Notions of male, female far from archaic

I’m getting patiently lectured by a young college student about the difference between sex and gender. I know when someone is being patient with me. You can see concern in the eyes, the kind smile. You can feel the gentle, cooling breeze of condescension.

Heavens! Did I talk like this when I sojourned through the ivory tower? Probably. Come to think of it, yes. Mea culpa.

It turns out that sex refers to the respective genitals attached to you at birth. These genitals are not your fault. No one, in fact, is to blame. Biology just does this randomly. It’s a genital lottery of sorts.

But gender, on the other hand, is assigned. I was, apparently, assigned the identity of male. My sisters, assigned the identity of female.

Those were the young student’s words: “gender assignments.” Words he heard in his college class. Words he read in his textbooks.

Who, then, are The Assigners? Are they, like, DC Comics villains? And why do I get the feeling there is a judgment brewing for these ignorant, unenlightened, bigoted, oppressive, enslaving, dark and mysterious Assigners? These shadowy figures, lurking and calculating to imprison me with … trousers! Forcing me to swim in public places … without a shirt! Insisting that I do my public toileting … in the men’s room!

(Is it here I start singing “We Shall Overcome”?)

He tells me he is “nonbinary.” He is proud of this. He has liberated himself from the mundane, not to mention oppressive, cultural burden that has beleaguered the human race these past 20,000 years — male and female! For him, both sex and gender are insignificant or even irrelevant.

“What do you think?” he asks, bright-eyed, willing and curious.

What I think, of course, is that I wish I could have made my getaway from this conversation before he asked me what I think. Oh well …

I tell him I think trying to extract a meaningful human identity from sex and gender is an exercise in both futility and narcissism. I say it nicely, but still, his smile fades a bit.

I tell him that part of what makes human beings human is that they have, of necessity, shaped sex and gender symbolically. That sex and gender are archetypal. Sex and gender can never be insignificant or irrelevant.

I tell him that cultural trappings do indeed come hand in hand with the results of one’s own personal genital lottery. I suppose you could call these trappings “assignments,” but I think that oversells the issue. I prefer to call them “acculturations” because the process is ever-so-much-more organic than calculated.

I tell him that bias is the only possible outcome for cultural beings and that he is a cultural being. The goal is not to rid ourselves of bias, because that is impossible. Delusionary. The goal is to know our bias.

I agree that some gender biases are unjust. Other gender biases, however, shape meaning. And human beings need meaning the way they need oxygen.

In short, abandoning all symbolic understanding of sex and gender on the grounds that we are especially enlightened and very cool is desperately unenlightened and not the least bit cool.

I tell the bright (if naive) young man that it is on the grounds of this symbolic understanding that I quarrel with misogyny. How can any meaningful, healthy and free embrace of the masculine contain, of necessity, an a priori antipathy for the feminine? Similarly do I raise an eyebrow at that circle of women who call themselves separatists. How can any meaningful, healthy and free embrace of the feminine include the fierce need to be unrelated and unengaged with the masculine?

I tell him I still have lots of questions about human sexuality. That the journey of psychosexual development cannot be sufficiently and meaningfully addressed (let alone happily resolved) by the mere protest “I was born that way” or by deciding that one is free to rise above such archaic notions as male and female.

Is there such a thing as psychosexual immaturity? Is there such a thing as sexual psychopathology? Is there such a thing as healthy psychosexuality? These are not moral questions; these are clinical questions. And it’s getting harder and harder to ask them without being charged with injustice and/or ignorance, quid pro quo. But I am not dissuaded.

My young friend’s eyes are glazed. I should stop.

I should be patient with him. It’s not his fault he was born during a time that going to college included getting assigned The Right Thoughts.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Las Vegas Psychiatry and the author of “Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing” (Stephens Press). His columns appear on Mondays. Contact him at 702-227-4165 or skalas@reviewjournal.com.