This working model of gender was first explained to me circa 2003 by Joann Prinzivalli, a trans woman who is director of the New York Transgender Rights Organization (NYTRO).
In this model, gender is regarded not as a single quality but as a four-sided event, just as an individual tone in music is not a single thing but a four-sided event comprised of pitch, duration, volume, and timbre. Alter any one of these parameters, and you alter the sound; Remove any of them, and there is no sound at all.
The four parameters of gender are equally essential, but just as people tend to simplify a sound into its pitch, so too does gender too often get reduced to the parameter of Assignment: The doctor looks between an infant’s legs and checks one of two boxes, M for Male or F for Female.
This emphasis on Assignment has caused people to ignore the parameter of Identity: what you know you are, regardless of what anyone else tells you.
A third parameter, ignored by no one, is Presentation: what you show people as you move through the world. Here gender is not just a definition or a self-awareness, but a social activity as well.
The fourth parameter is Orientation: In our sexual attractions and activities, we experience and express our gender.
In a sense, this model has always been embraced, providing it was filled out in only one of two ways:
Assignment…..M
Identity………..M
Presentation….M
Orientation……F
or
Assignment……F
Identity…………F
Presentation…..F
Orientation…….M
This two-part model has ordinarily been praised as the sum total of goodness and reality, despite the rest of the world that exists outside of it – a population that has always existed, in every culture and every era, and which will continue to exist.
In other words, the above model is flawed because it doesn’t work: Too much gendered activity occurs outside it too frequently for it to be sufficient in understanding gender.
For a great many people, their Assignment is contradicted by their Identity; a lot of them eventually make their Presentation conform to their Identity. It’s also very possible for the pattern to be completely consistent, MMMM or FFFF, as gay men and lesbians make plain every day. But Orientation is not limited to M or F – it can be Both. It can also be Neither.
These two additional possibilities, Both and Neither, apply to the other three categories as well. In Presentation, Both can be simultaneous, as with the Mesopotamian priests of Inanna wearing male and female garb, or alternated, as with the person who crossdresses on occasion; Neither is expressed through androgyny. If the idea of Both or Neither as options for Assignment and Identity sounds implausible to anyone, they need only do some research into the nature of intersexuality to discover how ramified and pervasive it truly is. Consider just one simple statistic: In the United States, one out of every 1,000 infants is subjected to surgery to “normalize” their genitals.
We therefore arrive at this model, with one of four possibilities for each parameter:
Assignment……M F B N
Identity…………M F B N
Presentation…..M F B N
Orientation…….M F B N
Employing this model, we can recognize literally any form of human gender expression. No one is omitted from the circle. That’s what’s nice about this model of gender: It works. Hence the title of this short essay.
(This essay was written in 2009 and appears here for the first time.)
For more on gender, see:
Music: KALW Radio Show #5, Gender Variance in Western Music, part 1: Male-to-Female Representations
Music: KALW Radio Show #6, Gender Variance in Western Music, part 2: Female-to-Male Representations
NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 