Gender Abacus Copyright 2011
This was the original proof of concept from which we designed the first wooden Gender Abacus!
This four foot abacus lives in my office; I use it to help young people talk about their gender, and help parents understand!
About Us
My name is Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy. For years, the only way we humans have discussed gender is in a binary, or dichotomous manner; male or female. The abacus was created in 2011 by myself together with my good friend, Dawn Ashbrook. We are interested in giving every person the opportunity to expand our ideas about gender identity, gender expression and sexuality.
​
Why a Gender Abacus?
There are many tools that have been created to discuss the domains of our psychosexual selves, even some that indicate that these domains exist on a spectrum. But the limiting factor of most of those tools is the "single point" problem. In other words, if your place on the spectrum moves toward male, it implies that you are moving AWAY from female. After thousands of conversations with hundreds of gender non-conforming, non-binary and transgender youth, we came to understand that this is not reflective of many people's experience. Seems like an abacus, with ten beads and ten spaces per domain would offer a more nuanced way to describe unique gender identities.