Gender Attribution and the Perils of Assumption

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In her book, Beyond the Binary Thinking About Sex and Gender, philosophy professor Shannon Dea makes reference to the work of psychologists Suzanne J. Kessler and Wendy McKenna entitled Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach. In this text, the psychologists introduce the term “gender attribution,” which they define as “the decision we make about a person’s gender when we first see that person” (Dea 19). Kessler and McKenna then go on to argue that as we carry out our business in the world, we are constantly and unconsciously attributing genders to the people we see. And, through the process of this unconscious gender attribution, we almost always assume that people are “either male or female, not neither or both” (19). It is only when we “encounter a difficulty in making the attribution due to a mixture of (traditionally) masculine and feminine cues, or an absence of them” that we realize that we even make these attributions! (19). 

While reading this portion of the book, I was immediately stuck by this concept of gender attribution, and I couldn’t seem to shake it. The terminology put to words something that in hindsight was so obvious and so under my nose, but I was simply not actively aware of. And, this section of the text made me acutely aware of how heavily I lean on the snap assumptions and judgements I make about those around me in order to navigate the world in a smooth way. I am very much a participant in what the text refers to as “mentally ticking off ‘he,’ ‘she,’ ‘she,’ ‘she,’ ‘he’....as we see people” (19). I think this, much like our human proclivity for stereotyping, has a lot to do with the evolution of our brains. Our brains ADORE categorization and searching for patterns, because these processes made it much easier for our hunter-gatherer ancestors to navigate a dangerous and complex world. Snap-judging and grouping others the instant we meet them helps us to gauge and interact in social situations without hesitation. But, where our judgments excel in speed, they can lack in accuracy. What was sufficient for survival thousands of years ago is simply not enough in our modern society, where we have developed a much more nuanced understanding of the complexity of the wide array of people that exist within our species. Now, we have much more time and space to question the accuracy of our categorizations. We can see now that if we try to jam every person we come across into two very narrow categories of gender that are nowhere near adequate and reflective of the actual diversity of gender categories that exist in our world, we are trapping complete strangers in boxes before they can even get a word in. 

So the question remains, is it possible to meet someone without performing gender attribution? Personally, I am very much in the habit and don’t know that I have ever not carried out gender attribution to a stranger. I think it would be very difficult to break that snap association between outward appearance and gender attribution that we so often make. But, I think we owe it to others, particularly genderqueer individuals, to make an active effort to try. One of my favorite maxims goes something along the lines of “Your first thought is what society has conditioned you to think, and your second thought defines who you are.” Our first thought may not be perfect, and that’s okay. As humans, we are far from perfect, and old habits, such as performing gender attribution to nearly every person we see, die hard. But what matters is what we do with that second thought. I think much like how many of us are learning and striving to check our internalized biases and correct our stereotype prone brains, we can include questioning our initial and narrow gender attributions to the list of checks. If we take the time to stop, think, and not assume things about others, we can give others a chance to speak for themselves before we assume things about them.

In practice, some ways we can work toward de-conditioning ourselves away from narrow gender attributions could include the simple but reliable practice of asking someone for their pronouns when introducing yourself, or at very least sharing our pronouns when introducing ourselves to a stranger. This might open the door for that person to feel comfortable enough to share their pronouns. Another concrete thing we could do could be to take a page out of Dembroff and Wodak’s book and consider using gender neutral pronouns, perhaps they, if we are not yet sure of a person’s pronouns, are referring to a stranger, or are unable to ask for whatever reason.

I know one idea that has become a topic of discussion is whether or not cisgender people should put their pronouns in their social media bios and email signatures. Many writers and activists in recent times have argued that cis people should in fact display their pronouns in these public spaces because it not only “normalizes” the sharing of pronouns so that trans people are not “singled out” as the only people who need to publicly share their pronouns, but it also weakens the association that so many of us have between outward appearance and gender identity. At first, many argued that cis people should not put their pronouns in these places because it is “easy to tell what their gender is”. But, in reality, there is no way to tell what a person’s gender identity is based on outward appearance. So, if all people, including cis people, shared their pronouns in these public spaces, it would help further erode the harmful idea that one must look a certain way according to their gender identity, which could help further reduce our tendency to make decisions about a person’s gender when we first see that person. 

I would love to know if anyone has any other ideas in regard to how we can avoid making assumptions about the gender of others!