This post discusses biological sex, gender and LGBTQ+ topics from a psychological perspective.

Recently, a friend pointed out that as a society, we seem increasingly uneasy with the notion that two seemingly opposite truths can coexist.

We crave certainty. Categorising people as either good or bad.

Right or wrong.

Strong or weak.

Victim or perpetrator.

Hero or villain.

We often speak as if there is no middle ground.

Psychologists call this dichotomous (or black-and-white) thinking, which is the tendency to divide the world into opposing categories while ignoring the complexity in between. While categorising information is normal and a useful cognitive function, rigid categories can prevent us from seeing situations and people accurately.

Take morality, for example. I believe that a fundamentally “good” person can still do “bad” things. This doesn’t excuse harmful behaviour, or mean harm shouldn’t have consequences, but one harmful act doesn’t erase all a person’s good qualities. On the flip side, someone can strive to be good but still hurt others due to unresolved trauma, circumstances or fear. Recognising complexity isn’t excusing it, but it is acknowledging that humans are seldom as straightforward as we would like.

Conversely, someone can appear compassionate, generous and kind while engaging in harmful behaviour behind closed doors. Good actions don’t make someone good. People are complex, and maybe that is the essence of it.

As a trans man, discussions about gender have made me comfortable with ideas that defy simple categories. Growing up, I was taught that people were either male or female.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

However, as I began studying biology, gender and psychology, I realised that reality is often more nuanced than the binary models we were taught as children.

Personally, I find the bimodal model of sex the most convincing for understanding human biology, but this doesn’t mean that I deny humans are a sexually dimorphic species. On average, males and females differ in many biological characteristics, and those differences are real. However, in my opinion, the bimodal model of sex offers a more accurate depiction of how these characteristics are distributed. Sex is not determined by a signal characteristic, but rather it involves hormones, chromosomes, reproductive anatomy, secondary sex characteristics and sometimes intersex variations.  Most traits cluster around two distinct groups but don’t always align perfectly in every individual.

To me, this distinction is important.

The characteristics themselves are sexually dimorphic, but humans themselves are far too complex to fit into two perfectly sealed boxes. The bimodal model acknowledges reality without denying the existence of males and females. Whether people agree with this distinction is almost irrelevant to me.

What interests me more is what this thinking has taught me. Once you embrace complexity in one area, you start to notice how often rigid binaries appear elsewhere.

Good or bad.

Normal or abnormal.

Success or failure.

Victim or villain.

Us or them.

Perhaps that is why my friend observed something intriguing in many queer spaces. She didn’t think that queer people are necessarily more nuanced than others, but many of us question categories that others are quick to accept.

When your existence challenges binaries, you become accustomed to questioning whether other binaries deserve scrutiny too. This is not me saying that every binary is false. Some things are genuinely true or false. However, many aspects of human life exist on distributions, overlapping spectrums or continuums, rather than in separate boxes.

Psychology offers a number of examples; personality traits exist on continua. Mental health isn’t simply “healthy” or “ill”. Even empathy, wellbeing, resilience and intelligence are better understood as dimensions rather than categories.

Our brains, however, prefer certainty.

Psychologists recognise that people use mental shortcuts, which they call heuristics, to navigate a complex world. These shortcuts are efficient but do encourage oversimplification.

Reality is messy. Categories are tidy.

Our minds, unsurprisingly, favour the tidy version. But people aren’t categories. They are contradictions, capable of cruelty and kindness, courage and fear, confidence and insecurity, growth and failure, sometimes all within the same day.

I’m not suggesting that we abandon judgement or pretend every perspective is equally valid. Some actions are harmful, some behaviours cause genuine damage, some beliefs deserve challenge. Acknowledging complexity doesn’t mean abandoning accountability. It simply means resisting the urge to reduce people to a simple mistake, label or characteristics.

Because not everything “not good” is bad.

Not everything “not bad” is good.

Sometimes there is a middle ground. 

And perhaps in those complicated, uncomfortable middles we come closest to understanding what it truly means to be human.