[Serious] Please convince me gender is binary

[bennyboy]

They're binary in our culture, and at present..that's a comment on our culture in this moment, not their being intrinsically binary.  Other cultures have conceptualized them differently (and so have we - little boys used to wear dresses).

So long as they are related to gender, they're binary.  If both boys and girls often wear dresses, then dresses are no longer part of gender expression or identity.  But since dresses are worn almost exclusively by women, then in our culture, that's a female mode of dress-- female being one of the two options in a binary gender metric.

I think for trans people like Jehanne, the gender binary symbols are good, and useful-- they allow her an easy means by which to express her sense of self.  If you break down all the symbols-- just call them all meaningless constructs-- then you aren't really doing anyone a favor; you're just making it impossible for people to express themselves.

But think about this-- people can have any mix of female or male traits, express any mix of species or cultural norms, but there's still no option "C."  You can have male chromosomes, female sex organs, and wear a dress or a male business suit on alternate days if you want.  But all those things distill down to a binary dialectic.