Everyone is talking about gender. But what, exactly, is being said? Is gender a synonym for sex? Is gender the culturally constructed norms and expressions of sex? Is gender an innate sense of one’s sex, almost like a sex of the psyche or the soul? In truth, “gender” has become something of an empty signifier, a word with no stable definition that is nonetheless endlessly deployed, shifting meanings to suit a particular context or agenda. As such, one could argue that “gender” has become meaningless.
And yet one could pivot and argue the opposite: that “gender” is meaning-full, perhaps too much so, brimming over with too much meaning, too many definitions, less like an empty shell than a shape-shifting chimera.
Is Gender Too Troubled?
