I’ve recently begun going through a bit of a personal renaissance regarding my gender, and I realized my numbers-focused brain needs something to quantify gender identity, both for myself and so I can better understand others. I also just don’t like socially-constructed labels, at least for myself.
So, using the Kinsey Scale of Sexuality as inspiration, and with input from good friends, I made up my own Gender Identity Scale.
- Three axes: X, Y, and Z
- X: Man (not necessarily masculinity), 0 to 6
- Y: Woman (not necessarily femininity), 0 to 6
- Z: Fluidity, 0 to 2
- X and Y axes’ numbers go from
0 - not part of my identity
to6 - strongly identify as
- Z axis’s numbers go from
0 - non-fluid
to2 - always changing
Example: The average cis-man is 6,0,0, the average cis-woman is 0,6,0, and a “balanced” nonbinary person might be 3,3,1, or 0,0,0, or 6,6,2…
Personally, I think I’m about a 3,2,1 - I don’t have a strong connection to either base gender, but being biologically male, I do identify a bit more as a man. I also feel that I’m somewhat gender-fluid, but not entirely so. I honestly don’t fully understand gender fluidity yet, so the Z-axis may require some tweaking.
Does this make sense? Can you use this to accurately quantify your own gender identity? I wanna know!
For me, 0-5-0, maybe 0-4-0?
And I’d suggest that you should probably add another axis to represent genders that don’t fit the man/woman binary. Not every non binary person sits on that man/woman spectrum
Hmm, I really don’t want to make it too complicated, though. Would 0-0-0 with maybe one additional label suffice? I guess at that point, the numbers become irrelevant and only the label matters, which defeats the whole purpose.
I don’t know enough yet about nonbinary folks (even though I’m pretty sure that’s what I am). Do you have any suggestions for additional/modified axes? Maybe we could make the X and Y axes go into the negatives, with different meaning ascribed to anything below zero. 🤔
I mean, we’re talking about gender. Complicated is unavoidable :)
😂 Good point!
That’s why I wanted to simplify it. It clearly needs more work, but I do think I’m onto something here, at least for those of us who find numbers easier to understand than labels. There are dozens of us!
Forget complicated, make it complex and add the imaginary axis i