Beyond the Binary: Unraveling Sex, Gender, and Energy

We live in a time of great unraveling — where old assumptions are cracking, truths once considered immutable are being questioned, and the human experience is expanding far beyond inherited roles and identities.

But with this expansion has come a storm of confusion, polarization, and pain. Words that were once used interchangeably — man, male, masculine — are being rightfully challenged, redefined, and reimagined. And yet, in the process, many of us are left wondering: What do these words really mean? What’s the difference between gender, biological sex, and masculine and feminine energy? Why do people feel so threatened by the disentangling of these ideas?

Let’s slow down. Let’s un-collapse what’s been collapsed. Let’s make some space to remember.

Biological Sex

Biological sex is a label typically assigned at birth based on observable physical characteristics — chromosomes, genitalia, hormones. For most of the modern world, this is presented as a binary: male or female.

But even biological sex is more complex than we were taught. There are people born with intersex traits. There are variations in chromosomes (XXY, XO, etc.), hormone levels, and anatomy that defy rigid categorization. Biology, it turns out, is not as binary as our language once suggested.

Gender

Gender is not biology. Gender is a social construct — meaning it exists in language, culture, and agreement. It is how we, as societies, have categorized, assigned roles, and determined expectations around identity, behavior, dress, and expression.

Historically, many cultures embraced more than two genders. Indigenous nations across Turtle Island, for example, recognized Two-Spirit people — individuals who carried both masculine and feminine spirits. In parts of South Asia, Hijra communities have existed for centuries. The modern, Western notion of “man” and “woman” as rigid and opposite ends of a gender binary is relatively new, and deeply entangled with colonialism, religion, and patriarchy.

Masculine and Feminine Energies

Then there’s something deeper, older, more subtle: the archetypal or energetic polarities known as masculine and feminine. These energies do not belong to any particular gender or body. They are universal patterns that exist in all of us.

The feminine is often associated with receptivity, intuition, fluidity, nurturing, and creativity. The masculine is associated with direction, structure, action, and protection. These are not rules, but energetic tendencies — forces that dance together in all humans, regardless of sex or gender.

The problem arises when we start equating these energies with identities.

The Collapse: Where Confusion Breeds Conflict

Here’s the collapsing that causes so much confusion:

“If you have a penis, you’re a boy. If you’re a boy, you’re a he. If you’re a he, you should be masculine. If you’re masculine, you should not cry.”

That collapsing — of biological sex into gender into pronoun into energy into behavior — is where we went wrong. It’s the root of so much suffering.

What happens when a child feels feminine energy in a male body? What happens when a person assigned female at birth feels no resonance with the gender roles imposed on her? What happens when someone expresses both energies fully and fluidly? For many, what happens is shame. Repression. Disconnection. Self-hatred. And for others, the decision to break free — to transition, to reclaim, to remember a truth that exists beneath the social conditioning.

The Backlash: When Identity Feels Threatened

And then, there’s the backlash — fierce, often violent resistance to this expansion.

Where does it come from?

At its root, it’s fear. Fear that if we allow others to live outside the binary, the whole system might unravel. Fear that if male isn’t this, and female isn’t that, then who am I? Fear that the ground beneath our identities is not as solid as we were taught.

And that fear often masquerades as righteousness — religious, scientific, or cultural. People defend their beliefs not because they’re certain, but because they’re terrified of what uncertainty might reveal.

Everything Was Once Created in Language

The deeper truth — and the invitation — is this:

So much of what we think of as “truth” was created in language.

Gender roles, beauty standards, power structures — these aren’t facts of nature. They are constructs. Inherited ideas. Stories. Rules we collectively agreed to, often without realizing it.

And if they were created, they can be uncreated.

That doesn’t mean throwing away biology or culture or tradition. It means making space for humanity — for nuance, fluidity, self-expression, and authenticity. It means choosing curiosity over certainty. Compassion over control.

What If We Let People Be?

What if we stopped deciding for each other what it means to be a “real man” or a “real woman”?

What if we stopped using words like masculine and feminine as cages and started using them as mirrors?

What if we remembered that the divine expresses itself in infinite ways — and that each of us is an ever-unfolding mystery?

This is the art of living — to allow for becoming. To let the truth of another person be theirs.

To witness. To listen. To unlearn.

To remember that there’s more space in humanity than we ever imagined.

And that we don’t have to agree to love each other — we just have to stop needing to be right.