Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, sometimes called “gender critical” feminists, have started a new hashtag campaign on Twitter, calling themselves #Genderfree. The idea is that they reject gender. They reject the performative nature of gender roles and the entire system of gender in society. They reject the concept of gender identity which leads credence to trans identities. All they believe in is the concept of biological sex and they define manhood/womanhood in terms of your sex, not your gender/gender identity.

This doesn’t leave much room for trans people to be who they say they are. GC feminists would call a trans woman a man and a trans man a woman. Often they refuse to use the preferred pronouns of trans people, saying this is in violation of “reality”. GC feminists want to structure the lines of society in terms of biological sex e.g. keeping public woman’s bathrooms free of trans women because of their biology.

But is it actually possible to be free of gender? I contend it is not, as I will explain below. It is merely a pipedream, something to aspire to, but cannot ever happen because of how gender actually works. Furthermore, the aspiration to destroy gender completely is in fact harmful. It can be critiqued but not destroyed. And denying the reality of gender or contending it’s not as real as biology is a falsehood that strips trans people of their authenticity.

Gender itself is a system of norms, rules, scripts, identification processes, institutions, and signs that regulates our behavior and thoughts through a mechanism of difference. It feeds off difference and creates a semiotic system from it. Even if we were to get rid of the differences between males and females, the gender machine would find another difference and create signs that regulate those differences in society.

In other words, gender is like the many-headed hydra. You cut off one head and two more sprout to replace it. It cannot be killed. Even if the physical differences between males and females were minimized it would just start to feed off other differences such as a class, age, hair color, ethnicity, or whatever else. It’s ultimately a difference-eating-monster. And there will always be differences between people. So long as this is the case there will be semiotic systems that regulate these differences and generate implicit norms.

Like GC feminists, I am in favor of fighting against harmful gender stereotypes such that girls cannot grow up to be powerful CEOs or that men don’t make good homemakers. In this sense, I agree with GC feminists that gender roles and stereotypes are social constructs. But being a social construct does not mean it’s imaginary. The value of money is a social construct but as anyone who studies economics knows, money rules the world and is very much real.

Where I differ with GC feminists is their hatred of gender itself, especially the concept of gender identity, which is what gives life to trans identities. There are extra complexities involved here when we consider the idea that sex and gender are deeply intertwined and not easily separated as distinct concepts but in general I think identity is critical to the trans experience. When GC feminists say gender does not exist in this sense they are really saying trans people do not exist. They are merely confused men and women who need professional help coming to terms with their biological bodies. For example, they would say trans women should learn to live by accepting themselves as very feminine men.

I disagree with this completely because as a trans person I believe in the power of identification processes. They are what fuel the authenticity of my experience. I could not be authentic if I were to go around pretending to be a feminine man. Others might see me as a feminine man but that’s not who I really am. I am a trans femme nonbinary person, not a man. Not a woman, but not a man either. This is a core aspect of my personhood. GC feminists want to deny this to me, but their only argument is “gender is incoherent and only sex can be defined properly.” But gender is not incoherent, it’s just complex. And I don’t need to give a dictionary definition of my identity to know it’s real and authentic, no more than I need to define consciousness to know my consciousness is real. I cannot define it but I can experience it clear as day. And that’s enough proof for me.

In the end, #Genderfree represents an attempt to get away from gender. And if someone really does want to distance themselves from harmful gender stereotypes, I’m all for it. But the quest to destroy gender itself is a fool’s errand and in fact turns out to be harmful to trans people, who take solace in their gender and use it to ground the authenticity of their experience. We don’t need to be free of gender to critique its worst aspects, such as the negative stereotypes and norms surrounding manhood/womanhood. But trying to get free of gender altogether is both impossible and harmful.