64 Who Are Our Friends?
has a genetic sex other than XX (female) or XY (male).” Again, by mathematical
extension, approximately 600,000 of the 300,000,000 people in the United States
have a genetic sex other than XX or XY. When these numbers are combined with
those persons born with ambiguous genitalia, a staggering 800,000 individuals in
the United Sates do not clearly fall into either the male or female biological sex
categories.
Some may argue that these numbers are not large enough to warrant a challenge
to the current status quo of viewing all friendships as either same- sex or opposite-
sex. I invite those individuals to consider the observations of Thomas Kuhn in his
seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Kuhn identifies a num-
ber of characteristics of problematic paradigms, that is, paradigms that are in need
of change but whose proponents are stubbornly resistant to any modifications in
the received view. The outdated gender paradigm that friendship scholars implicitly
endorse with their use of the binary typology of same- sex and opposite- sex friend-
ship is one such problematic paradigm.
Kuhn notes that a paradigm begins to be questioned because of the existence
of anomalies that cannot be explained by the existing paradigm. In addition to the
hundreds of thousands of individuals who are intersexed and/ or have a genetic sex
other than XX or XY, there are other recurring anomalies that the gender paradigm
cannot explain. The most obvious anomaly is reflected in the contention of some
scholars and thousands of practicing transgenderists that a third gender exists and
has existed for thousands of years (see the excellent book edited by Herdt, 1996). As
observed by Kuhn, proponents of existing paradigms typically discount the anoma-
lies and claim that they are the exception that proves the rule. Friendship scholars
can no longer afford to ignore these growing segments of the population whose very
existence challenges the gender binary and the two- sex friendship typology that we
have employed for so long.
If genetic sex is not exclusively binary, then the friendship categories of “same-
sex” and “opposite- sex” are called into question because those categories are based
on the gender binary. Indeed, Harper contends that biological sex occurs on a con-
tinuum, with individuals displaying differing degrees of biological maleness and
femaleness (2007). If an objective observer used the chromosome test, my relation-
ship with Susan would clearly be considered a same- sex one because we both had
the XY pairing. However, if that same observer employed the anatomical distinction
test, postsurgery Susan and I would be considered opposite- sex friends. Current
conceptualizations of friendship would not allow for her to be both a same- sex and
an opposite- sex friend of mine, although in the lived reality of our friendship that is
exactly what she was.
So how does a friendship scholar decide whether a particular friendship is same-
sex or opposite- sex? Even asking such a question implicitly accepts the gender
binary because it endorses the paradigmatic perspective that there are only two
genders/ biological sexes (Monsour & Rawlins, 2014). Such a view ignores the