progressive people yet this horrific situation for women directors persists. Gender discrimination stigmatizes our entire industry. Change is essential. Gender neutral hiring is essential.
Some trans people thought that in claiming that gender is performative that I was saying that it is all a fiction, and that a person's felt sense of gender was therefore "unreal." That was never my intention. I sought to expand our sense of what gender realities could be. But I think I needed to pay more attention to what people feel, how the primary experience of the body is registered, and the quite urgent and legitimate demand to have those aspects of sex recognized and supported.
I believe in assigned sex but not necessarily gender. Gender is a learned construct that is detrimental to both sexes.
When I became a professional and fully understood what was going on, I knew that with all the love and care and mentorship that someone like Professor James Herring had given us, was not based on gender; it was based on the notion that he wanted us to succeed.
I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that only gender non-conforming, non-binary, or trans people have a gender identity. But the truth is, everyone has a gender identity.
We are in the process of making the English language gender-neutral, and manliness, the quality of one gender, or rather, of one sex, seems to describe the essence of the enemy we are attacking, the evil we are eradicating.