The gender cube has been brewing in my world for nearly year. It started as a way to add depth to quantifying gender. My thought was by giving the gender category more depth more people could be categorized and legally recognized. The ultimate struggle is why the need for categorization and labels? Humans strongly desire to sort. We are constantly sorting. I’m guessing this comes from some primal need that protected us and ensured reproduction. I dunno, maybe we just were bored. But as we become overpopulated and insulated from a ‘wild’ world our need to sort seems only to inhibit us from true expresson. In my ideal world these primal instincts would vanish. But, hey, we’re not there yet. So, I created the gender cube knowing it was not an all-inclusive model. I created it as a stepping stone to the great gender galaxy (which seems to be the best model). Like I said, I’d love to jump there now but every evolution comes in steps.
The cube works this way. There is a self identity axis (x), a social identity axis (y) and a cultural identity axis (z). They are based on a spectrum ranging from masculine to feminine. The exact middle is gender neutral. This would be a self-reporting system. You determine how you view your gender, how socially you live your gender and how culturally your gender is viewed. Each box is numbered starting at the neutral point where the lines intersect. This is 0,0,0. It has varying degrees of femininity and masculinity with the middle points on each axis acting as neutral. So, I identify as 3Xm, 2Yf, 3Zm. This means I see myself in the middle of the masculine side of the spectrum. I like to socialize/be seen close to the middle of feminine side of the spectrum (whether I am is a different story) and culturally, I think I’m viewed in the middle of the masculine side. The Self Axis(x) is how you feel your gender/internal sense of gender. The Social Axis (y) is how you express your gender. The Cultural Axis is how your gender is seen in your culture.
I presented the model at the 2016 Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference. I received an incredible amount of feedback. And here I am 6 months later finally writing about the reaction to the gender cube. I’m thankful I had a large, vocal crowd. I passed out the Gender Cube Worksheet to help the audience members plot themselves on the gender cube and to provide feedback. I wanted to present some of the feedback here. In addition, I will be updating the model based on these comments. Feel free to use the worksheet to plot yourself on the cube!
One audience member said that the expression of gender through self, culture and socially is always in flux. They plotted themselves as a blob covering several degrees of gender on each axis. This was a great point – this self-reporting system is only valid at the time the person reports it. How they feel in the moment because gender can be/is fluid. Many people plotted themselves covering a range of degrees like 2m through 1f.
Many participants agreed that the axis being based on the masculine and feminine was problematic for several reasons: the masculine/feminine is undefinable and changes based on time, location, etc; and many people do not identify as masc or fem.
Another great point it didn’t allow room for bigender people. It only allowed you to plot yourself masc, fem or neutral and not BOTH masc and fem.
There was a suggestion to turn the cube into a Venn diagram. I’m going to tinker with this idea. The cube originally started as a circle.
Multiple people said that the culture axis was hard because it changed based on where they were – work versus school.
One of my favorite comments was that gender is just the self axis. That by defining the cube as the gender cube and adding two axis I was turning how you self identify into only a 1/3 of your gender and that it is all your gender.
And thankfully I had some mathematically feedback with the look of the cube.
Based on the feedback I’m going to take a critical look at:
- Making the masc and the fem not mutually exclusive
- Include multiple plot points
- Account for time and location
- How gender is defined (is really only the self?)
Remember, the gender cube is not a solution. It’s a step. It’s a step beyond the spectrum. While it’s a few months late, I want to thank everyone that came to my presentation and a special thanks for those who gave me valuable feedback.
Hi Leo, can you talk about where the term “gender cube” came from? There’s been some discussions about you potentially stealing the term because there’s a super well known trans man that’s been using the URL Gendercube for something like 5 years. I was in your workshop last year and it got brought up in a small group afterwards which I just remembered. Idk if you were aware of that so I wnted to bring it to your attention and hear from you
Hi Misha,
I wasn’t aware of another person using the term gender cube. Originally I was designing it as a sphere but once I started mapping everything out I realized it was more of a cube. During my research I looked up gender models and I didn’t find anything similar. I don’t recall googling the term gender cube. I definitely wouldn’t steal from someone. The only thing I found tonight after reading your comment was a tumblr called gender cube but it didn’t talk about a gender model. It seemed to be more of a blog. I dunno. I appreciate you bringing it to my attention. With the internet, I have no doubt my ideas aren’t always original but I certainly never use someone else’s ideas without crediting them.
Surprised I didn’t hear back from you, Misha.