The Gender Continuum - Is there such a thing?

Again and again (then again some more) when reading about, talking about, or simply listening in on the public discourse on "gender", one encounters the idea that, rather than the dimorphism or binary "opposites" bequeathed to us as "The" sex/gender regime, that there is instead a continuum, and that we all fall along it somewhere, with only the tiny portion of us positioned at this or that end. 

A concept that the graphic here exemplifies in an image (imagine it being much wider).

check me out, I'm on a continuum!
(that's me in the slightly less flared gauchos, I think)

& probably, lots of folks have raised doubts about this continuum idea as well. I just haven't read any of that and surely I have not heard anyone in the public sphere contesting the model of a gender continuum for any reason other than to reassert the two term status quo. Should it be that there is a great article or book, blog post or post-it note that totally makes my thoughts below irrelevant, I'd love it if someone would tell me about it. Read & cite, so much easier.

It seems to me that in the vast majority of cases, when someone proposes a continuum of gender, that they are doing so for what they take to be a progressive intent. I do not wish to disparage or otherwise bring the diss down upon those who forward this idea, or those who may believe very passionately in this notion. 

Given the choice between the two models (& why not assume that the culture at large will follow my lead) - Binary sex/gender dimorphism -vs- the Gender Continuum, I would choose the latter without a second thought as it obviously provides greater flexibility and, in principle, is aimed at a loosening of the sedimented meanings built upon sex and gender.

A'ight then.     Having said that…

What troubles me about the notion of The Gender Continuum is not all of that positive stuff which makes it a better model than the binary one we are largely subjected to, but simply that if the terms at the opposite ends of the continuum remain Male and Female, Man and Woman, or Masculinity and Femininity (in the ultimately stereotypical, if not necessarily false,culturally prescribed senses of these terms) - then our model forecloses the possibility that there might be positions to occupy which are neither Masculine nor Feminine. Arguably all the continuum model offers here is one strategy to legitimate "feminine" men and "masculine" women and "indeterminate" middle positions as ways of being. As crucial as this is (make no mistake) it nonetheless sustains, even as it might in many articulations repress or perhaps evade, an opposition between the two poles. If they are, arguably still at "opposite" ends, how easy is it to think of them as unopposed?

If the old traditional sexist or genderist model was two points, the continuum model gives us a discrete line. Is there nothing which might give us more?

It seems to me we need either some kind of 'field' model, or at the very least an additional pertinent axis to the one that the continuum allows us. 

The trouble with the idea of a second continuum intersecting the first is simply what it would be a measure of, ditto any third (though a third could allow plotting as space rather than plane). 

But if we think of gender as a bounded field or zone then it might be possible to place Male and Female at two points within it and to place Masculine and Feminine at two other points. These points are not at the edges (maybe the edges just plop you out on the other side again like in the old arcade game Asteroids) and they do not define any sort of absolute end points. Instead those 'poles' were instead something closer to vanishing points. One would feel them as implied within the field, but they'd remain nonetheless outside of any finally securable place that one could occupy. Rather we might imagine movement paced like lives are paced, with efforts here or there aiming toward or away from the various poles. In such a model, at issue would be the relative proximity of any subject not to this or that end of a continuum (i.e., resulting in 60/40 and 80/20 sorts of splits as descriptor) but instead one in which a given subject position might be quite close to both masculinity and femininity, as well as to male, but further away from female and have ways to move within the space thus defined. For the cisgendered, this might be a sort of ebb and flow, potentially unconscious. Thinking of my own life there have undoubtedly been times when the demand was quite intense that I be a man, act masculine, etc. & certainly this has also been at times my own demand. But there has been resistance too.

Without being able to manufacture such a model for you here, I am feeling a bit inhibited in trying to clarify this. But it would seem to me that beyond simply marking this as a 'plane' that one could work it up topographically - perhaps with a 'high point' in the middle such that the asexual or nonsexual subjects might have that which is specific to them in this registered - degree of sexuality as 'pitch'? I dunno. tricky other questions arise, no time for those now. 

Instead, ditch topography and resort to topology. Arguably to conceptualize M and F not as continnum, but as Möbius strip, might be an even better model. By "better", I mean in greater accordance with the progressive intentions that I impute to those who propose a continuum. I think this does a better job than the continuum for a couple of reasons.   1st, it gives a way to render graphically that there is not simply one direction to go in to become more feminine or more masculine (sort of obvious right? just as there is no one way to be a man or a woman or...)    2nd, it preserves an aspect of the opposition common to thinking M & F, but at the same moment undermines it far more than a continuum (which might as easily be thought of as a 'leak' toward the opposed pole). There is much more to think about all of this, and if one were truly trying to model "gender", I suspect that even the Möbius might retain too much of the (implicit and I suppose fantasmatic) binary. But unlike a continuum model, topological figures are infinitely plastic and to construct more complex, more ramified models and even 'figures' which the mind cannot imaginarize as they no longer conform to three dimension space is very possible. & why, after all, should conceptualizations of gender or sex or sexuality need to conform to Euclidean space any more than they must accord with Logic (that is, I take gender identification to, of necessity, contain a great admixture of unconscious desire).

This is a Klein bottle, its outside is its inside
and its inside is its outside etc. 

& before I close, might there be a way to rethink the ever so common statement which some hold to with great conviction and others dispute with vehemence… I refer to the "trapped in the wrong body" trope that is common in the literature of transexuality specifically. While it would be foolish I think to shut the door on biological inputs to any of these questions, I cannot help but to feel that arguments, inevitably essentialist at some level of consequence, that seek to ground the origin of transgender (or homosexuality, and a host of other things) in brain matter, or genes reduce the persons impacted by such claims to object status. While it has the effect of, at least in principle if not in social reality perhaps (compare racism as an issue of skin tone one is born with), taking away the stigma - as who can be blamed for their own genes? it opens the door to medico-technological attempts to 'cure' trans people in advance, or worse yet - abort if tests reveal there is a trans baby in the oven. This fantasy lurks around a lot of the early scientific investigation into homosexuality it seems. I would rather, in spite of the difficulties, in spite of the lack of a ready and purportedly definitive answer, prefer to consider trans people as in most of the important ways that we use to grant respect and rights to others, to be just like everybody else. That is, not as objects simply acting out the imperatives of genetics but as subjects with a desirous relationship to their lives. As such, might a figure like the Klein bottle or certain other topological figures in which it is possible to model an interior which is other, an exterior, in turn surrounded by an interior which is again "other", provide a way to discuss this that avoids the polarizations that, to a degree at least, form the horizon of the discussion at present?

This is a Möbius shoe, so of course I had to use this.
I also saw a Klein bottom knit hat,
a Möbius chair (very stylish) and an amazing amount of other stuff,
from other knitted topological figures
to buildings made on the model of the Möbius.
But back to the shoe!  What Lacanian could do without such footwear?
I wonder if Joan Copjec has a pair?
What about Zizek? 

ADDENDA (17 September, 2014) — is there is a way to add a photo comment, I was not able to figure it out, so here then is an image sent by the anonymous commenter below. 

"Here is one example, as per request." — Anon