The future can't be binary

No matter whether I think about climate change, capitalism, or gender, Theodor W. Adorno’s quote—“There is no right life in the wrong one”—keeps popping up in my mind as shorthand for simple answers that only make sense within a skewed system. Question the system, and you’ll see those answers unravel as distractions—at best.

Most recently, that quote’s playback button was hit by an unlikely source: the 363rd issue of the Dense Discovery newsletter. I learned to cherish this inspiring and curious dispatch as a secondary reader for some time, and more recently as a direct subscriber.

The curator and author Kai Brach—a German living in Australia (relevant here only because I assume he may be aware of Adorno’s quote)—writes in his opening words to issue 363:

“The mental health crisis, the manosphere, the rise in addiction and the lean towards strongman politics – young men’s struggle for identity manifests in so many troubling ways these days. Yet naming it explicitly remains fraught. We’re often reminded that doing so redirects attention from women’s ongoing battles for equality.”

What follows is a short article about the work of Richard Reeves on helping young men find their identity—as men. The main angle is that this can and should happen in a way that doesn’t contradict feminism:

“The work towards gender equality for women is vital and unfinished.”

Reeves is quoted further:

“I honestly believe that the way to beat the online world is offline, is in real life, by having male teachers, male coaches, fathers, uncles, neighbours, etc., just being a living and breathing version of what it means to be a man.”

“But we have to be really careful not to treat men like defective women, or vice versa.”

For me, the controversial part is the reduction of someone’s identity to their sex assigned at birth. Of course, Reeves heads up the American Institute for Boys and Men—the binary hint is in the name.

As a biological man who identifies as non-binary, I stopped asking myself how to be a man some time ago, because it felt like a futile battle I couldn’t win anyway. Why would I let something as limiting and charged as “manhood” define me? Realising that giving up this fight and instead simply being myself was the path to liberation—and to breaking repeating patterns—was pivotal.

I welcome anyone who wants to support others in finding their way. But I am alarmed when I read that the goal or mould of their support is just an updated version of the same binary gender concept, instead of empowering people to free themselves from the burden and pressure of complying with the social construct of binary gender.

If this is a step too far for you, I’ll ask you to follow a little experiment. Let’s pretend we are not talking about the mental health crisis of men, but of all humans with blood type A+.

For this experiment, we claim to find a significant percentage of those with A+ struggling with depression, suicidal thoughts, and addiction. And we therefore suggest that they spend time in the company of other folks with blood type A+ so they can see a “better version” of being A+ to look up to. Walks in the forest. Fishing. (Preferably no eye contact because A+ folks struggle with that…)

This, by the way, does not take away from the struggles B+ people have with being B+. It’s carefully separated and segregated—out of utmost respect, of course—to allow each group to find their identity in their blood type.

How do we feel about the idea that your blood should have such a major impact on your identity? Or the notion that all A+ people share enough that other A+ subjects are best suited to support them? Would we not call this utter nonsense and seek common environmental or contextual patterns rather than a biological marker? And would we not eventually realise that millennia of suggesting that A+ are this way and B+ are the other way created the mental health crisis and inequality in the first place?

No solution, no matter how well meant, is a good solution if it fails to challenge the fundamental system that caused the issue we’re trying to fix. This is the essence of Adorno’s quote.

An approach to improve the mental health of those suffering under an outdated, binary concept of gender—when that approach is based on the very idea of binary gender—will only perpetuate the damage done and deepen the mental health crisis.

Or: an updated version of the gender binary won’t fix the damage done by the patriarchy. And the patriarchy relies on the gender binary. If you want your right life, you have to unsubscribe from the entirety of the wrong one.

So what can we say to young people who find comfort in Reeves’s narrative? Find and know yourself. The original. The authentic, unaltered version of you. Or as Kae Tempest puts it:

“When I was young, I sought help from my older self
I came into my head, I told me know yourself”

The “older self” can be others who are genuinely on the same journey. But forget about their gender or genitals when you wonder if you should relate to them. When you stop classifying people as A+ and B+ and instead as humans with different life experiences, we may find more healing in acknowledging the specifics that really matter than in the false differences and commonalities of forced-upon social constructs.

Kai closes his article with:

“The future can’t be gendered – it has to work for everyone.”

I totally agree—our future can’t be gendered - nor can it be binary!