Canadian Government Executive - Volume 26 - Issue 05

January/February 2021 // Canadian Government Executive / 27 are often highly criticized, objectified, and targeted for violence. Gender fluidity in a world that is largely invested in a binary system of gender can be threatening and confusing because of existing power dynamics,” they say. Despite this, we are hearing of and encountering people who proudly proclaim they are non-binary or genderqueer. They may see themselves as androgynous or gender-neutral, or may simply be opposing the strict boundaries of binary gendering. This can be threatening to some but the authors argue that as non-binary identities become more accepted everyone can ben- efit from a more expansive definition of gender. “Nearly everyone can recall a time when their behaviour was not completely in line with gendered expectations. It may have been subtle. For a man, voicing emotions or crying could feel gender nonconforming. For a woman, negotiating a salary might feel far from the way she was taught to behave in the workplace. Likely we were not socialized or taught that these behaviours were accessible to us while growing up,” they write. The term transgender refers to someone who identifies with a gender that is outside the expectations associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. Men who were born with vul- va and ovaries will be referred to as transgender men or trans men. Women who were born with a penis and ovaries are called transgender women or trans women. This needs to be separated from sexuality or sexual orientation – whether they identify as gay, lesbian or queer. “Transgender is not an ‘extreme version’ of being gay. In fact, many transgender people partner with a dif- ferent gender and identify as heterosexual,” they note. Intersex people are those whose sexual or reproductive organs develop differently from the typical male or female pattern. They used to be called hermaphrodites but that is now considered of- fensive. Some intersex people consider themselves part of the LGBTQ spectrum but some don’t, and so you may see the term LGBTQIA, which includes intersex and asexual individuals. While this seems a modern phenomenon the authors trace these notions back through time. Plato’s Symposium discusses a creation myth involving three original sexes: Female, male and androgynous. North American indigenous tribes cover a range of non-binary identities with the term Two Spirit. In Mexico’s Oaxaca region, the Zapotec communities recognize “muxes,” people who were born as male identifying as female or existing totally outside the male-female binary. A 1974 study estimated that six per cent of the males in that community were muxe. The authors say that that the languages we speak have the po- tential to shape the way we think about gender, notably sexist language. For many years the default pronoun in English was he when gender was unknown. Suggestions to change that drew howls of protest, as did the notion that we should use neutral web https://canadiangovernmentexecutive.ca/category/ harvey-schachter/ terms like spokesperson and firefighter instead of more gen- dered language. Ms., which we now use as an equivalent to Mr., when not signifying marital status, was coined in the 1960s but actually dates back to the 17th Century. Using “they” to describe an individual when gender is unknown also dates back to the past, including Chaucer and Shakespeare. Some transgender and non-binary people have been choosing gender-neutral terms and those may come into mainstream use, Mx. being the most popular. Ze has been proposed to replace her or him and hir to replace him or her. But the most common gender pronoun is they/them. Gender may not seem like a leadership book. But government executives must adapt to the communities they serve in respect- ful ways. With something as complex, confusing, and explosive as gender, this book offers sound, level-headed explanations, with admirable research and historical depth. Also valuable are Gender: Your Guide by Queen’s University education professor Lee Airton, which has a similar explanatory element combined with some details on her own transition from female to a non- binary transgender person, and Transitioning in the Workplace: A Guidebook , by Dana Pizzuti, who left work one day as the male senior vice-president and returned after medical treatment as the female vice-president. H arvey S chachter is a writer, specializing in management and business issues. He writes three weekly columns for the Globe and Mail and The Leader’s Bookshelf column for Canadian Government Executive, and a regular column and features for Kingston Life magazine. Harvey was editor of the 2004 book Memos to the Prime Minister: What Canada Can Be in the 21st Century. He was the ghostwriter on The Three Pillars of Pub- lic Management by Ole Ingstrup and Paul Crookall, and editor of Getting Clients, Keeping Clients by Dan Richards. The Leader’s Bookshelf “Inherent in the gender binary is power. In most modern cultures, men hold more power than women, and those who identify outside the binary are often highly criticized, objectified, and targeted for violence. Gender fluidity in a world that is largely invested in a binary system of gender can be threatening and confusing because of existing power dynamic.”