Peter Goers: Yes, there is a gender agenda and it’s to understand all the new diversity in our society

The enemies of the new gender movement are strident reactionaries but we must all take a big leap of faith, writes Peter Goers.

There’s an agender agenda. If you’re agender – that is identifying as without gender – you seek social awareness. Fair enough.

The vast new diversity of gender and sexuality is both important to many people and confusing to many others. It’s all about identity – what you feel or know you are. It’s not just how you present to the world and therein lies a minefield of difficulty.

I’m an old, more rather than less binary boomer from a time when there were men and women and the occasional transgender person.

Sexuality was your own business and it was unimaginable that people of the same sex could marry.

Homophobia was rife and the shameful norm and homosexual acts were a criminal offence. Indeed, I’m working on expunging the record of a prominent, late South Australian who was jailed for homosexuality.

Language changes. The word queer was a shocking insult but now it’s a catch-all expression which is sanitised and embraced by many people who identify as queer.

Drag queen Miss Molly reading to children in the State Library Picture Matt Turner.

Recently an author came to my attention, self-described as a “non-binary lesbian”. What?

To be non-binary is to identify as neither male or female and yet this person is still attracted to women.

As confounding as this is, I wish that person well. So much of the new diversity beggars social understanding. We accept more readily than we understand. Please explain.

At least there’s a lot of choice in multi genders and a smorgasbord of sexuality – if it is a choice. More generally you are born that way.

Here are some of the new gender and sexuality terms which though confounding to stuck-in-the-mud cis folk are defining of others; heteroflexibility, gender fluid, expansive, nonconforming, agender, genderqueer, bigender, trigender, multi-gender, pangender, demigender, post-gender, bisexual, pansexual, boi/boy/tomboy, butch/masculine, femme.

Does this make it easier for kids struggling with issues of sexuality? Who do you look for? Who is your tribe. Hopefully it’s part of LGBTIQA + which is all embracing. Sexuality has changed and become much more expansive and now gender is doing so, too.

But one of the difficulties is that whilst is easy to accept sexuality as fluid and highly various it’s less easy to accept gender variances but we must accept that gender ain’t necessarily determined by body parts.

Other cultures have long since known this. That’s the leap of faith required by general society.

And we need more and better pronouns. They/them is clumsy. Myrtle was at the party.

Did you see them? How is they? Mmmmm …. Youse might be handy. “Hir, xe/zir and ze/zim” remain novel but the Swedes, as usual, lead in matters of sex and sexuality – perhaps it’s all that darkness – and hon is she in Swedish, han is he and they have a very popular non-gendered pronoun – hen.

Comedian and actor John Cleese. Picture: Peter Kramer

We have to learn that crucially, identity is more important than appearance. That’s hard because we rely on how people present to the world. We can change. Similarly the proponents of this new gender identity mustn’t be too obsessed with labels. All of us are always more than we appear.

Tolerance, time and the leadership of the young are very important. It can’t be a minefield of offence.

If you look for offence you’ll soon find it. Help and teach.

Lead by example. Like everything it needs humour. John Cleese saying that he now identifies as a Cambodian policewoman is funny, glib and not helpful.

The enemies of the new gender movement are strident reactionaries including one campaigner who continually asks for donations for her/their/hir/zir boring campaign promoting only two genders and loathing even the fun, harmless, cheery drag queen story time in children’s libraries.

There’s always room for more genders and more understanding as we continue to engender gender.

Peter Goers can be heard weeknights and Sundays on ABC Radio Adelaide.