The SNP’s 24 genders

How many genders are there, exactly? Most people would answer this formerly straightforward question with a resounding ‘two’. Or they might junk the whole gender concept entirely and say there are two sexes. But the SNP thinks differently. According to the Scottish government, there are actually a whopping 24 genders.

The Telegraph reports that the SNP has released official guidance for public bodies in Scotland that collect data on sex and gender for ‘operational, statistical and research purposes’. It includes a long list of all the supposed genders.

The list features some familiar ones, like ‘trans man’ and ‘trans woman’. There is ‘nonbinary’ of course – a gender identity that ‘does not conform to traditional binary beliefs about gender’ – and ‘agender’ – a person who, presumably like some androgynous alien, has no gender at all.

If these weren’t wacky enough for you, there’s also ‘trans feminine’ and ‘trans masculine’ – those born as either female or male but who identify more with the opposite sex. What makes them different from garden-variety transmen or transwomen is not exactly clear.

There are also ‘genderfluid’ and ‘genderqueer’, which, as far as I can work out, mean virtually the same thing. These individuals might identify as male or female or neither, depending on the day, time, mood, weather or Moon cycle.

Then there’s ‘pangender’, ‘bigender’, ‘demigender’ – all of which are variations of wanting to be a bit of everything.

‘Questioning’ also appears on the list, which is odd, because that’s obviously not a gender at all. Nor, even more egregiously, is ‘detransitioning’, which also appears in the guidance. The SNP seems to think that people who once believed themselves to be trans and who later changed their minds – in many cases fighting to undo various medical procedures and years of hormone therapy – are a gender all of their own. This is incredibly insulting. Detransitioners are, by definition, not trans. The clue is in the name.

Perhaps most bizarre of all is the inclusion of ‘autigender’. For readers who are likely hearing this term for the first time, this apparently describes ‘an autistic person [who] thinks about and relates to their gender label – or lack of gender label – in the context of autism’. Even autism can be a gender identity now.

Who knew it was all so complicated?

Lauren Smith is a staff writer at spiked.