On Gender Entitlement

A useful concept

Julia Serano has the concept of “gender entitlement”:

Gender entitlement relies on a central assumption: We presume that whatever beliefs, expectations, or preferences that we personally have regarding sex, gender, and/or sexuality must also apply to, or hold true for, other people. In making this assumption, we often invalidate those people’s own gender and sexual identities, desires, and experiences…

Because we may experience certain desires, and because certain ways of being gendered or sexual may resonate with us more than others, it is inevitable that we will develop personal meanings—i.e., we will personally like, appreciate, or prefer, some aspects of sex, gender, and sexuality more so than others. But in order to be ethically gendered, we must not presume that our own personal meanings represent fixed meanings—i.e., those that are supposedly universal and apply to all other people. Specific identities and bodies, and expressions of gender and sexuality, do not have any fixed values or meanings—their meanings can vary from place to place, and from person to person. Some people might think that it is wonderful when I wear a dress, while others may assume that it is a bad thing. Some may assume that by wearing a dress I am signaling the fact that I am docile and demure, whereas I may personally feel defiant and badass when wearing a dress. In other words, the act of wearing a dress does not have any fixed or inherent meanings built into it—like all aspects of sex, gender, and sexuality, it is essentially a blank screen that other people will often project their own values, meanings, and assumptions upon. It is one thing to acknowledge our own personal likes and dislikes, but that act becomes entitled and nonconsensual once we start believing that our own preferences represent fixed meanings or values that must hold true for all other people.

In other words: people make meaning out of their biological sex and the cultural constructions of gender and sexuality. But these meanings don’t apply to everyone in the world. Any individual sexed body part or gendered act doesn’t have a meaning in a vacuum: it only has the meaning we assign to it. Gender entitlement is when we assume that the meanings we assign to our sexed, gendered, and sexual actions and experiences are natural and normal and apply to everyone. Wearing a dress just means that you’re docile and demure woman, regardless of how you feel about it. Gender entitlement, Serano believes, is bad.

I think people having this concept would make a lot of discourse about trans issues (and gender in general) less fraught.