Table of Contents
I remember when we started having more conversations about why Black women needed to be named specifically instead of always being grouped under women of color.
Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with the term women of color. Sometimes it fits beautifully. Women from different racial and ethnic backgrounds can share experiences, organize together, and recognize common struggles.
But sometimes we need to talk about Black women.
Not everybody else. Not a broad collection of women with very different histories. Black women.
Because when we’re discussing maternal mortality among Black American women, discrimination against Black girls in school, or the particular ways racism and sexism meet in our lives, the broader language doesn’t always tell the whole story.
And if you’ve spent enough time doing advocacy work, you learn something about language.
Sometimes the umbrella is so big that the people you’re trying to help become difficult to see.
I think we’re encountering something similar in conversations about sex and gender.
Some feminists and womanists are returning to more deliberate use of sex-based language. Not because the word gender must disappear, but because it has come to mean several different things, and those meanings are not always interchangeable.
There are times when we’re discussing gender stereotypes. There are times when we’re discussing gender identity. And there are times when we’re discussing the material realities of being female.
Those conversations may overlap, but they are not automatically the same conversation.
And women should be able to say so.
When the Word Gender Started Doing Too Many Jobs
For years, people have used sex and gender interchangeably in everyday conversation.
Sometimes the distinction didn’t seem especially important. But the words can describe different things.
Sex refers to biological characteristics associated with female and male reproductive organization, including reproductive anatomy, physiology, and related characteristics.
Gender can refer to social roles, expectations, identities, and cultural ideas associated with being a woman or a man.
Depending on the institution, legal system, or academic discipline, the word gender may carry different meanings.
That is part of the difficulty.
When a woman talks about sex discrimination, is she discussing discrimination because she is female? Discrimination because she does not conform to expectations about femininity? Or discrimination connected to gender identity?
All three can be important subjects.
But we lose precision when we assume that one word always describes all three.
Consider medical research.
If researchers are studying pregnancy complications, menstruation, or conditions associated with female reproductive anatomy, biological sex and relevant anatomy are important.
Good language helps us identify the actual problem.
And once we identify the problem, we have a better chance of finding an appropriate solution.
Black Women Have Seen What Happens When Language Becomes Too Broad
There is a reason the comparison with women of color stays with me.
Black women have repeatedly had to insist that our particular experiences not disappear inside broader conversations.
A discussion about racism may overlook sexism.
A discussion about sexism may overlook racism.
And a discussion about women of color may overlook differences among Black, Latina, Asian, Indigenous, and other women.
The problem isn’t that solidarity is wrong.
The problem comes when solidarity requires us to stop naming the people and circumstances we’re actually discussing.
For example, Black maternal health disparities deserve attention to the particular conditions affecting Black women. Those conditions cannot always be understood by combining every nonwhite population into one statistical category.
The same principle applies when we’re talking about sex.
When women discuss female reproductive health, sex-based violence, sports classifications, or privacy in intimate settings, they may need language that identifies sex specifically.
That doesn’t mean every question about gender identity has been settled.
It means the word female still communicates something relevant.
Precision is not the enemy of compassion.
Sometimes it is what allows compassion to become useful.
Gender Nonconformity Is Not the Same as Gender Authoritarianism
Now, here is where another distinction becomes important.
Women have spent generations challenging the rules about how we’re supposed to “behave.”
We were told certain professions were unsuitable for us. Certain clothes were inappropriate. Certain ambitions were unfeminine.
Women challenged those rules, and rightly so.
A girl who enjoys mechanics does not need somebody questioning whether she’s sufficiently feminine.
A woman who wears short hair, refuses marriage, loves competitive sports, or has no interest in makeup is not failing some test of womanhood.
That is gender nonconformity.
It concerns freedom from prescribed expectations about femininity and masculinity.
But gender authoritarianism describes something different.
It refers to attempts to impose rules or beliefs about gender through authority, pressure, or coercion.
Historically, gender authoritarianism has often taken the form of traditional sex-role enforcement.
Women were denied educational opportunities, restricted in employment, and expected to obey husbands because institutions treated those arrangements as proper.
Today, debates about gender can also raise questions about institutional authority, compelled speech, and freedom of conscience.
The central question is not whether someone has a belief about gender.
People are free to hold beliefs. The question is whether someone is attempting to require other people to adopt those beliefs.
And whether the authority being exercised is justified.
Six Terms Worth Understanding
These terms are related, but they should not be treated as synonyms.
1. Gender Authoritarianism
Gender authoritarianism describes the imposition of prescribed rules or beliefs about gender through social, political, or institutional authority.
Historically, this could involve authorities insisting that women must obey husbands, dress according to approved standards, or remain outside certain professions.
The defining feature is not merely that someone believes in traditional roles. It is the effort to enforce conformity.
2. Gender Totalitarianism
Critics use gender totalitarianism to describe what they regard as attempts to make a particular ideology about gender govern nearly every aspect of public and private life.
The word totalitarianism has a serious historical meaning involving extensive political control over society.
For that reason, we should use the expression carefully.
A disagreement over language or a workplace policy does not, by itself, establish totalitarianism.
If we’re discussing institutional pressure, gender authoritarianism or ideological enforcement may be more precise.
3. Gender Orthodoxy
An orthodoxy is a set of beliefs treated as established or authoritative.
Gender orthodoxy describes beliefs about gender that a community or institution regards as “correct” and expects its members to accept.
Orthodoxy is not automatically coercion.
The concern arises when questioning those beliefs becomes unacceptable or carries disproportionate consequences.
A useful question is whether an institution permits thoughtful disagreement or treats every challenge as evidence of wrongdoing.
4. Gender Dogmatism
Dogmatism means holding beliefs rigidly and resisting reasonable examination or contrary evidence.
Gender dogmatism can appear in traditional or contemporary discussions.
Someone might insist that every woman must be naturally nurturing and submissive.
Another person might insist that a particular theory about gender cannot be questioned.
The content of those beliefs differs, but the dogmatic approach shares an unwillingness to consider criticism.
A person can hold strong convictions without being dogmatic.
The difference is whether those convictions remain open to examination.
5. Gender Essentialism
Gender essentialism is the belief that women and men possess inherent qualities that determine their personalities, roles, or behavior.
For example, claiming that women are naturally unsuited to leadership or that men are inherently incapable of nurturing children reflects essentialist thinking.
We should distinguish these claims from recognizing biological sex differences.
Acknowledging that female and male reproductive biology differs does not require believing that every woman has a particular personality or must perform a particular social role. (Especially, she MUST support the feelings and will of men.)
Biology does not come with a mandatory personality.
A woman does not become less female because she rejects conventional femininity.
6. Gender Ideological Enforcement
This phrase describes efforts to pressure or require people to adopt particular beliefs or language about gender.
It is a descriptive expression rather than a formally established legal or academic classification.
And there is a distinction we should preserve.
An institution may require employees to behave respectfully toward colleagues without requiring them to personally agree with every belief those colleagues hold.
Regulating workplace conduct is not automatically the same as compelling ideological agreement.
The concern becomes sharper when people are required to profess beliefs they do not hold, rather than simply comply with legitimate standards of conduct.
Freedom of conscience deserves attention in those circumstances.
What About Gender Authority?
Who gets to define gender?
Who gets to interpret women’s experiences?
And who gets to establish rules that other people must follow?
For much of history, powerful institutions claimed authority over what women could do.
Doctors declared women intellectually or physically unsuited to certain activities.
Employers decided married women should not hold particular jobs.
Lawmakers restricted women’s property rights.
Religious authorities sometimes treated female obedience as a moral requirement.
Women challenged those claims because the people exercising authority were often making decisions about women’s lives without granting women equal power to participate.
We should remember that history when examining any institution that claims the authority to define women’s experiences for us.
But we should also distinguish between someone offering a definition, an institution adopting a policy, and a government imposing legal penalties.
Those are different exercises of power, and they deserve different levels of scrutiny.
Why Sex-Based Language Still Has an Important Place
When feminists talk about sex-based rights, they are generally discussing rights and protections connected to being female or male.
These discussions can involve reproductive health, sex discrimination, sports, privacy, safeguarding, and other matters where sex may be materially relevant.
For example, if we’re discussing pregnancy discrimination, it helps to identify pregnancy rather than relying on a vague reference to gender.
If we’re discussing the historical exclusion of female athletes, sex-based classifications are central to understanding why women’s sporting categories developed.
And if we’re discussing violence against women, accurate information about the sex of victims and perpetrators is important for prevention, research, and policy.
Questions about privacy, inclusion, discrimination, and institutional obligations can involve competing interests and different legal requirements.
But those questions become harder to examine when the language itself obscures what is being discussed.
A person may support protections against discrimination based on gender identity WHILE ALSO believing that biological sex should be recorded and considered where relevant.
Women Should Not Have to Apologize for Naming Our Own Experiences
One thing I have learned from years of advocacy is that people often become uncomfortable when women begin speaking precisely.
A woman says she is afraid of a particular man, and somebody wants to discuss whether she’s being unfair.
She says she needs privacy, and somebody wants to discuss whether her boundary is sufficiently welcoming.
She identifies a pattern of violence, and somebody wants to shift the conversation toward whether she has chosen the most agreeable words.
Eventually, the woman can find herself defending her character instead of discussing the concern she originally raised.
That is a familiar experience for many women.
And it is one reason I believe we should be careful about allowing discussions of language to replace discussions of material conditions.
If a woman is describing a sex-specific medical need, let her describe it.
If she is discussing discrimination because she is female, let her name that discrimination.
If she is questioning an institutional policy, examine the policy and its effects.
We do not have to resolve every philosophical disagreement before we can take women’s practical concerns seriously.
The purpose of language should be to help us understand reality, not make reality harder to describe.
And perhaps that is where we should leave this conversation.
Women have spent generations challenging institutions that claimed the authority to tell us what being a woman required.
We should be able to question those claims today, too.
Not every disagreement is hatred. Not every boundary is an insult. Not every request for precision is an attempt to exclude.
Sometimes a woman is simply trying to name what is happening in her own life.
And before anybody rushes to correct her vocabulary, perhaps they ought to listen long enough to understand what she is saying.
Women have fought too long to be heard only to find ourselves explaining why we’re entitled to name our own experiences.
Original Affirmations
1. I can be precise without being unkind. I am allowed to name my experiences in language that accurately describes them.
2. I can respect another person’s freedom while maintaining my own understanding of sex, gender, and womanhood.
3. I do not have to abandon a useful distinction simply because somebody finds it uncomfortable.
4. My questions deserve thoughtful answers, not assumptions about my character.
5. I am allowed to think independently. Respect does not require me to surrender my conscience.
A Question Worth Keeping
Before accepting a rule about what women must say, believe, or acknowledge, ask:
Is this rule protecting people’s freedom to live differently, or requiring everybody else to think alike?
