Understanding a quote

Question

I need help understanding this quote.

Gender is a complexity whose totality is permanently deferred, never fully what it is at any given juncture in time. An open coalition, then, will affirm identities that are alternately instituted and relinquished according to the purposes at hand; it will be an open assemblage that permits of multiple convergences and divergences without obedience to a normative telos of definitional closure.

Answer 1

It is saying that gender is always changing. It stems from a controversial school of thought (social constructivism) that holds that gender is the public conception of sexuality, so as the public's conception can always shift, so can gender. The problem with this view, however, is that gender is a concept related to biological sex, which is not constantly changing. So this sort of view in the quote focuses on the idea that gender can shift, but does not address the limits to this, nor does it address what the ultimate origin of gender is. It's origin cannot be merely public perception, because there has to be something there perceive.