Karey Harwood, professor in philosophy and gender studies, suggests that the most valuable conversations on gender and identity must be approached in good faith. These discussions are not about entrenching dogma but about engaging critically, inquisitively and with an earnest attempt to understand the complexities of selfhood, performance and identity.
If all “men” are created equal, then, to honor this principle, we must dismantle rigid, artificial boundaries and embrace the spectrum of human experience. To truly embrace equality, we must critically examine the tools we use to construct arguments about identity. Philosophy encourages us to think for ourselves, negotiate reality and challenge the status quo.
Gender, as a concept, is one such tool. It is not a fixed truth but a performative act — a costume we wear, shaped by the cultural and historical contexts in which we live.
From men in wigs and dresses in the 18th century to the fluidity of modern fashion, gender expression has always been malleable. As Harwood notes, “Are there other creatures that go through so much trouble constructing costumes?” I think the role of gender performance in other animals, such as marvelous wing colors, is largely for mating purposes. If that is true, what are the concerns around rigid courting performances, binary dancing styles and its limiting choreography, spectated expression and sanctioned union — fear of eroding a nuclear unit, a “family” tied to structures?
This performative aspect of gender is nothing new in behavior and its shifting nature has simply been codified differently across eras and cultures. As Susan Wendell suggests in “The Rejected Body,” our environment constructs barriers to identity, much like how physical spaces either enable or disable bodies.
Constructions of binaries are elaborated on by Anne Fausto-Sterling in “Sexing the Body.” She challenges the traditional dualisms of sex vs gender, nature vs nurture and real vs constructed. She argues that sex itself is shaped by the culture in which scientific knowledge is produced.
Fausto-Sterling highlights the existence of intersex individuals, who embody one of five natural human variants and critiques societal efforts to force these individuals into binary categories. Her work underscores the idea that neither sex nor gender is as fixed as we once believed and therefore there might be more for us to play with here, assisted by technology and catalyzed by philosophical nature.
If we can question what we are made up of and what we make more regularly and productively, we are equipping our society with critical reasoning and compassionate social constructs.
Donna J. Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” and Karen Barad’s work on quantum physics and queer theory both reject rigid boundaries. The cyborg, a hybrid of human and machine, resists categorization.
Likewise, Barad’s application of quantum mechanics to gender theory reveals the inherent contradictions within binary thinking. Quantum particles exist in superposition — two places at once — just as gender, identity and embodiment can be multiple things simultaneously.
To subsume this concept, we might turn to a less politicized example: the gut microbiome theory, which challenges the idea of one “self.” It postulates that we are composed of, and foundationally are, billions: We are in an interconnected web. Rather than one or the other, individual or many, there is no boundary in quantum, zooming far enough into the skin to see atoms and quirks. Things are moving, liminal and fluid, with no set transition point between any phase changes.
If the very fabric of our biological selves is interconnected, then why should gender be any different?
A factor of gender discourse has always been reproduction. Who can, who should and who will be notoriously political? Paul Preciado in his essay “Baroque Technopatriarchy: Reproduction” argues that nothing about reproduction is natural — it is entirely sociopolitical.
From the encouragement of certain racial and class demographics to reproduce to the commodification of sperm and eggs, reproduction is deeply intertwined with power structures. Preciado calls for a democratization of reproduction, imagining radical new ways of creating life that challenge traditional norms.
Similarly, Silvia Federici’s “Caliban and the Witch” explores the historical subjugation of women’s bodies under capitalism. Federici argues that the control of reproduction was essential to the development of the capitalist workforce and that this control was enforced through rituals, witchcraft trials and other forms of violence. Her work reminds us that the way we reproduce — and the way we think about gender — is not natural, but constructed by those in power and their predecessors.
Charlotte Jarvis, an artist and lecturer working at the intersection of art and science, embodies this spirit of experimentation. Her project “In Posse” seeks to create “female” sperm by growing spermatozoa from her own cells, challenging the cultural narrative that reveres semen as a symbol of male potency.
Jarvis’s work is experimental and explorative of gender, reproduction and identity, blurring the lines between art and science, male and female, real and constructed.
Jarvis’s installations and performances, such as “The Future is not a Noun; it’s a Verb” invite participants to engage with these ideas in visceral, embodied ways that challenge our understanding of us, our self and our collective, and how it can be impacted by each other. By donning clown masks and making custard pies in a plastic-shrouded room, participants are forced to confront the performative nature of identity and the ways in which it is shaped by context and audience.
The future of gender is not about finding a fixed answer; it is about continuing the conversation taken up in good faith, negotiating realities. To question is the linking verb of the future.
As Maggie Nelson’s “The Argonauts” suggests, identity is an evolving process — a negotiation between self and society. Science, philosophy and art should be recognized as tools for critical thinking rather than established principles of knowledge and belief, challenging us to reconsider what we take for granted.
Ultimately, quantum gender is not a paradox but a paradigm shift. It invites us to move beyond static categories and embrace a world where gender is as fluid, interconnected and dynamic as the universe itself.
