What is the main message of She/He/They/Me?

The main message of She/He/They/Me is to embrace and celebrate the fluidity and diversity of gender identities.

Who is the author of She/He/They/Me?

The author of She/He/They/Me is Robyn Ryle.

Society & Culture

She/He/They/Me Book Summary - She/He/They/Me Book explained in key points

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She/He/They/Me summary

Name: She/He/They/Me
Rating: 2.5 (386 reviews)
Author: Robyn Ryle

Robyn Ryle

For the Sisters, Misters, and Binary Resisters

2.5 (386 ratings)

36 mins

Brief summary

In 'She/He/They/Me', Robyn Ryle explores the complex and fluid nature of gender identity. Through a personal and sociological lens, the book unpacks how gender affects our perceptions, experiences, and relationships in society, and the possibility of creating a more inclusive future.

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Gender & Sexuality Life Sciences

Table of Contents

She/He/They/Me
Summary of 12 key ideas

Audio & text in the Blinkist app

Key idea 1 of 12

What’s in it for me? Learn about the many possible forms that gender can take.

What is gender? That’s the question at the center of these blinks – but spoiler alert: they’re not going to provide you with a definitive answer. Indeed, there is no such answer! Gender can be different things for different people in different societies at different times. It can even be different things for the same people at different stages in their lives.

Instead of a single, fixed phenomenon, we can imagine gender as being like a landscape, across which societies and individuals can chart various courses. Each course reveals another possibility – and the possibilities are nearly endless.

As a result, we can’t map out the terrain of gender in its entirety; there’s simply too much ground to cover. But there are some crucial junctions at which the possibilities of gender branch off, like paths extending from a series of crossroads. In these blinks, we’ll explore some of those main crossroads and paths.

Along the way, you’ll learn

that there are more than two genders;
what a female-dominated society might look like; and
what transcending gender altogether could mean for society.

The traditional view of gender is simplistic, reductive and problematic.

Before we set off on our journey to explore the possibilities of gender, we first need to lose some of our baggage. Otherwise, we’ll be carrying too much weight to travel freely.

To lighten our load, we must set aside the simplistic, conventional notion of gender that can drag down our thinking about the subject.

Let’s start by laying it out on the table and examining its logic. Gender is typically thought of as a natural, objective distinction that divides people into one of two categories: male or female. If you’re male, you normally have a penis, and you act in certain ways people call “masculine” – like being dominant and feeling sexually attracted to women. Conversely, if you’re female, you normally have a vagina, and you act in certain ways people call “feminine” – like being passive and feeling sexually attracted to men.

That’s more or less the “common sense” understanding of gender in modern Western society. Notice what’s baked into it: a set of unexamined assumptions about what’s “objective,” “natural” and “normal,” coupled with a series of black-and-white, binary oppositions, like masculine/feminine, penis/vagina and dominant/passive. All of these assumptions and oppositions are highly questionable, for reasons we’ll look at in the course of our journey.

With this conventional notion of gender, we can also notice a lot of conflation going on between concepts and aspects of reality that should be distinguished from each other. In thinking about gender this way, we’re mixing up biological sex, gender assignment, gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation – blurring them together into a confusing mess of ideas.

We’ll unpack all of these concepts in due time. For now, the important thing to note is simply this: the conventional notion of gender is pretty reductive – and deeply problematic.

As we’ll see, the reality of gender is much more complicated. It involves many other factors, dimensions and possibilities, which are overlooked or even outright obscured by the “common sense” understanding of gender.

And, as is often the case, this “common sense” may be common, but it doesn’t really make much sense, at least in terms of capturing the complexities of reality. In the journey ahead, we’ll be striving to do these complexities better justice.

There could be societies with no gender.

Now that we’ve left behind some of our baggage, we can begin our journey. Right at the start, we find ourselves at a crossroads, with two paths open to us. The first one leads to all of the possible societies in which gender exists. The second one leads to those in which it doesn’t exist.

Let’s start with the second path.

There could be societies with one, three or even infinite genders.

As we enter the realm of societies in which gender exists, we arrive at another crossroads – this one branching into four paths. Each path represents a different answer to a single question: How many genders are there? There’s the familiar answer of “two,” but that’s just one possibility. Let’s take a look at the other three.

First, we have societies in which there’s only one gender.

Two-gender societies can vary a great deal, depending on their gender norms.

After considering the complexities of a society with three or even infinite genders, you might think that having only two of them would be pretty straightforward in comparison. But even with just two genders, there are still plenty of possibilities.

While the words might stay the same, the actual meaning of “masculine,” “feminine” and their related terms can drastically change between different cultures, eras and groups of people within a particular society, such as races and socioeconomic classes.

Gender norms are taught to children through a process called gender socialization.

To continue our exploration of two-gender societies, and to see how different cultures can have radically divergent notions of femininity, let’s first return to the contemporary US.

Here, girls are conventionally taught to be nurturing and passive. For example, they’re “supposed” to take care of their younger siblings, and they’re not “supposed” to get their clothes dirty or be “domineering” when they play with other children.

A two-gender society can be patriarchal or matriarchal.

Now that we’ve seen some examples of gender norms and socialization, we can ask some more fundamental questions: What’s the point of these norms? And why bother teaching them to children in the first place?

To find the answers, let’s consider a more straightforward question: If modern American boys are being encouraged to behave like leaders and discouraged from acting like nurturers, and if the opposite is true for girls, what kind of roles are the children being prepared for when they grow up into adults?

Gender inequality exists in many different areas of society.

Before we set off into the realm of matriarchal societies, let’s remind ourselves of the definition we established in the previous blink: matriarchal societies are societies in which women possess more power than men overall.

That word “overall” is crucial. If you just looked at the gender distribution of legislative seats in Rwanda, then it would seem like women had more power than men.

Matriarchy isn’t just the opposite of patriarchy, and gender equality might require transcending a two-gender society.

You might suppose that a matriarchal society would look just like a patriarchal society in reverse – with women dominating men, rather than the other way around. But if the anthropological record is any indication, that’s not necessarily the case.

Now, there’s controversy among researchers over whether any society has ever been truly matriarchal, and debate over what the word “matriarchy” even means in the first place. But there have been some societies in which power has tended to be held more by women than by men. For the sake of simplicity, let’s call these matriarchal societies and look at some of their general features.

As an individual, your gender journey begins with your gender assignment.

Up until now, we’ve been looking at possible answers to the following set of questions: For a given society, is there the concept of gender? If yes, how many genders are there? How are they defined? What are their norms? How are those norms instilled? And which gender has more power?

The answers to these questions define the broad contours of what gender looks like in a particular society; they shape an overall gender landscape, so to speak. But individual human beings still need to navigate that landscape for themselves, and there are all sorts of possible paths they can take.

Gender assignments can be rigidly imposed on people.

Intersex conditions are much more frequent than you might think. Some estimates put them as occurring in as much as 1.7 percent of the global population – comparable to the percentage of people who have red hair! These conditions also illustrate some other important aspects of gender, so, for both reasons, they’re well worth examining in more depth.

Ambiguous genitalia is just one of many possible reasons a person might be intersex. Other intersex conditions include having a penis and a vagina, an ovary and a testis, or XXO, XXY or XO sexual chromosomes (unlike the biologically female XX and male XY chromosomes).

Gender assignments can be more loosely applied, opening up space for different gender identities.

Imagine once more that you were born with a visible intersex condition – but this time, your doctor and family were ethically opposed to the concealment-centered model. As an alternative, they might follow the patient-centered model.

In this model, your doctor and family will choose a gender for you at birth – but it’ll be a provisional one, and they’ll assign it to you with the understanding that you might want to revise it when you’re older.

Gender expression and sexual orientation shape an individual’s experience of gender.

Let’s say that one way or another, you’ve established your gender identity: you're a trans woman, cis man, nonbinary person or whatever the case might be.

But establishing your gender identity is hardly the end of your gender journey; in many ways, it’s just the beginning. From here, all sorts of possibilities open up. We can divide them into two additional dimensions of gender.

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What is She/He/They/Me about?

She/He/They/Me (2019) provides readers with a unique opportunity to explore the many concepts and phenomena of gender. Weaving anthropology, global history and gender studies into a fascinating blend of empirical information and theoretical speculation, author Robyn Ryle opens our eyes to the sheer vastness of the possible forms that gender can take.

She/He/They/Me Review

She/He/They/Me (2021) is a thought-provoking exploration of gender identity and expression. Here's why this book is worth reading:

It presents a wide range of personal stories that offer diverse perspectives on gender, fostering empathy and understanding.
Rich in research and expert insights, it provides a comprehensive understanding of the complexities of gender, helping readers navigate their own identities.
The book challenges societal norms and encourages critical thinking, igniting conversations and promoting inclusivity in a world that often misunderstands gender.

Who should read She/He/They/Me?

People interested in fighting for a society that has more gender equality
Those seeking a deeper understanding of masculinity and femininity
Individuals interested in doing away with such dualities altogether

About the Author

Robyn Ryle is a professor of sociology and gender studies at Hanover College in Indiana. She’s the author of the textbook Questioning Gender: A Sociological Exploration, and her academic writing about gender inequality has appeared in SAGE Publications’ Investigating Social Problems textbook and the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality. For general audiences, her essays have appeared in Gawker, StorySouth and Little Fiction/Big Truths.

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