Being a fan of Star Trek, I saw all the series and recall in The Next Generation, an episode, entitled The Outcast, which depicted a genderless society. When the crew of the Enterprise came into contact with this race, there were social interactions and exposure to the concept of male and female. One member of the race, Soren, working closely with Riker developed a relationship which grew and was eventually discovered. Soren was put on trial by her own people for exhibiting and embracing a female identify.

Back when I went to school, gender was a category you checked in a box while filling out an official form. It was straightforward and any discussion of other meanings was private. While the concept of homosexuality was admittedly tolerated, it was still not talked about much less accepted in common media. As society became more tolerant and the concept of same sex marriages was first legalized in the Netherlands in 2000, the concept of sex and gender took on greater diverging meaning.

At the workplace, I started seeing colleagues ending their salutation with pronouns. At first, I thought it was redundant as I knew ‘Jim’ is a man and his declaration of He/Him was simply superfluous. And then two things came to my awareness. A sales rep at a store who served me had a manly stature with stubbles on his face; but he also had long hair, make up and nail polish. He introduced himself as ‘Emma’. I looked at ‘her’ in the eye and simply greeted her as Emma without being conspicuously confused, ignorant or antagonistic.

It occurred to me that gender is a much more fluidic concept increasingly being determined by the individual on how they want society to treat them. In the English language, we have for eons used the gender-neutral pronouns they and them to describe an unknown individual or group. In the twenty-first century, society has simply and more broadly adopted the same pronouns to describe an individual who may not want to inherit the traditional stereotypes or are themselves transitioning. The other thing that came to my awareness is the realization that adoption of pronoun email closings is in support of this social evolution. Not everyone does it, but it is enough to raise our awareness.

 

My daughter even back in grade school, knew that in nature, parthenogenesis and the hermaphroditic characteristic of earthworms already render human definitions of sex and gender to be limiting and incomplete.

 

To think that gender identity is an adult-only topic is simply false. While some adults may have the wherewithal for serious medical services, preoccupation of gender identity, some may say, begins very early. My daughter told me one of her friends (biological or cis female) is going out with another (cis female) who is transitioning to a male. I was a bit confused. And given that I was having a private conversation with my daughter, I asked her to clarify for me if she knew whether the transition was an emotional or physical one. Flippantly, I also asked my daughter that if her friend was simply going out with another girl, wouldn’t that just be plain-old, vanilla same-sex relationship? We never got answers to these questions and we both conclude that these were private matters. My daughter will simply deal with this individual in whatever way they want.

While I am open and accepted that sexuality is a spectrum, I think society still mainly and exclusively thinks that there are only two sexes. But my daughter even back in grade school, knew that in nature, parthenogenesis and the hermaphroditic characteristic of earthworms already render human definitions of sex and gender to be limiting and incomplete.

In frontiers unknow, there could be many more divergences that are simply foreign to our evolution. In another Star Trek episode entitled The Host, Dr. Crusher falls for an alien whom she thought was male. But an injury to his body resulted in the surprised and necessary removal of the sentient symbiont that must be joined to another host. Eventually a new Trill body was found. But it was female. While all the memories from all the hosts are retained in the symbiont, the original he/symbiont/she still felt the same for Dr. Crusher. However, Crusher didn’t feel the same anymore and her last words to the symbiont/she were, “…It is a human failing. But we are not accustomed to these kinds of changes…perhaps someday, our ability to love won’t be so limited.”