June 8, 2026

More and more people are claiming to be non-binary; some of them are well-known like the Canadian footballer Quinn or the actor Elliot Page. The philosopher Robin Dembroff, who identifies as non-binary/genderqueer, admits that it is difficult to define the new gender identities – genderfluid, pangender, agender, genderqueer, non-binary, and so on – because ‘all of these terms are somewhat in flux’. What’s more, Dembroff claims that ‘the scope of gender identities outside of male and female is vast and effectively unlimited’. The term ‘non-binary’ appears to be an umbrella term for gender identities that fall outside of the binary (man/woman). A person who identifies as non-binary may feel that they are both male and female, neither male nor female, or like a mix of the various new gender identities.

Philosophers distinguish between natural kinds, like tiger, rip tide, volcano, and social kinds, like money, marriage, and the age of majority. We have little control over the former; for the most part, we simply encounter them. Social kinds, on the other hand, are partly determined by us. We collectively decided what counts as the ‘age of majority’, and we can, for example, change it from 21 to 18; we have control over it. Similarly, we have broadened the membership conditions of the social kind ‘marriage’ to include same-sex couples.

Dembroff believes that ‘non-binary’ is a social kind. Yet if it is a social kind, then it is a very special one. For even though we have some control over the boundaries of social kinds, typical social kinds are nevertheless anchored in social reality. A ‘soldier’ is someone who usually wears a uniform and is a member of the armed forces of a country. Identifying as a soldier, while living in the basement of your mother’s house and playing violent video games, only makes you into an imaginary or fictional soldier.

Similarly, being a ‘philosopher’ is based in social practices like teaching and publishing in philosophy. Institutional certifications like having a PhD are relevant, too. Of course, teaching philosophy (as Socrates and Kant did, but not Descartes), having a doctorate in philosophy (as Kant did, but not Socrates or Descartes) or having published in philosophy (as Descartes and Kant did, but not Socrates) are fallible guides to who should count as a philosopher, not absolute preconditions. However, that doesn’t mean anything goes. Some people might find the membership conditions on being a philosopher ‘oppressive’: for instance, those who see themselves as ‘philosophers’ (having gained their ‘degree’ from the university of life); autodidacts; those who didn’t finish their PhD; some who study esoteric subjects – and, of course, all kinds of crackpots. Among these, there will no doubt be people who should count as philosophers, because they really do have a connection to the practice of philosophy. But the mere fact that someone sees herself as a philosopher isn’t enough for her to be one. Nor is it what makes her a philosopher if she is one.

Does being non-binary have any similar anchor in the social world? That is unclear. For such an anchor would be hard to reconcile with the fact that one is supposed to be able simply to self-identify as ‘non-binary’. In effect, the membership conditions of the social kind ‘non-binary’ are taken only to be accessible to non-binary persons. As Dembroff writes, the non-binary establish and police their own membership conditions: ‘Individuals are granted authority over their gender kind membership’. On this picture, gender identities are not up for debate; we just have to go along with individuals’ self-classifications, no questions asked. Once again, that is not how social kinds normally work. For example, a single person cannot simply declare that he is married, and expect everyone else to accede in his assertion.

Perhaps, to distinguish them from social kinds that have an anchor in the external social world, we should call non-binary and other such kinds ‘self-posited’ social kinds, or ‘private’ kinds. Is it useful to countenance such unusual kinds? An immediate worry is that, when it comes to self-posited social kinds, anything does go. My favourite example is cogito gender: ‘A gender that only exists when you think about it, or is quiet until called to attention. Alternatively, feeling genderless until a gender is consciously chosen.’ In the 2019 Worldwide Gender Census, there was only one person who identified with this category (a crackpot philosopher?). Sadly, in the following years, no more people came out as ‘cogito gender’. I say ‘sadly’, because I do appreciate this gender for its entertainment value.

Despite their potential entertainment value, self-posited social kinds are far from innocuous. More specifically, they are deeply undemocratic, because their representatives aim to impose their own reality on all other members of the social world; their fellow human beings have no say about it. Tellingly, supporters of these social kinds tend to exhibit an authoritarian streak. For instance, Dembroff writes: ‘those in dominant contexts not only ought to make trans-inclusive classifications, but also ought to believe these classifications even when they are unsupported by available evidence.’ Similarly, another trans philosopher, Talia Mae Bettcher, urges us to ‘defer’ to the first-person-authority of trans people. This would be for transgender individuals to enjoy a kind of epistemic autocracy over their gender identity, whereby their testimony is obligatory for others to accept.

In a profoundly un-Socratic spirit, philosophers like Dembroff and Bettcher urge us not to reason for ourselves about the murky topic of gender identity. The associated apparatus of self-posited social kinds should therefore be treated with caution. And at a minimum, the epistemic autocracy of gender identity, as propounded by Dembroff and Bettcher, should be rejected because it is inimical to the philosophical project. It is a proto-totalitarian imposition on the broader social world.

Miroslav Imbrišević is a lecturer in political philosophy at Allen Hall/London.