document updated 13 years ago, on Oct 7, 2010
Popular preoccupation with bottom surgery reveals that many people believe there is one very-sharply-defined gender boundary — one that cleanly separates men and women into two halves, and that the only way to jump that canyon is via bottom surgery.
This is clearly wrong, of course. The gender binary is an artificial social construction, and even if people actively avoid thinking about it, non-binary identities really do exist.
However, if one were to suggest that since one boundary isn't right, that the correct answer is zero boundaries, they would be wrong again.
- Adolescent gender-policing reveals there are two common boundaries: One that discourages males from being too feminine (getting anywhere near the middle region is "bad"), and one that discourages females from being too masculine (again, androgynous=icky). Anyone who sits in the middle is territoryless, an undefined other.
- In reality, there are more than just two. Within gay male culture, the boundaries of what males are allowed to do are pushed a little further than in hetero culture. However, they still discourage each other from going too far.
- For every gender-related label/identity that people are invested in, there is social pressure that tries to define what the limits of that identity is. For instance, there is only so far that someone can move on the gender spectrum before others feel that they should no longer identify as "butch lesbian". If someone is invested in identifying as that label (because of camaraderie, existing social relationships, shared experiences/values, etc), they feel some peer pressure to stay within the prescribed limits.
- The boundary also exerts some influence for people who wish to AVOID that label. For instance, transmasculine androgynous people often get read as butch lesbian. If a transcmasculine person wishes to avoid the confusion, they may end up wanting to present as more masculine than they otherwise would, in order to get far enough away from the the limit of what could be considered "butch lesbian" so as to try to reduce possible confusion.