What is a man?
Partially in response to Matt Walsh’s new documentary “What is a Woman?”
This question seems more relevant than ever as we deal with bans on transgender athletes in sports and issues of healthcare for trans people. Conservatives will argue that your gender is equal to your sex and your genetics. More liberal-minded people will argue that gender is distinct from sex, and that there exist people, trans people, whose gender identities differ from their sex assigned at birth. More progressive people will argue that gender constructs and social roles are unnecessarily restrictive on human behaviour and that we should move towards a society without notions of gender; these are the so-called “gender abolitionists”.
Let’s begin with an important point, which is the definition of our terms.
Sex is defined as one of the two main categories, male and female, into which humans are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions.
Gender is defined as the characteristics of men and women that are socially constructed.
What is the purpose of sex? The phenomenon of two sexes of the same species exhibiting differing characteristics is known as sexual dimorphism. The two sexes in nature serve two different roles; females devote more resources towards raising children, while males usually devote less resources towards children and more resources towards competing for women. Males usually exhibit a much larger variance in outcome, and women usually select for men who show exceptional ability in certain characteristics. This competition between men and variance in outcome is known in evolutionary biology as sexual selection.
Sex is also linked to sexual reproduction, in which an organism with male gametes and an organism with female gametes produce offspring with a combination of traits. This produces vastly more genetic variation than asexual reproduction, in which genetic variation only occurs through random mutations.
Gender is how we interact with each other in society. We do not interact with each other on the basis of sex. As evidence of this, make note of the fact that we do not inspect each others’ genitals when meeting someone for the first time. We treat people based on what we can perceive about them, which is their gender presentation. I would be very concerned about the idea that we should treat people based on their sex, which is what some conservatives argue. For example, I think it would be ridiculous to force the infamous Blaire White, who presents almost flawlessly as a woman, to use a men’s restroom.
As a side note, another fascinating topic to me is how much symbolism and meaning is attached to gender throughout the history of human civilization. It speaks to how important these topics are to humans. We have a notion of the archetypal man and woman in Judeo-Christian morality — this is referring to Adam and Eve from the Bible. Freud had his notion of the Oedipus complex. In the modern world, we see the most extreme forms of gender distinction in the gendered laws of many Arab countries, where religious law exists. As further evidence as to the importance of gender, we are talking about this topic right now, and gender continues to be a contentious topic in our political world.
So now that we have our distinction between gender and sex, let’s go back to the original question — What is a man or woman? The problem with this question is that it is actually quite difficult to define for several reasons. The way I conceptualize the notion of man and woman is through archetypes and forms. If you are familiar with Plato’s concept of forms, they are abstract, perfect ideals.
For example, the form of a human may possess two legs, two arms, a head, etc. However, when we see an instance of a human, they may be an amputee and be missing an arm, but we would still consider them a human. To me, this is due to the distinction between the instance of an object and the perfect form of an object. We still classify the amputee human instance as a human because they possess more than 95% of the characteristics of the human form. We would not classify a frog as a human because it does not cross a certain threshold of similarity to the human form. We have a separate idea of a form of a frog.
The problem with differentiating a person into the categories of “man” and “woman” is that “man” and “woman” are associated with a wide range of characteristics, and that each individual person falls in different places along each of those ranges. For example, “man” may be associated with being slightly taller, having a deeper voice, having more pronounced muscles, being more fascinated with objects, etc. “Woman” may be associated with being slightly shorter, having an exaggerated hip-waist ratio, being more fascinated with people, etc. It is not simply one of those characteristics that defines “man” or “woman”, rather, classification depends on having several characteristics that aligns with a certain gender. For more than 95–99% of people, their gender aligns with their sex, and they do not feel conflicted about it, so a simplified view of “man” and “woman” may suffice. However, this breaks down at the margins and borders, and things get fuzzy. Say there’s a trans man who has undergone hormone therapy, voice therapy, dresses like a man, etc. The trans man is essentially identical to our simplified notions of a man, except for his genetics and reproductive function. Is it right to deny this person the treatment of a man in our society?
The classification of a trait into “masculine” and “feminine” camps is also quite subjective. What traits should we include? How much weight should we assign to each of these traits in determining gender? What threshold should be met in assigning someone’s gender based on traits? Is it 50%? 75%? 99%? We also need to account for the existence of butch lesbians, tomboys, femboys, and people suffering from Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, etc. We would certainly not deny that a tomboyish woman is a woman if she herself identifies as such. How do we account for these scenarios in our model? I certainly am not equipped to answer such difficult questions. These questions are posed in order to demonstrate how fragile and fuzzy our notions of gender are.
I should mention that while I reject the oversimplified conservative view of gender, I also reject the gender abolitionist view of gender. Let me explain. Categories do not exist in nature and objective reality; for example, there is not really such a thing as a “chair”, there are only the materials of plastic, wood, and metal that make up the chair that exists in reality. Yet, while the category of “chair” only exists in our collective minds, this notion of a “chair” is extremely useful. For example, I can tell someone to find me a chair and they will know exactly what I mean. Just because a categorization like “man” and “woman” is a social construct does not mean it is arbitrary and useless. They are actually extremely useful concepts. I think that gender is tied very closely to sex. I think that we have invented gender concepts to align with sex for a reason. My point is only that we should be more thoughtful about how we draw the borders around these concepts.
Our subjective notions of gender are shaped by our life experiences. It is shaped by growing up without a father or mother figure. It is shaped by the media we consume. It is shaped by our friends, family, and co-workers.
In conclusion, to define what a man is, my answer is that I can’t really define what a man is. It is an elusive, abstract concept that lives in our minds. When we see a man, we know that is a man, but it is almost impossible to define exact specifications for what a man is. Our concept of “man” is in some part defined by biology, and in some part related to our subjective life experiences. The best answer I can give, for now, is that a man is somebody that looks and behaves like a man.
