The concept of gender being a scale belongs to social constructivism, meaning that gender is something socially constructed – not biological. The sex you are born with is biological, and that is the main difference between gender and sex.

In Scandinavia in general, it is becoming quite common to view sexuality as a scale. More and more people are open to the idea that everyone is born bisexual, but that you can have a strong preference to either side of the scale – but that there is always an opportunity that you could fall for someone on the other side of the scale.

Research conducted by Dr. Alfred Kinsey in the mid-20th century uncovered that most people aren’t absolutely gay or straight. Instead of asking “do you like women or men?”, he asked people to report their fantasies, dreams, thoughts, emotional investments in others and frequency of sexual contact. Based on his findings, he broke sexuality down into a seven point scale and reported that most people are a little bisexual.

Sam Killerman wrote on his blog itspronouncedmetrosexual.com that “gender identity is all about how you, in your head, think about yourself. It’s about how you internally interpret the chemistry that composes you (e.g. hormone levels.) As you know it, do you think you fit better into the societal role of “woman”, or “man”, or do neither ring particularly for you? In that case, you might like to be called genderqueer, as that’s that you call “inbetween-people.””

“It has been accepted that we form our gender identities around the age of three, and after that age it is incredibly difficult to change them. Hormones and environment affect formation of identity just as much as it is by biological sex. Oftentimes, problems arise when someone is assigned a gender based on their sex at birth that doesn’t align with how they come to identify.”

Ella said she never thought of gender as a scale before she came to the school, but now she even thinks of her own gender as a scale.

“It makes more sense to me now. I’ve never felt quite girly anyway, and to me it’s a relief that that doesn’t make me less of anything. It just makes me stress less about it.

GENDER AS A SCALE