I believe it is a socially constructed term to separate people into categories based on once significant, but not necessarily defining qualities of a human.
There are those with penises, those with vaginas and even those with both, but there are not only three types of people. Judith Butler in her book Undoing Gender describes just this; how there are people that are not even recognized as human because they do not match the criteria related to having a specific gender. (SEE: What Constitutes a Human? - gender doesn't even come into play in its definition). Therefore, nobody is entitled to say that a person is not human.
What would it mean then, to redefine what gender is? Would this make people see that to be anywhere on the gender spectrum doesn't affect their humanness? Would this allow transgender individuals to live more valuable lives as Butler also suggests?
What would it take to change the concept of gender and for people to accept the meaning behind it?
We are all capable of doing this, just as the word femininity changed.
-E
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