Abstract

This article presents the binary gender norm (BGN) as an active and lively concept. To show how gender happens and manifests more as an entanglement than as individual cases in particular communities or locations, the study examines this operation in the context of six apparently unrelated case studies produced simultaneously between 2019 and 2021. Addressing the topics of wine production, biosociocultural indicators, reggaeton, masculinities, normality in schools, and water management, these case studies help show how the binary gender norm maintains itself in invisible ways and responds to any methodological practice employed. How does gender persist as an implacable force that produces stigmatized differences among humans, and why does it seem normal? How is it that, despite all the sophisticated theories and research practices, the binary gender norm finds a way to become gender again? The binary gender norm is familiar but illogical; it is also mutable, sympathetic, and playful. Situated in post-humanist thinking, this article presents a theoretical and methodological discussion on how the binary gender norm shapes itself to continue framing lives.