To begin with, no one is inherently born a “woman” or a “man.” These categories are not biological givens but socially constructed identities. As Simone de Beauvoir famously argued, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (The Second Sex, 1949). This does not deny the existence of biological sex: individuals may indeed be born female, male, or intersex. Yet, as Judith Butler has shown, the categories of “man” and “woman” are the result of performative repetition within cultural systems of meaning (Gender Trouble, 1990). Possessing female genitalia does not in itself make one a woman, just as possessing male genitalia does not automatically make one a man; rather, one becomes such through processes of acculturation and identification.

Our society, structured around a rigid gender binary, socializes those assigned females at birth into the role of “women” and those assigned male into the role of “men.” This binary is not simply the result of Western, Eurocentric traditions that were imposed globally through colonization. It also functions, as Michel Foucault might say, as a “disciplinary regime” that produces subjects while simultaneously regulating them (The History of Sexuality, 1976). Moreover, the gender binary serves the interests of capital by creating roles that can be commodified and exploited, whether in the labor market, in media, or in consumer culture.

The culture of gender is so deeply rooted that even today, myths about prehistory are mobilized to naturalize patriarchy. A common claim is that in so-called “cave societies,” women only cared for children while men hunted. But as Donna Haraway critiqued in Primate Visions (1989), such evolutionary narratives often tell us more about contemporary ideology than about the past. Recent archaeological evidence directly challenges the “man the hunter, woman the gatherer” model. Studies show that women participated in hunting in 79% of foraging societies, including in big-game hunting in a third of those cases. A striking example is a 9,000-year-old burial in Peru where a female skeleton was interred with hunting tools (Haas et al., 2020). As Sarah Lacy and Cara Ocobock argue, there is no empirical basis for assuming rigid gendered divisions of labor in prehistory; rather, such claims reproduce modern cultural biases.

There is nothing inherently wrong with identifying with a particular gender—or altering one’s body through medical intervention to align with that identity. The issue lies not in gender itself but in the rigidity of gender norms. Because these norms are so deeply entrenched, those who do not conform are frequently marginalized, cast as outsiders by their families, and even criminalized by their nations. In response, queer communities emerged as necessary sites of kinship and survival, echoing what José Esteban Muñoz described as a “collective horizon of belonging” (Cruising Utopia, 2009).

That said, I hold reservations about the proliferation of micro-labels within the LGBTQ+ community. While the larger movement thrives as a coalition, the constant coinage of increasingly specific labels risks reducing identity to hyper-specialization. Some individuals rely on such terms as anchors of belonging, which speaks to a deep human longing for recognition. But at times, the debate seems misplaced. When asked about terms like lesboy or gaygirl, I found them less threatening than revealing. They exemplify how arbitrary gender categories are. To the hostile gaze of homophobia and transphobia, these nuances collapse: whether one identifies as gay, pan, trans, lesbian, or lesboy, one is cast as a “fag,” “dyke,” or “tranny.” In this sense, lesboys and gaygirls demonstrate both the creativity of queer world-making and the ultimate futility of seeking legitimacy within oppressive binaries.

What we call “lesbian love” is, in truth, simply love; and what we call “masculinity” is not a universal essence but, as Butler would argue, a culturally contingent performance. Masculinity and femininity are not natural givens but contingent arrangements shaped by European and Anglo-American histories and disseminated globally through media and institutions. These categories are less eternal truths than provisional frameworks for organizing intimacy, preference, and social life.

At the same time, I acknowledge the profound human need not only to belong but also to be seen, heard, and free to express oneself. Here, I find great value in communities such as those built around xenogenders: they illustrate the creativity of identity-making and the insistence on recognition in one’s own terms. Yet I also believe, following the tradition of queer activism from ACT UP to contemporary mutual aid movements, that the queer community must not dissolve into pure self-expression alone. It must remain grounded in solidarity, collective struggle, and the building of new worlds together.