They, Them, and Theirs Jessica Clarke
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Vanderbilt University Law School Scholarship@Vanderbilt Law Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications Faculty Scholarship 2019 They, Them, and Theirs Jessica Clarke Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/faculty-publications Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, and the Law and Gender Commons Recommended Citation Jessica Clarke, They, Them, and Theirs, 132 Harvard Law Review. 894 (2019) Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/faculty-publications/1099 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Scholarship@Vanderbilt Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Vanderbilt Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. +(,121/,1( Citation: Jessica A. Clarke, They, Them, and Theirs, 132 Harv. L. Rev. 894 (2019) Provided by: Vanderbilt University Law School Content downloaded/printed from HeinOnline Tue Jun 4 16:03:08 2019 -- Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance of HeinOnline's Terms and Conditions of the license agreement available at https://heinonline.org/HOL/License -- The search text of this PDF is generated from uncorrected OCR text. -- To obtain permission to use this article beyond the scope of your HeinOnline license, please use: Copyright Information Use QR Code reader to send PDF to your smartphone or tablet device THEY, THEM, AND THEIRS Jessica A. Clarke CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................ 896 I. N ONBINARY GENDER ............................................................................................................ 904 A. The Diversity of N onbinary Gender Identities ............................................................ 905 B. R easonsfor B ias Against N onbinary People........................................................... 91-0 C. Convergences and Divergences with Other Rights Struggles ................................. 914 . Fem inist Argum ents ............................................................................................... 915 2. TransgenderR ights ...................................................................................................... 921 3. Sexual Orientation...................................................................................................... 925 4. Intersex Variations...................................................................................................... 928 5. Antiracist and Postcolonial Struggles ....................................................................... 930 II. A CONTEXTUAL APPROACH TO NONBINARY GENDER RIGHTS ............................... 933 A. Against Universal D efinitions of Sex and Gender....................................................... 933 B. R egulatory M odels for N onbinary Gender R ights ....................................................... 936 . Third- Gender R ecognition ......................................................................................... 937 2. Sex or Gender N eutrality ........................................................................................... 940 3. Integration into Binary Sex or Gender R egulation................................................ 945 III. LEGAL INTERESTS IN BINARY SEX OR GENDER? ................................................... 945 A. Identification.................................................................................................................... 947 B. Antidiscrimination Rules ........................................................................................... 95] L. Data Collection and Affirm ative Action ................................................................... 952 2. Pregnancy Protections................................................................................................ 954 3. M isgendering and Pronouns...................................................................................... 957 C. Sex-Specific R oles and Programs ................................................................................... 963 . Education ..................................................................................................................... 963 2. Athletics ........................................................................................................................ 966 3. Workplaces .................................................................................................................... 974 D. Sex-Segregated Spaces..................................................................................................... 981 . R estrooms and Changing Facilities.......................................................................... 981 2. H ousing ......................................................................................................................... 983 E. H ealth Care....................................................................................................................... 986 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................. 990 894 THEY, THEM, AND THEIRS Jessica A. Clarke* Nonbinary gender identities have quickly gone from obscurity to prominence in American public life, with growing acceptance of gender-neutralpronouns, such as "they, them, and theirs," and recognition of a third-gender category by U.S. states including California, Colorado, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington. People with nonbinary gender identities do not exclusively identify as men or women. Feminist legal reformers have long argued that discrimination on the basis of gender nonconformity - in other words, discrimination against men perceived as feminine or women perceived as masculine - is a harmful type ofsex discriminationthat the law should redress. But the idea of nonbinary gender as an identity itself appears only at the margins of U.S. legal scholarship. Many of the cases recognizing transgender rights involve plaintiffs who identify as men or women, rather than plaintiffs who seek to reject, permute, or transcend those categories. The increased visibility of a nonbinary minority creates challenges for other rights movements, while also opening new avenuesfor feminist and LGBT advocacy. This Article asks what the law would look like if it took nonbinary gender seriously. It assesses the legal interests in binary gender regulation in areas including law enforcement, employment, education, housing, and health care, and concludes these interests are not reasons to reject nonbinary gender rights. It argues that the law can recognize nonbinary gender identities, or eliminate unnecessary legal sex classifications, using familiar civil rights concepts. What gender am I? I bet you thought either male orfemale before I even asked the question. And this assumption is called the gender binary. I was born non-binary, meaning my body and mind don't fit into either gender. At the age of 2, I told my parents I wasn't a girl. At i2, I was the only person on my football team without a penis. And today at 36, I can wield a chainsaw 5ofeet up a tree, and I'm also really a soft sensitive artist type. * Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University Law School. Thanks to Toby Adams, Bradley Areheart, Genny Beemyn, Stephanie Bornstein, Mary Bryson, Erin Buzuvis, Mary Anne Case, Paul Castillo, Arli Christian, David Cruz, Heath Fogg Davis, Robin Dembroff, Deborah Dinner, Elizabeth Emens, Katie Eyer, Joseph Fiskhin, Andrea Freeman, Andrew Gilden, Michele Goodwin, Aimi Hamraie, Gautam Hans, Jill Hasday, Aziz Huq, Alex lantaffi, Neha Jain, Dru Levasseur, Bill McGeveran, Shannon Minter, Amy Monahan, Rebecca Morrow, Douglas NeJaime, AJ Neuman Wipfler, Bethany Davis Noll, David Noll, Aaron Potenza, Jessica Roberts, Darren Rosenblum, Laura Rosenbury, Alan Rozenshtein, Naomi Schoenbaum, Jennifer Shinall, Russell Spiker, Maayan Sudai, Hudson Taylor, Ezra Young, the University of Minnesota Public Law Workshop, the Insti- tute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota, the Vanderbilt LGBT Policy Lab, the University of Chicago Workshop on Regulation of Family, Sex, and Gender, and the law faculties at the University of Minnesota and the University of Florida for conversations and comments on this project. Thanks to Katie Hanschke of the Vanderbilt Law Library for tracking down sources. For research assistance and valuable substantive feedback, I am grateful to Maria Brekke, Emily Lamm, Sara Lewenstein, Jessica Sharpe, Derek Waller, Claire Williams, and the editors of the Harvard Law Review. All opinions expressed here are my own. HARVARD LAW REVIEW [Vol. 132:894 Our identities, who we know ourselves to be, is affected by our biol- ogy and the environment, nature and nurture. There are non-binary folks who are intersex, they have ambiguous genitalia,chromosomes that are not XX or XY i in ioo people have bodies that differ from standard male or female. And there are non-binaryfolks who do have genitalia that is consid- ered standard male or female, but our brains have always been transgender. And collectively, we are the solid evidence that there is, and always has been, a spectrum of gender variation in the human species. - Carly Mitchell' INTRODUCTION With stunning speed, nonbinary gender identities have gone from obscurity to prominence in American