What Are We Speaking About When We Speak About Gender? Gender as a Continuum

This article shows how, using the figure of the continuum, gender pluralities can be captured in their actually existing diversity and thus be detached from a still powerful and often stereotyping binary constructedness. Gender as a continuum encompasses the four dimensions physical, psychological, social and sexual or: body, feeling, behavior, and desire. It will be demonstrated that all of these dimensions are not clearly separable within themselves and from each other. In the second part of the article, concrete everyday examples and legal debates are discussed from the perspective of the continuum. Thus, we are free to consider differences and similarities between and within the different gender groups in all their diverse shapes and manifestations. The question of what we are speaking about when we are speaking about gender will be answered with a clear “We are speaking about us as individuals and us as a society”. The simple reversion of this correlation will lead to the question: “Do we have to speak about gender when we are speaking about ourselves?”. This question will be answered with a clear “No”, if the normality of plurality and diversity also includes the negation, the absence of gender.