Across the phylogeny of Homo sapiens, the distribution of sex, orientation, and gender among individuals has probably never been in flux; apart from the increasing prevalence (and concomitant deleterious effects) of hormone-affecting environmental toxins, all has most likely been ever thus. However, the most recent times have seen a rise in controversy, and even hostility, among those of extreme opinion regarding these features' distribution among the members of our species, and have sown new forms of social, ideological, and political discord as well. These developments are a genuine disgrace. Let's try to untangle the triangle of sex, orientation, and gender, and figure out how to replace ideological fervor with dispassionate objectivity, opinion with science. As we'll see, the issue that is most troublesome is gender, in particular the unmotivated ideological certainties of those who either fully reject or fully embrace gender as a scientific reality.

Sex, orientation, gender

Sex is biologically determined. Employing a computer metaphor, we can think of sex as hardware, as a hard-wired, built-in physical attribute: male ([potential] sperm producers) and female ([potential] egg producers). The sex distinction is categorical (specifically, it is binary); it is exceedingly rare for humans to be born with a genetic or developmental disorder such that they do not belong to either of these two sharply delineated categories (and such individuals are rarely fertile as either male or female, and never fertile as both male and female). Claiming that our species' sex distribution is not binary as a consequence of such exceedingly rare genetic or developmental defects is akin to claiming that Homo sapiens is not a pentadactyl species as a consequence of a rare genetic defect that imparts a sixth digit.

Orientation Is also biologically-determined. It has two endpoints, heterosexual and homosexual, and is on a gradient though weighted scale. Orientation is bimodal in distribution—typically, one is either heterosexual or homosexual (most are heterosexual)—though a reasonably-sized minority of people fall somewhere in-between, on the bisexual spectrum. Extending our computer metaphor, we can think of orientation as firmware, as a largely fixed systemic property that is not physically marked. On rare occasion, sexual orientation may vary over the course of a lifetime, but even in such cases, it is highly doubtful that this variation is a consequence of one's intrinsic make-up, but rather, is a consequence of extrinsic factors, in particular, the process of "coming out", which is not a change in orientation, but rather, is a psychological acceptance of one's in-born homosexual or bisexual nature.

Gender, according to its recent usage, is a psycho-social construct. It concerns whether a person reports feeling like a man or a woman, or boy or girl, "on the inside", and is heavily bimodal in its distribution, far more so than orientation. We might think of gender as software. Unlike sex and orientation, there are, as of this writing, no empirically verifiable (physical, behavioral) markers of gender. Rather, one's gender is based on self-report, and is often (though by no means exclusively) outwardly suggested by superficial trappings, for example, culturally-normative male or female clothing and body decorations, physical changes brought on by hormone treatments, and sometimes elective cosmetic surgery. Such socially-directed markers may serve to encode and signal aspects of the inner feelings of individuals, that is, whether they think they are men or women (or boys or girls) "on the inside". For these people, the somewhat more-accurate term "transgender" has come to largely replace the scientifically inaccurate term "transsexual" (since one cannot change his or her sex), though some still prefer the latter. Some individuals report that their gender is changeable—for some, binarily; for others, gradiently. There is no scientific (objective, quantifiable) evidence in support of gender as exisiting apart from the self-reported psycho-social construct it is claimed to be.

These three variables—sex, orientation, gender—are differently correlated. Sex and gender are extremely highly correlated (within sex): almost all males feel like men, and almost all females feel like women, though a very small minority of males may feel like women, and a very small minority of females may feel like men. A still smaller number identify along the gradient. Sex and orientation are quite highly correlated: most males and most females are heterosexual, though a sizable minority of males and females are homosexual, or bisexual. Orientation and gender are poorly correlated: heterosexuals and homosexuals identify as the "other" gender (or a gradient thereof) at more or less comparable levels (that is, extremely rarely). However, transgenders are somewhat more likely to be homosexual, or expand their orientation, as a consequence of hormone treatments and/or mistaking their homosexual identities for transgenderism.

"Gender" is currently the source of some confusion. In the history of English, for example, "gender" was originally (and still is) used in the domain of linguistics. Many languages have markers that divide their nouns into different categories, sometimes based on semantic properties of the object, but oftentimes not. While many languages have a profusion of genders (for example, the Bantu languages of Central and Southern Africa; the Sinitic languages of East Asia), many others have only three, or even two (and some may have none). Many two-gendered languages are divided along "animate" and "inanimate'; such gender systems clearly wed gender to semantics. Others use the terms "masculine" and "feminine" (often, also a third, "neuter"), although assignment to one or another category is usually semantically arbitrary: there is, typically, no inherent property of an object or concept that determines whether it is linguistically masculine or feminine (or neuter) gender. Rather, the terms "masculine" and "feminine" here are just arbitrary labels, and bear little or no relation to men or women, males or females; they are, most likely, merely a very basic and very useful distinction that is re-purposed for delineating a grammatical binary.

In English, grammatical gender is only present in the pronoun system, always for humans, usually for pets, sometimes for other animals, along with a small set of inanimate noun classes (for example, transportation vehicles often take the feminine), and it is here, in both English and certain other languages with (often more pervasive) masculine-feminine gender systems, that there is currently confusion, disagreement, and even some utterly distasteful hostility. As the word "sex" became ambiguous between denoting the male-female distinction and, later, the procreative/recreational activity, it has fallen out of favor in some circles when referring to the former, and the word "gender" has stepped in to replace it, "sex" being used primarily for (sexual) activity itself. Most recently though, the term "gender" has been cleaved from the male-female system and deployed for a new one, that of how one reports feeling "on the inside"—as a man (boy) or as a woman (girl)—ostensibly independent of sex. This new usage, in a state of linguistic flux, is now somewhat controversial psychologically, socially, politically, and yes, scientifically. But despite its scientifically unsettled status, there is little reason for controversy elsewhere.

Toilets, sports, pronouns

All people, of course, should be free to feel, and to express themselves, however they see fit, provided their expression does not infringe upon the legal protections (free expression, physical safety, etc.) of others. But feelings should never be considered when establishing law or policy. (Still, the humane among us nonetheless exercise the right to hurt feelings with judiciousness, of course.) With respect to the issues under discussion, there are only a few areas in which clear thinking apparently (and unfortunately) requires some explication, fully independent of anyone's feelings.

Regarding toilets, there is a ready solution to any problem arising from the inclusion of "gender" as a distinct category that divides people. Each public toilet should be for anyone, and completely individual and private. They can be marked "toilet(s)". Current sex-differentiated multi-stall public toilets can be easily retrofitted in this fashion, with their outside doors removed, their stall doors better secured for privacy, and ideally, a sink and a mirror in every stall. Stalls that also have changing tables, urinals, and perhaps kiddie-urinals, should be clearly marked, and all users should exit their stall with the toilet lid closed (the far healthier, more hygienic, and more ergonomically-designed squat toilet has the further benefit of lacking a lid altogether). Finally, parents should always accompany their young children. Signs like "men's restroom", "women's restroom", and, currently in vogue in some ideological circles, the wholly gratuitous "all gender restroom" for single-stall toilets, can be dumped for good.

And why should all adults stick to using their own sex’s toilet until that day arrives? Because (1) it’s a dangerously slippery slope if they don’t. We have no medical or legal definition of “transgender”: how and where do we draw the line between who can and who cannot use toilets of the sex not their own? Any such line would ultimately be an arbitrary one, and would invite tremendous discord, and perhaps even violence. (2) Even if we do draw such a line, how will we know who is who? Surely, carrying "proof" of one’s transgender status, and producing it on demand, is out of the question. And (3), while most transgenders are of course no threat to anyone’s safety (I am sure almost all transgendered people just want to live their lives freely and without bother, just as I am sure almost all non-transgenders do), those few men who do want to engage in violence against women and/or transgenders will abuse the system, claiming transgender status to access women's spaces then crying discrimination against their false claims of transgenderism if caught. Consequently, (4) rates of both rape and murder, of both females and transgender males, would thus likely increase.

Regarding sports, if a prepubescent male decides to live as a girl, or if a prepubescent female decides to live as a boy, these individuals might be treated as such in childhood sports; the binary may be one of gender, not sex. Once puberty is reached however, then sex, rather than gender, is the determining factor; the binary must one of sex, not gender. The reason is simple: if a (post-)pubescent male competes with females, the physical safety of all female competitors (on the playing field and/or in the locker room) is jeopardized. The rationale here is akin to that for drunk driving laws: drunk driving by an individual may cause no harm, but its risk to all others demands that we prohibit it.

Regarding pronouns, languages' pronoun systems—unlike their noun, verb, and adjective inventories—are extremely resistant to change. In English for example, singular gendered pronouns will, in all likelihood, remain in place for individuals: "he/him/his" and "she/her/hers" ("it/it/its" for neuter); plural pronouns ("they/them/their") will also almost certainly be reserved for referring to more than one person. Although some individuals want others to refer to them with "they/them/their", these individuals have not replaced "I/me/my" with "we/us/our" when referring to themselves—an obvious first step—and so, their expecting others to change their usage to the plural without their first changing their own is suggestive of the stubbornness of linguistic inertia. But most fundamentally, this probably won't happen regardless, because a gender designation marked by a number designation is quite likely unprecedented by nature, and is certainly unprecedented by diktat. No one dictates how language changes; language change is passive and unguided. This is not a statement of policy; it is a statement of fact. Indeed, I'm not aware of any authoritarian government or historical social movement that has attempted to change the grammatical structure of language. Current authoritarian attempts to change pronoun use may be historically unprecedented, and, as stated, are probably and properly doomed to fail.

Singular "they/them/their" has, over the centuries, crept into use in some contexts. For example, "Someone forgot their keys" may be encountered when (1) the sex and gender of the person is unknown, as when reporting this information to a clerk (the plural here may have evolved as a shortcut for the unwieldy "his or her"), and even (2) when the sex, and, presumably, gender, of the person is known, as when teasing or scolding the friend who returns to fetch them (this second usage is probably a consequence of analogy with the first). But in neither case is the plural (used to mark number) deployed as a mark of gender. Moreover, using plural pronouns with the plural form of "to be" ("we are"; "they are") to denote a single person is ambiguous and confusing: languages abhor ambiguity, and passively evolve such that it is minimized; such an engineered innovation is pretty much destined to never take hold. One might imagine that those who prefer to refer to themselves with plural forms could employ the singular form of "to be" ("we am" etc.). Though this would serve a disambiguating function, it will never take hold, of course.

Finally, if one prefers others to use the (singular) pronoun not of their sex, this should be respected. It is surely hoped, however, that if dispreferred forms are mistakenly used by others—which is a completely natural and understandable error, given one's lifelong experience with pronoun use—that offense is not taken, and that at most, a gentle and friendly reminder is offered. It's comparable to when a Christian wishes a Jew a "merry Christmas": as annoying as it may be to be misidentified, malice should not be assumed.

As noted, the distribution within our species of the categories sex, orientation, and gender has probably been fixed in the past, and will probably remain fixed into our future (again, apart from the increasing prevalence and deleterious effects of hormone-affecting environmental toxins). Untangling this triangle in today's confused world thus involves how we choose to face the scientific reality of their distributional stability: both ignorance and its bedfellow, partisan hostility, inevitably thrive when ideologues insert themselves into the domain of scientific inquiry. As I foresee no change in this destructive trend—history, alas, teaches us well—the title of this brief essay is thus less optimistic than it is wishful thinking.

Of course, it would be a better world if all people were happy simply by being who they are, regardless of their sex, orientation, or (despite its unsettled scientific status) gender, without feeling the need to force-fit themselves into any society's or anyone's notions of acceptability, and especially, without their feeling the desire for hormone treatments or cosmetic surgery to modify their natural constitutions. But medicine and technology now afford us these possibilities, and some adults may suspect their personal happiness would increase upon undergoing such drastic and oftentimes dangerous chemical and surgical procedures that often result in permanent infertility. I certainly hope that those adults who decide to take this arduous route find contentment on the other side, especially since there's pretty much no turning back. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that most do.