Intersectional gender measurement: proposing a new metric for gender identity and gender experience

ABSTRACT

Traditional conceptions of gender as a binary, man-or-woman categorization are being challenged in scholarship and in U.S. popular culture. Researchers across disciplines have rejected gender binarism; English dictionaries and style manuals have embraced the singular “they”; and social networking sites offer multiple gender options. These changes signal increased awareness that binary gender categorizations perpetuate structures of oppression that act on all people, but especially disadvantage transgender, non-binary, and intersex individuals. Mindful of this cultural shift, this paper explores how gender measurement is handled in recent scholarly publications in communication. Based on a qualitative content analysis of articles published in 2018–2019, it demonstrates that six leading U.S.-based communication journals published research that marginalizes non-cisnormative people through binary gender measurement. Arguing that it is the ethical responsibility of researchers to recognize the multiplicity of identities that are authentic to our informants, it concludes with recommendations for conceptualizing, measuring, and reporting gender beyond the binary, including a metric for gender that incorporates dual axes of gender identity and gender experience.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersectional gender measurement
• research ethics
• gender identity metric
• transgender
• non-binary

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Dr. Fabienne Darling-Wolf for her comments, critique, and encouragement, and to the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and many insightful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. “Hispanic” is a contested term that has been problematically associated with the U.S. government and Census. I include this example not to celebrate the Census question’s wording but to note that the two-question format is widespread and likely familiar to respondents.

2. The term “passing” implies a fiction, a falsehood, a masquerade: one thing is “passing” for something it is not. While the word “passing” is part of transgender discourse, and I honor trans people’s decisions to self-describe using the terminology that is most comfortable for them, I do not use this word to describe myself. My masculine gender identity is my authentic self; it is not fake, fictional, or deceptive. Therefore, I say instead that I am recognized when those around me correctly perceive me as a man.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aiden James Kosciesza

Aiden James Kosciesza (he/him) is a doctoral student in the Department of Media and Communication at Temple University and an assistant professor of English at the Community College of Philadelphia.