Non-binary gender identity and algorithmic-psychometric marketing legibility

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recently, discussions of non-binary gender identity have been increasingly featured in U.S. American mainstream print media, particularly mass market magazines, advertising and business editorials, and marketing reports from consumer insight strategy groups. I present a threefold argument relating to this increase in non-binary gender visibility. First, I argue that the media depictions I examine portray non-binary gender identity as a more “authentic” gender identity than cisgender and binary transgender identities, a claim that encourages all consumers to engage in individualized consumptive patterns that transcend hegemonic gender categories in order to attain an authentically gendered self. I frame this media and marketing reification of the supposed affective and consumptive behaviors of non-binary individuals as a result of the parallel evolution of trans respectability politics, targeted marketing techniques, and aspirational economic subjecthood in the U.S. Second, I argue that the departure from these broad, hegemonic consumptive patterns that all consumers are encouraged to adopt enables the development of ever more fine-grained individual consumer data profiles within various algorithmic targeting marketing systems. Finally, I argue that the algorithmic legibility that such discourse encourages renders individuals more vulnerable to the many surveillance systems with which individualized commercial data profiles are often shared.