Current debates on gender tend to speak of gender identity in terms of “authenticity:” Transgender people, for instance, are sometimes described as “born in the wrong body,” so that gender transition is regarded as necessary for them to become “truly authentic.” I argue that gender has never been truly authentic and that we are currently undergoing a shift from gender roles to gender profiles. This shift pertains to both cisgender and transgender people, but contemporary forms of transgender identitites manifest it most clearly and explicitly.

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My first question would be about gender metaphysics or the lack of gender metaphysics. When you say gender is something that is socially and historically constructed, that's the major view from the position of academia, that there is no such thing as a metaphysical essence of gender. What do you concretely mean? Can you say something about this switch from the idea of the metaphysical self to this postmodern non-metaphysical self/gender?

Right. I mean traditionally... there is this idea, also a theological idea, how God made men and women, and there is something essential to these two genders. In some cultures, we also have a third-gender idea. And then again, the idea is that there is something eternal, essential, substantial, that is somehow ready-made. Now, we know that this is not really that simple, that gender identity is more complex. It's not just a social construct. Of course, there are also other aspects to it, namely the body, the physiological, the sexual aspect, as well as the psychological aspect. But the thing is they don't completely match, right? So there is no one way that biological males feel male or biological females feel female. And then you add the social dimension to it, right? How to live in a male or female way or in a third gender way. So we can say gender is always some kind of negotiation of all these three things which are not congruent, they are incongruent, right, and they change, they are dynamic. So that's the whole point that gender is a big mess where all these three components kind of mutually influence one another.

Regarding this very popular question of how many genders are there, we start from the two genders, but we end up with infinite genders. Every person finally reinterprets the gender by him or herself or themselves.

Yes. So we've reached that stage but again this is not essential. Now we think two genders are not essential but a hundred genders are. Of course, that's also not the case. It's not truer when we develop a society that accommodates let's say a hundred genders. That's not truer than a society that accommodates two genders. It's just a different way of a different kind of social organization and a different way of fitting these different elements together, but there is no essential fit to them. So from a philosophical perspective, I think that's important to understand. From a practical perspective, that's something that has to be managed in a specific social context. So if you try to impose a 100 gender framework on a society that has established a two gender framework, that doesn't fit and vice versa. So that's a point that I was trying to highlight: once we understand that gender is complex, then we have to understand that there is no one right approach to gender.

After we had a dialogue with urselves and established who we are, who we think we are, can we perhaps build up a new authenticity in this basis Can we use some methods of artistic expression to develop our identity? Can that be perceived as authentic?

Well, again I use the term of authenticity as a specific form of finding your true self, which I think doesn't exist. It's another form of metaphysics. It’s not like we have this core authentic self and even each person has one and we have to either find or create it. Of course, that doesn't mean that we can’t develop a sense of genuineness; we all must develop a sense of a genuine identity but it is not in the form of finding this one true self that we always have been or that we are meant to be. The artistic approach is creating something. We cannot create something on our own. We create it in the context of the people we interact with, and in the context of the society that provides us with the materials, ideas and values that we need. So this idea of self-creation is a complete overestimation of ourselves. The creativity takes place in a social, cultural and historical context and is not dependent on the true single sovereign individual. I'm trying to combat that notion because I think it's wrong.

I think we should start talking about not just transgender, but cisgender identities. They are versatile and different just as trans but we don't usually put that into focus. So gender heterosexual identities are also full of different gender expressions and full of different sexualities.

Exactly. Right. Yes, and I think that's true. I mean whatever there is no such thing as a homosexual person and there's no such thing as a homosexual person, right? That's a huge spectrum and it changes over a lifetime. And again, it changes within the culture. So I also think that's a kind of problematic binary. And we've been too obsessed with distinguishing these identities. And that's a danger, right? If we overemphasize, if we essentialize, if we reify whatever, gay and lesbian identity, I think that perspective is as problematic as if we over-emphasize heterosexual identity as you just said it's all kind of a spectrum and it's all kind of dynamic and we shouldn't we should understand this better.

My point was that heterosexuality or standard gender expression have been seen as normal so we don't investigate it, we don't question it, but we question what seems to fall out of this normality. We find "non-normality" so intriguinguing, seemingly begging for explanation and that's how women's studies came to being and lesbian, queer studies etc. But rarely do we focus ourselves on men's studies, on masculinity, on heterosexuality as well.

I think like every heterosexual person, or most heterosexual person, have homosexual elements in them. But vice versa, there is also no such thing as the essentialial homosexual person, right? We should, I think, once we question the binary, we need to question it from all sides. That’s the danger of the binary: the essentialization.

What is your stance on a pressing political issue that is heating the trans debate? What is your stance, if you have any, about puberty blockers and the whole attitude towards trans children?

First of all, I think we shouldn't rush to have an attitude towards this, I cannot judge the research on this. I'm not, I don't know how a puberty blocker functions and so forth. And I think there is kind of a complete mismatch between the strength of opinions people have on this and the depth of knowledge they have. And I think that it is a major danger that we rush to judgments without even understanding what is behind the words that we are using. I try to explain the whole problem from a social and psychological and existential perspective and I think again we take on very ideological positions on each side maybe very easily and that's not very healthy. In the context of capitalism, these things very easily lend themselves to business commodification and so forth. And that is a clear and present danger. And I think there needs to be a more general kind of suspicion regarding the neoliberal project of commodifying liberal agendas.

My final question is about China. It's a country with a cultural continuity of several millennia. It's also a mixture of various religions. You have a Marxist influence there. Now it is switching more towards capitalism, to controlled market-oriented economy. How is this modern change in China affecting the traditional gender roles there? I know it's a huge question, but perhaps you can focus on transgender people in China.

I don't know that much about transgender in mainland China. It’s popular in Taiwan. In mainland China, there is, as far as I know, very huge and active lesbian and gay communities. At my university there are many lesbian and gay people obviously, but it's still different from the West. It's very complex. So I think there is a huge change going on in China, probably more drastically than in the West. There is a very low birth rate, which used to be pretty high. And there is also a very high divorce rate now. So the changes in gender identifications are dramatic in China. And it would be a misunderstanding to assume these changes are not taking place, changes that we're seeing in the West too. But they are less openly politicized.

You live in Macau, right?

Yes.

How much is a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread?

It's not that expensive. I don't drink milk, so I don't know how much a bottle of milk is, and Chinese people in general do not drink much milk. Also, Chinese people don't eat lot of breadh, but it's maybe twice as much as it is here. But you can get rice probably cheaper.

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Hans-Georg Moeller is a Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Macau. He authored numerous books including You and Your Profile: Identity after Authenticity, Genuine Pretending: On the Philosophy of the Zhuangzi (both with Paul D’Ambrosio), The Moral Fool: A Case for Amorality, and The Radical Luhmann (all with Columbia University Press). He is content creator of the YouTube philosophy channels Carefree Wandering and Philosophy in Motion.