Gender Beyond The Binary: Circle Discussion Guide

Check-In

Group activity

5 minutes or less

An icebreaker is a powerful tool to help us become present with one another and ourselves. Use this icebreaker to see how your Circle members currently feel. Go around your Circle and share an update on how you’re feeling using the traffic light colors:

• Green (mostly good)
• Yellow (mixed feelings, unsure, or just OK)
• Red (mostly not doing great)

You can also briefly share why you’re feeling that way if you’d like.

Discussion Questions

Group activity

Approx. 35 minutes

These questions are designed to help you and your Circle members process and discuss the findings of the episode.

Have someone in the group read aloud the key takeaways from this episode, summarized below:

• Binary thinking isn’t limited to gender. We have a tendency to sort things into only two categories, or to see only two options—and pushing ourselves to break out of binary thinking can open up new possibilities.
• We often assume we know someone’s gender before we even talk to them (for example, a waiter greeting a group of “ladies” in a restaurant). There’s almost always a gender-neutral alternative to gendered greetings—usually, it’s as simple as just saying hello.
• Even for people who identify as cisgender, gender is fluid and complex. We all express and experience our gender in different ways, and for most of us, some aspect of our gender identity goes against the binary norm.
• We can think of transness as a bridge. Some people identify as trans because they cross from man to woman or woman to man, but there are also a lot of non-binary people who stay on the bridge and identify with both genders, or neither.
• Children naturally explore and express their true gender identities, and we should encourage them to do so without shame or expectation. If your child is exploring different expressions of gender, celebrate that and let them lead.

As a group, discuss the following questions. Pick one question to start with and move on to the other questions if you have time.

• What are some places (other than gender) that binary thinking shows up in your life? What could you learn or gain by challenging that thinking?
• Have you ever been misgendered or accidentally misgendered someone else? How did you navigate that interaction? If it happened again, what would you do differently?
• As Jacob points out, there is no such thing as “just” a woman or a man. What are some subtleties or complexities in your personal gender identity? Are there ways in which your gender expression goes against what you think of as “expected”?

One Action

Group activity

Approx. 10 minutes

Wrap-Up

Group activity

Approx. 10 minutes