Avoid the Comms Crisis: Learn the New Language of Gender Now

Just when some people are getting their heads around the fact that there are people whose gender identities don't align with their assigned gender (namely, transgender people) — a new crop of college students who identity as queer want to do away with gender altogether.One student told New York Magazine that they don't feel connected to the word transgender because it's too aligned with the binary gender identities of male and female. And the idea that their gender is "in the middle" of a gender spectrum still makes male and female its dominant poles. Gender, to them, is a constraint that feels quaint.Genderqueer and gender nonconforming identities are already, in a sense, trumping transgender as radical categories, at least for some young people. In a signal we call Outsiders Welcome, the notion of an inside and an outside are getting deconstructed: the outsiders are the insiders, because gender doesn't matter (the thinking goes) for identity, as much as it used to. Subscribe to n2 now and receive daily trends, direct to your pocket