Brianna Lovely
05-27-2007, 06:51 PM
While reading another thread about labels and what things mean, two things came to mind.
First, it reminded me of a dear friend of mine, who has come from France, to attend collage in the US.
He is constantly asking me, "What means this?" But of course he can't explain what he is questioning..........because he doesn't know what it means.
So, secondly, I was reminded of an item I had read a few years ago, that I think is worth sharing.
So here it is.
About Sex And Gender
(Second Edition)
By: L. Blake, March 1997
Second Edition Jan 2004
Introduction
The common thread running through both cisgender and transgender worlds, and through sex-change, crossdressing and crossliving, is that these are all issues of gender identity and body sex. That is to say they are issues of how our emotional and social identification as men or women plays out against our male or female body parts.
Living, as we do, in a society that relies almost entirely upon biology as a means of identification, we tend to give short-shrift to our own gender identity. We tend to treat the corporeal as though it mandates the social, creating a world in which we want our bodies to have power over the way we live our lives. Absent a social dimension the emotional and social aspects of identity end up taking a back seat to physical attributes.
Fortunately this is beginning to change. Some of the older associations are beginning to break down under force of social activism. As women move more and more into the traditionally men-only bastions of business, politics and science, feminism has shown us that our genitalia have no authority over our choices in career and social leadership. The gay and lesbian community is showing us that our romantic associations are not driven by our genitalia; same-sex relationships are slowly taking their place beside those of heterosexuals.
Even with the current movement away from genital-determinism, one last bit of sexism stands largely unchallenged. We still consistently associate social role with genitalia. It remains our expectation that our male genitalia amounts to masculinity and we hold dear the idea that female genitalia amounts to femininity. Our world continues to hold the idealized notion that everyone either is or wants to be Cisgender Identified.
But not everyone is cisgender identified.
We have a very long record of transgender presence in society to show us there are lots of people who simply do not fit into the either/or of the cisgender ideal. It must be clear by now that the simple bipolar notion of man-male and woman-female is anything but all-encompassing. The presence of man-females and woman-males in every society of mankind throughout all of our history demonstrates that human identity is not based solely upon genitalia. From this we learn the simplistic cisgender bipolar is inadequate to explain all possibilities of body sex and gender identity, there must be some other mechanism involved.
If we are to achieve our goal of transgender equality, this mechanism needs to be understood.
Questionable Wisdom
In recent years a considerable amount of research has been dedicated to the subject of transgender identity, transsexualism in particular. Something in excess of a million pages have been written on the topic and still this social phenomenon remains every bit as enigmatic as the day it was brought to public awareness by the December 1,1952 outing of Christine Jorgensen in the New York Daily News. Half a century later, it is still quite safe to observe that all the explanations offered are totally inadequate to the understanding of this issue.
The lion's share of "wisdom" has come from psychiatry. Terminology like "Gender Dysphoria" and "Gender Identity Disorder" are now commonly used to describe our little branch of human reality. There is, however, good reason to question this view.
First, transgender identity actually displays none of the common markers for being a disorder: People don't get sick and die because they are transgendered, "Transies" are no danger to themselves or anyone else, it is not contagious and most transgendered people have a very good grasp of the reality that surrounds them. In and of itself, being transgendered is something of a non-issue.
Add to this the matter that there is no known aetiology for this supposed disorder. Even authoritative researchers make note of several shortfalls in their work. In "Clinical Management Of Gender Identity Disorders In Children And Adults" (Clinical Practice Series #14, Blanchard and Steiner, American Psychiatric Press, 1990, ISBN 0-88048-187-0) Blanchard's preface clearly states the failings of the current world wisdom. He says:
"As is the case of various other disorders, more is known about the treatment of gender dysphoria than about it's aetiology. It is true that available outcome studies of sex-reassignment surgery fall far short of the research ideal, and it is true that evidence concerning the psychological treatment of gender dysphoria consists largely of case reports and clinical impressions. Objective data concerning the aetiology of gender identity disorders, however, are virtually nonexistent. There is, to be sure, no shortage of aetiological theories, often presented as established fact by their originating authors. None of them has gained widespread acceptance, even within a single tradition in psychiatry; none is well supported by systematic, objective evidence; and none, in fact, has even been subjected to rigorous empirical testing." [page xiv]
And finally there is the matter of what isn't there. Throughout the latter 1980s and the early 1990s while working with TransEqual, I made a point of looking for "Document Zero", the document presenting the first examination of transgender identity and somehow determining it to be a disorder. Such a document would lend considerable credence to the sometimes overwhelming presence of psychiatry in our lives. However, we discovered only what Blanchard points out in Clinical Management; this body of work simply does not exist. Everything I've seen on this topic bases itself upon the unquestioned assumption that transgender identity isn't supposed to happen and then attempts to explain it from that standpoint; in effect predetermining the outcome from the suppositions held going in.
It takes very little analysis to discover how so much work could accomplish so little. We need only look at the beliefs held by the researchers.
When someone who is raised to believe there are only two options in a given situation they won't be looking for other possibilities. Even when confronted with the truth there is an almost automatic tendency to disbelieve. Most people want to somehow fit this new information into what they already know and, generally, don't stop to think their present beliefs might simply be wrong. When denial doesn't carry the day they tend, next, to attribute right and wrong to the new evidence often entering into moral judgments in the process. Acceptance is usually the last exercise in the process of discovery.
We are all very used to (for example) light switches that click to one of two positions; on or off. When we are suddenly confronted with one that has three or more positions, it takes us a while to figure out what is going on. Some of us will reach wrong conclusions about it's function, some will argue that we don't need more than two positions and still others will reject it as broken. It is only when it's operation is understood that this new switch is deemed reasonable.
Like our light switch, the cisgender ideal is a rigidly bipolar view of human identity that has been upheld in our society for centuries. It actively declares that we must all be either woman-female or man-male. It comes as no surprise that psychiatry's currently held "disorder model" of transgender identity has gained acceptance; it comes directly from this ideal which says: "Cisgender is good, transgender is bad."
The Cisgender Ideal is not difficult to model. This simple 4 step progression of rules summarizes it quite nicely:
1) Everyone is cisgendered by default.
2) It is wrong to be anything but cisgendered.
3) Those who are not cisgendered must appear cisgendered.
4) Those who do not appear cisgendered are beneath consideration.
But, ideals are dangerous toys. They almost always exist in denial of some larger reality. In this case, that not everyone is cisgendered.
The tendency to set aside information in view of belief is made very apparent by what Blanchard told a reporter for the London Ontario Free Press during a December 14,1991 interview:
Part of the problem is they're attempting to communicate emotions that neither you nor I have ever felt, for which there is no language of communication. If I say, "I'm mad as hell", if I say "I was so scared I was shaking", if I say "I was head over heels in love" you know what I'm talking about because you've had those feelings. If I say to you "I want so bad to be the opposite sex", you don't know what I'm talking about because you haven't experienced it.
So they are forced to use these hackneyed clichés to try and communicate feelings that are probably impossible to communicate and for which we have no way of relating to. They say "I feel like a woman trapped in a man's body". Well that's a silly thing to say when you stop to think about it. What is that? Like a cat locked in a closet?
Like many other self-appointed experts in this area, Blanchard actively decries the very truth of the matter in order to maintain his own belief in the cisgender ideal -- even after citing flaws in the world wisdom in his published work.
As we will soon see, his "hackneyed cliché" is exactly how it feels and, indeed, most transgendered people can empathize with his cat.
If science backing the "disorder model" doesn't exist, if current insight has never been subjected to any credible process of verification, and if reasonable understanding is discarded so casually, we are left to ask how do these so called experts know it is a disorder.
The answer is simple: they don't.
In the absence of tested verification, the current world wisdom and particularly the disorder model from psychiatry constitutes little more than moral judgment. Without the benefit of scientific backing, their continued involvement in our lives becomes a human rights issue as they have no legal right to step in without justification.
Moreover; this isn't the first time such decrees have been made from within the psychiatric disciplines. For a very clear example, we need only look to the psychiatric treatment of homosexuals. After decades of analysis, behavioral modification, and electroshock, it was scarcely 2 decades ago that psychiatry finally released their hold on the gay and lesbian community, acknowledging only grudgingly that the disorder model imposed upon them was unjustifiable and inhumane. Today we know that gays and lesbians get along quite well in life without psychiatric interventions and, hopefully, we are beginning to understand that moral judgment is not a valid basis upon which to deem human idiosyncrasies to be mental disorders.
In fact, the cisgendered ideal in our society holds true only on strength of rejecting other possibilities out of hand. If we take these right/wrong moral judgments out of the equation, and open our minds to accept whatever we might find, a very different version of things rapidly emerges.
In Quest Of Insight
I've always fancied myself something of a pragmatist. As such, I like to look to the world around me to learn how things work rather than delving into theoretical concoctions. One area that lends itself particularly well to this kind of examination has been my own transgender identity. As I began embracing my own identity as a woman, more than two decades ago, I spent considerable time looking at people and their social interactions for
new insight about my own situation. What I found was a series of basic realities that, when placed into a larger picture very nicely explained the reality of my own situation and that of my peers. As a bonus, this insight holds together without invoking moral or social judgments.
The Sex Dimorphism
My Funk and Wagnall’s offers the following definition of "Sex":
1) Either of two divisions, male and female, by which organisms are distinguished with reference to the reproductive functions
2) The character of being either male or female.
"Sex" is about reproductive body parts, our genitalia.
We already understand how this works. Sex is so well understood that each of us is identified by sex on our birth certificates, drivers licenses etc.
We know that if we queued up all the people in the world and examined their crotches we would find only two sexes. Even in those rare cases were the individual is intersexed, we find either the mixing or the absence of the two basic, male and female, sex characteristics.
If we look at the way sex is determined we actually discover it to be an entirely fair and unbiased process. Our sex is assessed at birth by simple observation of the genitalia. Since secondary sexual characteristics (breasts, beard, etc.) are undifferentiated at birth, they play no part in this day-one assignment of sex. Genetics also play no part; very few people are subjected to genetic testing. Sex assignment, being an immediate function of birth, also occurs at a time when adult matters of social integration, personality, and lifestyle are unknowable.
Given the sheer simplicity of this "look and see" process, it cannot help but be objective:
Penis equals male and vagina equals female.
We know, from all this, that sex is a universal human characteristic. With extremely rare exceptions, each of us is clearly a member of one sex or the other. We are a sex-dimorphic species.
The Gender Dimorphism
In the same dictionary, "Gender" is defined as:
1) (a) One of two or more categories of words (esp. nouns and pronouns) or affixes based upon differences of sex, or absence of sex, or sometimes upon other distinctions (as of animateness or inanimateness), each category having distinctive forms for the words or affixes themselves of, for the words modifying them. (b) Such categories collectively, or a system of categories. (c) The distinctive form or forms used for each category.
"Gender" is about pronouns, "he" or "she", the referent terms used to describe manhood and womanhood. In other words, gender is about how we deal with people in a social context.
There clearly is a social division. A walk down any crowded street will show us that much. We can see that most people clearly align themselves with either the masculine or the feminine. There are readily observable differences between the appearance, social manner, and lifestyles of the two groups and these differences are great enough that with rare exception we can easily tell who belongs to which group. In fact, we can go so far as
to point out that most people endeavor to make their manhood or womanhood apparent to others.
As with our observation about sex, there is something to be learned by examining the way we assess the gender of another person. Throughout history and in differing cultures, those things socially thought to be masculine or feminine have differed considerably, but we have always been able to tell them apart. This we do comparatively, gauging the person we are dealing with against the larger averages in the society around us. This happens in an almost subconscious process of thinking "this person is more like the women I've met than the men", or "this person is more like the men I know than the women". Through this simple process of comparison, based on localized definitions of gender, we can tell men from women, even in the face of cultural and social differences.
Like sex, gender is universal human characteristic. Even with differing cultural traditions we still see differing standards for masculine and feminine. As both history and our busy street both show us, there clearly is a long standing and culture spanning tendency to differentiate ourselves socially into two recognizable groups. From this, we can conclude that each of us naturally forms a social identity as a man or a woman, making gender identity a universal trait.
Like sex, gender identity is a universal human characteristic. We are a gender dimorphic species.
Cutting The Cord
Now that we can see two dimorphisms --one for gender and one for sex—the next step is nderstanding the relationship between them. This insight is probably the most problematic since it cuts right to the heart of what we believe about gender roles of the sexes and challenges the validity of long held social customs. Mustering to objectivity at this point gives us access to some very interesting new information.
In our society we are forbidden to go around with our genitalia exposed.
This means that in our day to day interactions with others we seldom have factual information about anyone's genitalia. We simply don't know, by observation, whether our day to day contacts are male or female.
Gender, however, is clearly displayed in every part of our lives. We express it in our clothing, our mannerisms, our names, and in our social interactions.
What we observe when we interact with others is not their sex, it is their gender. We can tell who is a man or a woman, but we don't actually know if they are male or female without examining their crotch. So, as a matter of custom, we presume to know a person's sex by observing their gender.
In day to day interactions Sex is assumed from observation of Gender.
This assumption is never more apparent than when it breaks down. Unless we are living in a bubble, each of us has met someone who challenges the cisgender ideal. This challenge usually comes as an encounter with a very feminine male, or a masculine female and most of us have come across a cross-dresser or a transsexual in our lives. Some of us have met these people only to be told, after the fact, that we had wrongly assessed them and someone originally thought female was in fact male, or vice-versa. The error occurs because we based our presumption of sex upon the assessment of gender, thinking that if someone appears to be a women she must be female or if someone appears to be a man he must be male.
But this isn't always the case. Not everyone is cisgendered.
For a reverse confirmation we can look to medicine. By observing cisgendered people who lose their genitalia to illness or accident, we can easily see that men who lose their testes or penis do not show pronounced shifts in identity; they don't become women. Similarly we can see that women who lose their ovaries or uterus are not prone to suddenly become men. A change in the genitalia is not accompanied by a change in gender identity.
From these two simple observations we get a clear indication that no essential correlation exists between sex and gender. Our observation of gender does not always lead us to the correct conclusion about sex and loss of sex organs does not lead to changes in gender identity.
Two independent processes are at work here.
Taking the independence of sex and gender only a small step further, my own experience tells me that if a fundamental correlation between them did exist, transgendered people would not. Were sex and gender somehow interconnected woman-male and man-female would not be possible.
So, we can see that sex and gender are not inherently linked. In fact the correlation between woman and female and between man and male, is quite simply the result of social custom: the cisgender ideal.
ZZZ Scientific Corroboration
In addition to the basic social observations above, recent years have
brought us some beginning scientific confirmation that our identity as a
man or a woman does not hinge solely upon our genitalia. Gender identity,
like sex, may well have biological underpinnings. There is reason to
believe that much of who we are might well be a result of prenatal brain
coding, a process that biologically predisposes a person to certain choices
in life. (e.g. left or right handedness)
The seminal work in this area is "BrainSex: The real difference between men
and women", (Moir and Jessel, 1989, Mandarin Non-Fiction, ISBN
0-7493-0525-8). This publication, a plain language compendium of research
data, puts forth the idea that our brain --the home of our emotional
identity-- is predisposed long before birth to be either masculine or
feminine in nature.
Not "male" or "female"; masculine or feminine. Were we to examine the
brain tissues of a transgendered male, it would still be male tissue.
Similarly the brain tissue of a transgendered female would still be female
tissue. It's not about composition, it's about function.
They explain this saying:
Our identity blueprints come in the form of forty-six chromosomes,
half contributed by the mother, half by the father. The first
forty-four team up with one another forming pairs of chromosomes which
determine certain bodily features of the eventual individual, such as
the colour of the eyes, the length and shape of the nose. But the last
pair are different.
The mother contributes an "X" chromosome to the egg (the 'X' describes
the rough shape of the chromosome). If the father's contribution on
fertilization of the egg is another "X" chromosome the outcome will
--normally-- be the formation of a girl baby. If the father's sperm
contains a "Y" chromosome, normally a baby boy will be born.
But the genes alone do not guarantee the sex of a child. That depends
upon the intervention, or the absence, of the other factor in sex
determination -- the hormones. Whatever the genetic make-up of the
embryo, the fetus will only develop as a male if male hormones are
present, and it will only develop as a female if male hormones are
absent. The proof of this has come from studying people who have
inherited abnormalities. It is only by looking at where development
goes wrong that the scientists have been able to build a picture of
what happens during normal development. These studies have shown that
male hormones are the crucial factor in determining the sex of a
child. If a female fetus, genetically XX, is exposed to male
hormones, the baby is born looking like a normal male. If a male
fetus, genetically XY, is deprived of male hormones, the baby is born
looking like a normal female.
In the first weeks in the womb the tiny fetus isn't noticeably a
miniature girl or a miniature boy. It has all the basic equipment,
such as vestigial ducts, tracts and so on, to develop as either sex.
But as the weeks go by, the genes begin to put the message across. If
things go normally, and everything follows the XY blueprint of a boy
the chromosomes will cue the development of the gonads into testes.
It's now, at around six weeks, that sexual identity is finally
determined -- when the male fetus develops the special cells that
produce the male hormones or androgens, the main one being
testosterone. The hormones instruct the body not to bother with
developing a feminine set of sexual equipment, while stimulating the
embryonic male genitalia.
At about the same time, if the baby is female, genetically XX, the
reproductive machinery develops along female lines, produces no
significant amount of male hormone and results in a girl baby.
Just as the six-week-old fetus wasn't recognizably male or female in
appearance, so the embryonic brain takes some time before it begins to
acquire a specific sexual identity. If the embryo is genetically
female, nothing very drastic happens to the basic pattern of the
brain. In broad terms, the natural template of the brain seems to be
female. In normal girls it will develop naturally along female lines.
In boys it is different. Just as male gender depended on the presence
of male hormone, so a radical intervention is needed to change the
naturally female brain structure into a male pattern.
The literally mind-altering process is the result of the same process
that determined those other physical changes -- the intervention of
the hormones.
It has always seemed something of a puzzle that nature should put such
a high priority on organizing the sexual machinery of the unborn
child. After all, its reproductive mechanism isn't going to come into
its own for years to come. The answer is that the formation of the
sexual equipment is not simply an end in itself. Once formed, the
sexual machinery has work to do. It produces those crucially important
male hormones. They, in turn, have work to do -- on the unformed
brain.
Embryonic boy babies are exposed to a colossal dose of male hormone at
the critical time when their brains are beginning to take shape. The
male hormone levels then are four times the level experienced
throughout infancy and boyhood. A vast surge of male hormone occurs at
each end of male development: at adolescence, when his sexuality comes
on stream, and six weeks after conception, at the moment the brain is
beginning to take shape.
But, as with the development of the rest of the body, things can go
wrong. A male fetus may have enough male hormones to trigger the
development of male sex organs, but these may not be able to produce
the additional male hormones to push the brain into the male pattern.
His brain will 'stay' female, so he will be born with a female brain
in a male body. In the same way, a female baby may be exposed in the
womb to an accidental dose of male hormones --we'll see later how this
can happen-- and end up with a male brain in a female body. [Pages
21-25]
If we look past the authors' confusing syntax, this theory (and as of this
writing it remains a theory) may well be a confirmation of the social
observations we made. This and other passages from BrainSex make it
abundantly clear that, as the transgendered have long held, gender identity
occurs between the ears while body sex resides between the legs.
BrainSex also shows us something important about the disorder model of
transgender identity. From the above we can see that the same process sets
up the gender identity of both sexes. High androgen levels during brain
coding, in a foetus of either sex, will result in a man-coded brain. Low
levels, in a foetus of either sex, will result in a woman- coded brain. If
the predilection to womanhood or manhood is created identically in both
sexes, we clearly have no premise for labeling either manhood or womanhood
as "disordered" in either sex.
Enter Society
Recognizing the biological underpinnings of gender and sex still does not
give us all the answers. It fails to account for the difference in gender
across varying cultures and it certainly doesn't explain how both
transgendered and cisgendered people come to express gender in such a
similar manner. So there is actually a third process at work.
This third process involves learning a definition of gender. We may well
be biologically predisposed to align ourselves with one gender or the other
but it is extremely unlikely we are born with a built-in definition of what
being a man or a woman might mean or what it will look like. Were such a
definition innate, we would not see the cultural variations that are
obvious around the world.
The definition of gender is absorbed from the world around us, by observing
people. This process probably begins right at birth as babies learn to
recognize their parents. One of the very first things we learn is that
mommy doesn't look like daddy. Recognizing our parents and modeling our
own behavior accordingly ends up giving us the beginnings of a definition
of gender. This baseline definition is further filled out by a constant
stream of lessons and corrections continuing well into adolescence.
In our modern society this definition of gender also (mistakenly) includes
sex. We teach male children different life lessons than we teach to female
children. We dress our children differently according to their sex and we
correct their mistakes when they drift off the sex-determined path. These
lessons come directly from the cisgender ideal and the create a believed
correlation between gender and sex that isn't actually a native state in
the human animal.
Both cisgender and transgender children get the same sex-based lessons and
grow up under the same sex-based expectations. But always the assumption
is that the child is cisgendered. For a child who actually is cisgendered
this is helpful; it provides them with guidance and early life training
that aids their adult fit in the world. But, for a transgendered child
it is pure sabotage. Growing up in a world where the definition of gender
they absorb includes rules about what the sexes can and cannot do teaches
them to be ashamed of who and what they are. It convinces them that,
because they are transgendered --not like other children of their sex--
they are flawed in some serious way. It tears down their self-esteem,
teaches them to be ashamed of themselves and drives them into secrecy;
often well before school age.
These events occur in reverse to the way we assess an adult's sex from
observing their gender. In children we assign gender from sex. For most
it works out ok but for transgendered children it can make quite the mess
of their self-esteem and their lives. The transgendered state, thus
becomes one of oppression.
Social Archetypes
Realizing that sex and gender are both valid but different elements at the
core of our identity creates an interesting problem; neither, by itself, is
adequate. Since being male does not amount to manhood and being female does
not amount to womanhood, knowing a persons gender (as man or woman) does
not tell us which sex (male or female) they are. Conversely; knowing their
sex does not tell us which gender they are.
It is, thus, no longer adequate to treat someone as a man, just because
they have an "M" on their birth certificate. While they may well be legally
and biologically male, it simply isn't fair or accurate to assume that they
have or will live life as a man. As always the opposite applies, there is
no premise for the conclusion that because someone has an "F" on their
identification they are a woman. We actually need to know both sex and
gender before the person's identity can be fully known.
With children, we need to allow them to explore and discover their own
genders if we are not to oppress them into shame and secrecy.
This has been the problem from the beginning. Our idealized notion of a
world filled only with masculine males and feminine females has blinded us
to one simple fact: there are other possibilities.
By thinking that genitals must always match social identity we have been
working with half the needed information. No wonder transgender identity
has so staunchly befuddled our scientists. Even in BrainSex, a book
talking about the differences between sex and gender, we see the
terminological conflation of sex with gender. Had Moir and Jessel gone
that extra inch, they would have discovered what we now know... that sex
and gender are two entirely different things.
With two equally real dimorphisms at work we actually end up with four
valid possibilities of sex and gender. These four social archetypes or
"sociotypes" are:
man-male, woman-female (cisgender)
man-female and woman-male (transgender)
Where:
Man and woman denote gender, what's between the ears.
Male and Female denote sex, what's between the legs.
When we additionally realize that gender can be somewhat variable,
occurring along a scale from man to woman, more than two possibilities of
gender present themselves creating an even better representation of a
person's identity. We could easily add new sociotypes to our beginning
list.
Most importantly, in a view that offers our social identity equal weight
with the sex of our body, we have a premise to improve our understanding of
the legal and social equality problems that are faced by people from all
four basic sociotypes. If they are all equal in validity are they not all
deserving of equal consideration?
Conclusions
Sex and gender operate independently. We are biologically divided by sex,
into male and female. We are also socially divided by gender, as men and
women.
Sex and gender are separate and universal human characteristics. Because of
this, it turns out there are (at least) four possibilities of sex and
gender. If we resist the temptation to assign wrongness to any of the four
sociotypes, we end up living in a world that can and should extend social
and legal equality to all four groups.
Psychiatry, in believing that only cisgender identity is valid, may well
have decried the "Woman in a male body" version of transgender identity
but, as it turns out, that is the reality of it.
Because we do not easily accept non-cisgendered people, the transgendered
state ends up being as much about oppression as it is about sex and gender.
There is, thus, a real need to move beyond the Cisgender Ideal and into a
more accepting view recognizing all possible combinations of Sex and Gender
as equally valid and real.
Related Reading
"BrainSex: The Real Differences Between Men And Women", Mandarin Press
1989, Anne Moir and David Jessel, ISBN 0-7493-0525-8
"Clinical Management Of Gender Identity Disorders In Children And Adults",
American Psychiatric Press, 1990, Ray Blanchard and Dr. Betty Steiner, ISBN
0-88048-187-0
First, it reminded me of a dear friend of mine, who has come from France, to attend collage in the US.
He is constantly asking me, "What means this?" But of course he can't explain what he is questioning..........because he doesn't know what it means.
So, secondly, I was reminded of an item I had read a few years ago, that I think is worth sharing.
So here it is.
About Sex And Gender
(Second Edition)
By: L. Blake, March 1997
Second Edition Jan 2004
Introduction
The common thread running through both cisgender and transgender worlds, and through sex-change, crossdressing and crossliving, is that these are all issues of gender identity and body sex. That is to say they are issues of how our emotional and social identification as men or women plays out against our male or female body parts.
Living, as we do, in a society that relies almost entirely upon biology as a means of identification, we tend to give short-shrift to our own gender identity. We tend to treat the corporeal as though it mandates the social, creating a world in which we want our bodies to have power over the way we live our lives. Absent a social dimension the emotional and social aspects of identity end up taking a back seat to physical attributes.
Fortunately this is beginning to change. Some of the older associations are beginning to break down under force of social activism. As women move more and more into the traditionally men-only bastions of business, politics and science, feminism has shown us that our genitalia have no authority over our choices in career and social leadership. The gay and lesbian community is showing us that our romantic associations are not driven by our genitalia; same-sex relationships are slowly taking their place beside those of heterosexuals.
Even with the current movement away from genital-determinism, one last bit of sexism stands largely unchallenged. We still consistently associate social role with genitalia. It remains our expectation that our male genitalia amounts to masculinity and we hold dear the idea that female genitalia amounts to femininity. Our world continues to hold the idealized notion that everyone either is or wants to be Cisgender Identified.
But not everyone is cisgender identified.
We have a very long record of transgender presence in society to show us there are lots of people who simply do not fit into the either/or of the cisgender ideal. It must be clear by now that the simple bipolar notion of man-male and woman-female is anything but all-encompassing. The presence of man-females and woman-males in every society of mankind throughout all of our history demonstrates that human identity is not based solely upon genitalia. From this we learn the simplistic cisgender bipolar is inadequate to explain all possibilities of body sex and gender identity, there must be some other mechanism involved.
If we are to achieve our goal of transgender equality, this mechanism needs to be understood.
Questionable Wisdom
In recent years a considerable amount of research has been dedicated to the subject of transgender identity, transsexualism in particular. Something in excess of a million pages have been written on the topic and still this social phenomenon remains every bit as enigmatic as the day it was brought to public awareness by the December 1,1952 outing of Christine Jorgensen in the New York Daily News. Half a century later, it is still quite safe to observe that all the explanations offered are totally inadequate to the understanding of this issue.
The lion's share of "wisdom" has come from psychiatry. Terminology like "Gender Dysphoria" and "Gender Identity Disorder" are now commonly used to describe our little branch of human reality. There is, however, good reason to question this view.
First, transgender identity actually displays none of the common markers for being a disorder: People don't get sick and die because they are transgendered, "Transies" are no danger to themselves or anyone else, it is not contagious and most transgendered people have a very good grasp of the reality that surrounds them. In and of itself, being transgendered is something of a non-issue.
Add to this the matter that there is no known aetiology for this supposed disorder. Even authoritative researchers make note of several shortfalls in their work. In "Clinical Management Of Gender Identity Disorders In Children And Adults" (Clinical Practice Series #14, Blanchard and Steiner, American Psychiatric Press, 1990, ISBN 0-88048-187-0) Blanchard's preface clearly states the failings of the current world wisdom. He says:
"As is the case of various other disorders, more is known about the treatment of gender dysphoria than about it's aetiology. It is true that available outcome studies of sex-reassignment surgery fall far short of the research ideal, and it is true that evidence concerning the psychological treatment of gender dysphoria consists largely of case reports and clinical impressions. Objective data concerning the aetiology of gender identity disorders, however, are virtually nonexistent. There is, to be sure, no shortage of aetiological theories, often presented as established fact by their originating authors. None of them has gained widespread acceptance, even within a single tradition in psychiatry; none is well supported by systematic, objective evidence; and none, in fact, has even been subjected to rigorous empirical testing." [page xiv]
And finally there is the matter of what isn't there. Throughout the latter 1980s and the early 1990s while working with TransEqual, I made a point of looking for "Document Zero", the document presenting the first examination of transgender identity and somehow determining it to be a disorder. Such a document would lend considerable credence to the sometimes overwhelming presence of psychiatry in our lives. However, we discovered only what Blanchard points out in Clinical Management; this body of work simply does not exist. Everything I've seen on this topic bases itself upon the unquestioned assumption that transgender identity isn't supposed to happen and then attempts to explain it from that standpoint; in effect predetermining the outcome from the suppositions held going in.
It takes very little analysis to discover how so much work could accomplish so little. We need only look at the beliefs held by the researchers.
When someone who is raised to believe there are only two options in a given situation they won't be looking for other possibilities. Even when confronted with the truth there is an almost automatic tendency to disbelieve. Most people want to somehow fit this new information into what they already know and, generally, don't stop to think their present beliefs might simply be wrong. When denial doesn't carry the day they tend, next, to attribute right and wrong to the new evidence often entering into moral judgments in the process. Acceptance is usually the last exercise in the process of discovery.
We are all very used to (for example) light switches that click to one of two positions; on or off. When we are suddenly confronted with one that has three or more positions, it takes us a while to figure out what is going on. Some of us will reach wrong conclusions about it's function, some will argue that we don't need more than two positions and still others will reject it as broken. It is only when it's operation is understood that this new switch is deemed reasonable.
Like our light switch, the cisgender ideal is a rigidly bipolar view of human identity that has been upheld in our society for centuries. It actively declares that we must all be either woman-female or man-male. It comes as no surprise that psychiatry's currently held "disorder model" of transgender identity has gained acceptance; it comes directly from this ideal which says: "Cisgender is good, transgender is bad."
The Cisgender Ideal is not difficult to model. This simple 4 step progression of rules summarizes it quite nicely:
1) Everyone is cisgendered by default.
2) It is wrong to be anything but cisgendered.
3) Those who are not cisgendered must appear cisgendered.
4) Those who do not appear cisgendered are beneath consideration.
But, ideals are dangerous toys. They almost always exist in denial of some larger reality. In this case, that not everyone is cisgendered.
The tendency to set aside information in view of belief is made very apparent by what Blanchard told a reporter for the London Ontario Free Press during a December 14,1991 interview:
Part of the problem is they're attempting to communicate emotions that neither you nor I have ever felt, for which there is no language of communication. If I say, "I'm mad as hell", if I say "I was so scared I was shaking", if I say "I was head over heels in love" you know what I'm talking about because you've had those feelings. If I say to you "I want so bad to be the opposite sex", you don't know what I'm talking about because you haven't experienced it.
So they are forced to use these hackneyed clichés to try and communicate feelings that are probably impossible to communicate and for which we have no way of relating to. They say "I feel like a woman trapped in a man's body". Well that's a silly thing to say when you stop to think about it. What is that? Like a cat locked in a closet?
Like many other self-appointed experts in this area, Blanchard actively decries the very truth of the matter in order to maintain his own belief in the cisgender ideal -- even after citing flaws in the world wisdom in his published work.
As we will soon see, his "hackneyed cliché" is exactly how it feels and, indeed, most transgendered people can empathize with his cat.
If science backing the "disorder model" doesn't exist, if current insight has never been subjected to any credible process of verification, and if reasonable understanding is discarded so casually, we are left to ask how do these so called experts know it is a disorder.
The answer is simple: they don't.
In the absence of tested verification, the current world wisdom and particularly the disorder model from psychiatry constitutes little more than moral judgment. Without the benefit of scientific backing, their continued involvement in our lives becomes a human rights issue as they have no legal right to step in without justification.
Moreover; this isn't the first time such decrees have been made from within the psychiatric disciplines. For a very clear example, we need only look to the psychiatric treatment of homosexuals. After decades of analysis, behavioral modification, and electroshock, it was scarcely 2 decades ago that psychiatry finally released their hold on the gay and lesbian community, acknowledging only grudgingly that the disorder model imposed upon them was unjustifiable and inhumane. Today we know that gays and lesbians get along quite well in life without psychiatric interventions and, hopefully, we are beginning to understand that moral judgment is not a valid basis upon which to deem human idiosyncrasies to be mental disorders.
In fact, the cisgendered ideal in our society holds true only on strength of rejecting other possibilities out of hand. If we take these right/wrong moral judgments out of the equation, and open our minds to accept whatever we might find, a very different version of things rapidly emerges.
In Quest Of Insight
I've always fancied myself something of a pragmatist. As such, I like to look to the world around me to learn how things work rather than delving into theoretical concoctions. One area that lends itself particularly well to this kind of examination has been my own transgender identity. As I began embracing my own identity as a woman, more than two decades ago, I spent considerable time looking at people and their social interactions for
new insight about my own situation. What I found was a series of basic realities that, when placed into a larger picture very nicely explained the reality of my own situation and that of my peers. As a bonus, this insight holds together without invoking moral or social judgments.
The Sex Dimorphism
My Funk and Wagnall’s offers the following definition of "Sex":
1) Either of two divisions, male and female, by which organisms are distinguished with reference to the reproductive functions
2) The character of being either male or female.
"Sex" is about reproductive body parts, our genitalia.
We already understand how this works. Sex is so well understood that each of us is identified by sex on our birth certificates, drivers licenses etc.
We know that if we queued up all the people in the world and examined their crotches we would find only two sexes. Even in those rare cases were the individual is intersexed, we find either the mixing or the absence of the two basic, male and female, sex characteristics.
If we look at the way sex is determined we actually discover it to be an entirely fair and unbiased process. Our sex is assessed at birth by simple observation of the genitalia. Since secondary sexual characteristics (breasts, beard, etc.) are undifferentiated at birth, they play no part in this day-one assignment of sex. Genetics also play no part; very few people are subjected to genetic testing. Sex assignment, being an immediate function of birth, also occurs at a time when adult matters of social integration, personality, and lifestyle are unknowable.
Given the sheer simplicity of this "look and see" process, it cannot help but be objective:
Penis equals male and vagina equals female.
We know, from all this, that sex is a universal human characteristic. With extremely rare exceptions, each of us is clearly a member of one sex or the other. We are a sex-dimorphic species.
The Gender Dimorphism
In the same dictionary, "Gender" is defined as:
1) (a) One of two or more categories of words (esp. nouns and pronouns) or affixes based upon differences of sex, or absence of sex, or sometimes upon other distinctions (as of animateness or inanimateness), each category having distinctive forms for the words or affixes themselves of, for the words modifying them. (b) Such categories collectively, or a system of categories. (c) The distinctive form or forms used for each category.
"Gender" is about pronouns, "he" or "she", the referent terms used to describe manhood and womanhood. In other words, gender is about how we deal with people in a social context.
There clearly is a social division. A walk down any crowded street will show us that much. We can see that most people clearly align themselves with either the masculine or the feminine. There are readily observable differences between the appearance, social manner, and lifestyles of the two groups and these differences are great enough that with rare exception we can easily tell who belongs to which group. In fact, we can go so far as
to point out that most people endeavor to make their manhood or womanhood apparent to others.
As with our observation about sex, there is something to be learned by examining the way we assess the gender of another person. Throughout history and in differing cultures, those things socially thought to be masculine or feminine have differed considerably, but we have always been able to tell them apart. This we do comparatively, gauging the person we are dealing with against the larger averages in the society around us. This happens in an almost subconscious process of thinking "this person is more like the women I've met than the men", or "this person is more like the men I know than the women". Through this simple process of comparison, based on localized definitions of gender, we can tell men from women, even in the face of cultural and social differences.
Like sex, gender is universal human characteristic. Even with differing cultural traditions we still see differing standards for masculine and feminine. As both history and our busy street both show us, there clearly is a long standing and culture spanning tendency to differentiate ourselves socially into two recognizable groups. From this, we can conclude that each of us naturally forms a social identity as a man or a woman, making gender identity a universal trait.
Like sex, gender identity is a universal human characteristic. We are a gender dimorphic species.
Cutting The Cord
Now that we can see two dimorphisms --one for gender and one for sex—the next step is nderstanding the relationship between them. This insight is probably the most problematic since it cuts right to the heart of what we believe about gender roles of the sexes and challenges the validity of long held social customs. Mustering to objectivity at this point gives us access to some very interesting new information.
In our society we are forbidden to go around with our genitalia exposed.
This means that in our day to day interactions with others we seldom have factual information about anyone's genitalia. We simply don't know, by observation, whether our day to day contacts are male or female.
Gender, however, is clearly displayed in every part of our lives. We express it in our clothing, our mannerisms, our names, and in our social interactions.
What we observe when we interact with others is not their sex, it is their gender. We can tell who is a man or a woman, but we don't actually know if they are male or female without examining their crotch. So, as a matter of custom, we presume to know a person's sex by observing their gender.
In day to day interactions Sex is assumed from observation of Gender.
This assumption is never more apparent than when it breaks down. Unless we are living in a bubble, each of us has met someone who challenges the cisgender ideal. This challenge usually comes as an encounter with a very feminine male, or a masculine female and most of us have come across a cross-dresser or a transsexual in our lives. Some of us have met these people only to be told, after the fact, that we had wrongly assessed them and someone originally thought female was in fact male, or vice-versa. The error occurs because we based our presumption of sex upon the assessment of gender, thinking that if someone appears to be a women she must be female or if someone appears to be a man he must be male.
But this isn't always the case. Not everyone is cisgendered.
For a reverse confirmation we can look to medicine. By observing cisgendered people who lose their genitalia to illness or accident, we can easily see that men who lose their testes or penis do not show pronounced shifts in identity; they don't become women. Similarly we can see that women who lose their ovaries or uterus are not prone to suddenly become men. A change in the genitalia is not accompanied by a change in gender identity.
From these two simple observations we get a clear indication that no essential correlation exists between sex and gender. Our observation of gender does not always lead us to the correct conclusion about sex and loss of sex organs does not lead to changes in gender identity.
Two independent processes are at work here.
Taking the independence of sex and gender only a small step further, my own experience tells me that if a fundamental correlation between them did exist, transgendered people would not. Were sex and gender somehow interconnected woman-male and man-female would not be possible.
So, we can see that sex and gender are not inherently linked. In fact the correlation between woman and female and between man and male, is quite simply the result of social custom: the cisgender ideal.
ZZZ Scientific Corroboration
In addition to the basic social observations above, recent years have
brought us some beginning scientific confirmation that our identity as a
man or a woman does not hinge solely upon our genitalia. Gender identity,
like sex, may well have biological underpinnings. There is reason to
believe that much of who we are might well be a result of prenatal brain
coding, a process that biologically predisposes a person to certain choices
in life. (e.g. left or right handedness)
The seminal work in this area is "BrainSex: The real difference between men
and women", (Moir and Jessel, 1989, Mandarin Non-Fiction, ISBN
0-7493-0525-8). This publication, a plain language compendium of research
data, puts forth the idea that our brain --the home of our emotional
identity-- is predisposed long before birth to be either masculine or
feminine in nature.
Not "male" or "female"; masculine or feminine. Were we to examine the
brain tissues of a transgendered male, it would still be male tissue.
Similarly the brain tissue of a transgendered female would still be female
tissue. It's not about composition, it's about function.
They explain this saying:
Our identity blueprints come in the form of forty-six chromosomes,
half contributed by the mother, half by the father. The first
forty-four team up with one another forming pairs of chromosomes which
determine certain bodily features of the eventual individual, such as
the colour of the eyes, the length and shape of the nose. But the last
pair are different.
The mother contributes an "X" chromosome to the egg (the 'X' describes
the rough shape of the chromosome). If the father's contribution on
fertilization of the egg is another "X" chromosome the outcome will
--normally-- be the formation of a girl baby. If the father's sperm
contains a "Y" chromosome, normally a baby boy will be born.
But the genes alone do not guarantee the sex of a child. That depends
upon the intervention, or the absence, of the other factor in sex
determination -- the hormones. Whatever the genetic make-up of the
embryo, the fetus will only develop as a male if male hormones are
present, and it will only develop as a female if male hormones are
absent. The proof of this has come from studying people who have
inherited abnormalities. It is only by looking at where development
goes wrong that the scientists have been able to build a picture of
what happens during normal development. These studies have shown that
male hormones are the crucial factor in determining the sex of a
child. If a female fetus, genetically XX, is exposed to male
hormones, the baby is born looking like a normal male. If a male
fetus, genetically XY, is deprived of male hormones, the baby is born
looking like a normal female.
In the first weeks in the womb the tiny fetus isn't noticeably a
miniature girl or a miniature boy. It has all the basic equipment,
such as vestigial ducts, tracts and so on, to develop as either sex.
But as the weeks go by, the genes begin to put the message across. If
things go normally, and everything follows the XY blueprint of a boy
the chromosomes will cue the development of the gonads into testes.
It's now, at around six weeks, that sexual identity is finally
determined -- when the male fetus develops the special cells that
produce the male hormones or androgens, the main one being
testosterone. The hormones instruct the body not to bother with
developing a feminine set of sexual equipment, while stimulating the
embryonic male genitalia.
At about the same time, if the baby is female, genetically XX, the
reproductive machinery develops along female lines, produces no
significant amount of male hormone and results in a girl baby.
Just as the six-week-old fetus wasn't recognizably male or female in
appearance, so the embryonic brain takes some time before it begins to
acquire a specific sexual identity. If the embryo is genetically
female, nothing very drastic happens to the basic pattern of the
brain. In broad terms, the natural template of the brain seems to be
female. In normal girls it will develop naturally along female lines.
In boys it is different. Just as male gender depended on the presence
of male hormone, so a radical intervention is needed to change the
naturally female brain structure into a male pattern.
The literally mind-altering process is the result of the same process
that determined those other physical changes -- the intervention of
the hormones.
It has always seemed something of a puzzle that nature should put such
a high priority on organizing the sexual machinery of the unborn
child. After all, its reproductive mechanism isn't going to come into
its own for years to come. The answer is that the formation of the
sexual equipment is not simply an end in itself. Once formed, the
sexual machinery has work to do. It produces those crucially important
male hormones. They, in turn, have work to do -- on the unformed
brain.
Embryonic boy babies are exposed to a colossal dose of male hormone at
the critical time when their brains are beginning to take shape. The
male hormone levels then are four times the level experienced
throughout infancy and boyhood. A vast surge of male hormone occurs at
each end of male development: at adolescence, when his sexuality comes
on stream, and six weeks after conception, at the moment the brain is
beginning to take shape.
But, as with the development of the rest of the body, things can go
wrong. A male fetus may have enough male hormones to trigger the
development of male sex organs, but these may not be able to produce
the additional male hormones to push the brain into the male pattern.
His brain will 'stay' female, so he will be born with a female brain
in a male body. In the same way, a female baby may be exposed in the
womb to an accidental dose of male hormones --we'll see later how this
can happen-- and end up with a male brain in a female body. [Pages
21-25]
If we look past the authors' confusing syntax, this theory (and as of this
writing it remains a theory) may well be a confirmation of the social
observations we made. This and other passages from BrainSex make it
abundantly clear that, as the transgendered have long held, gender identity
occurs between the ears while body sex resides between the legs.
BrainSex also shows us something important about the disorder model of
transgender identity. From the above we can see that the same process sets
up the gender identity of both sexes. High androgen levels during brain
coding, in a foetus of either sex, will result in a man-coded brain. Low
levels, in a foetus of either sex, will result in a woman- coded brain. If
the predilection to womanhood or manhood is created identically in both
sexes, we clearly have no premise for labeling either manhood or womanhood
as "disordered" in either sex.
Enter Society
Recognizing the biological underpinnings of gender and sex still does not
give us all the answers. It fails to account for the difference in gender
across varying cultures and it certainly doesn't explain how both
transgendered and cisgendered people come to express gender in such a
similar manner. So there is actually a third process at work.
This third process involves learning a definition of gender. We may well
be biologically predisposed to align ourselves with one gender or the other
but it is extremely unlikely we are born with a built-in definition of what
being a man or a woman might mean or what it will look like. Were such a
definition innate, we would not see the cultural variations that are
obvious around the world.
The definition of gender is absorbed from the world around us, by observing
people. This process probably begins right at birth as babies learn to
recognize their parents. One of the very first things we learn is that
mommy doesn't look like daddy. Recognizing our parents and modeling our
own behavior accordingly ends up giving us the beginnings of a definition
of gender. This baseline definition is further filled out by a constant
stream of lessons and corrections continuing well into adolescence.
In our modern society this definition of gender also (mistakenly) includes
sex. We teach male children different life lessons than we teach to female
children. We dress our children differently according to their sex and we
correct their mistakes when they drift off the sex-determined path. These
lessons come directly from the cisgender ideal and the create a believed
correlation between gender and sex that isn't actually a native state in
the human animal.
Both cisgender and transgender children get the same sex-based lessons and
grow up under the same sex-based expectations. But always the assumption
is that the child is cisgendered. For a child who actually is cisgendered
this is helpful; it provides them with guidance and early life training
that aids their adult fit in the world. But, for a transgendered child
it is pure sabotage. Growing up in a world where the definition of gender
they absorb includes rules about what the sexes can and cannot do teaches
them to be ashamed of who and what they are. It convinces them that,
because they are transgendered --not like other children of their sex--
they are flawed in some serious way. It tears down their self-esteem,
teaches them to be ashamed of themselves and drives them into secrecy;
often well before school age.
These events occur in reverse to the way we assess an adult's sex from
observing their gender. In children we assign gender from sex. For most
it works out ok but for transgendered children it can make quite the mess
of their self-esteem and their lives. The transgendered state, thus
becomes one of oppression.
Social Archetypes
Realizing that sex and gender are both valid but different elements at the
core of our identity creates an interesting problem; neither, by itself, is
adequate. Since being male does not amount to manhood and being female does
not amount to womanhood, knowing a persons gender (as man or woman) does
not tell us which sex (male or female) they are. Conversely; knowing their
sex does not tell us which gender they are.
It is, thus, no longer adequate to treat someone as a man, just because
they have an "M" on their birth certificate. While they may well be legally
and biologically male, it simply isn't fair or accurate to assume that they
have or will live life as a man. As always the opposite applies, there is
no premise for the conclusion that because someone has an "F" on their
identification they are a woman. We actually need to know both sex and
gender before the person's identity can be fully known.
With children, we need to allow them to explore and discover their own
genders if we are not to oppress them into shame and secrecy.
This has been the problem from the beginning. Our idealized notion of a
world filled only with masculine males and feminine females has blinded us
to one simple fact: there are other possibilities.
By thinking that genitals must always match social identity we have been
working with half the needed information. No wonder transgender identity
has so staunchly befuddled our scientists. Even in BrainSex, a book
talking about the differences between sex and gender, we see the
terminological conflation of sex with gender. Had Moir and Jessel gone
that extra inch, they would have discovered what we now know... that sex
and gender are two entirely different things.
With two equally real dimorphisms at work we actually end up with four
valid possibilities of sex and gender. These four social archetypes or
"sociotypes" are:
man-male, woman-female (cisgender)
man-female and woman-male (transgender)
Where:
Man and woman denote gender, what's between the ears.
Male and Female denote sex, what's between the legs.
When we additionally realize that gender can be somewhat variable,
occurring along a scale from man to woman, more than two possibilities of
gender present themselves creating an even better representation of a
person's identity. We could easily add new sociotypes to our beginning
list.
Most importantly, in a view that offers our social identity equal weight
with the sex of our body, we have a premise to improve our understanding of
the legal and social equality problems that are faced by people from all
four basic sociotypes. If they are all equal in validity are they not all
deserving of equal consideration?
Conclusions
Sex and gender operate independently. We are biologically divided by sex,
into male and female. We are also socially divided by gender, as men and
women.
Sex and gender are separate and universal human characteristics. Because of
this, it turns out there are (at least) four possibilities of sex and
gender. If we resist the temptation to assign wrongness to any of the four
sociotypes, we end up living in a world that can and should extend social
and legal equality to all four groups.
Psychiatry, in believing that only cisgender identity is valid, may well
have decried the "Woman in a male body" version of transgender identity
but, as it turns out, that is the reality of it.
Because we do not easily accept non-cisgendered people, the transgendered
state ends up being as much about oppression as it is about sex and gender.
There is, thus, a real need to move beyond the Cisgender Ideal and into a
more accepting view recognizing all possible combinations of Sex and Gender
as equally valid and real.
Related Reading
"BrainSex: The Real Differences Between Men And Women", Mandarin Press
1989, Anne Moir and David Jessel, ISBN 0-7493-0525-8
"Clinical Management Of Gender Identity Disorders In Children And Adults",
American Psychiatric Press, 1990, Ray Blanchard and Dr. Betty Steiner, ISBN
0-88048-187-0