Gender and Identity

By Romana Annette 11/19/2008

I now live and breathe concepts of gender.  It never used to be that way, but ever since I came out as transgendered and then started to live full-time as a transwoman, thinking about concepts related to gender and identity has become second nature.

The Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary defines gender as follows:

Function: noun
1 : Sex
2 : The behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex.

I will discuss a meaning for gender that is being promoted by transgender groups, but has not yet been made official.  I will not make any attempt to distinguish between gender, gender identity, and gender role, since I do not think anyone has successfully separated these concepts.  One common explanation is that sex is what is between the legs, and gender is what is between the ears.

For instance, when I step out wearing a coral-colored dress and red sandals, I am making a statement about my gender.  This creates a possibly erotically-loaded situation, since I am male; however, while I do not tend to find any clothing to be erotically stimulating; other transgendered persons can be quite different.  Eroticism and sexuality are often forbidden topics in transgendered circles.

We have evolved a unique kind of sexual dimorphism.  As our ancestors reduced their body hair, they also developed differing features in the distribution of body fat, muscle toning, facial features, voice, and even brain function.  We take this so for granted, that in science fiction, alien species often exhibit the same kinds of gender dimorphism, as if human characteristics were part of a universal model.

In my world, sex and gender are separate, though related.  Sex is fairly objective, associated with genetic encoding.  For human beings, one’s sex is essentially determined at conception, and it is not subject to change or revision.  Gender, on the other hand, is subjective and can be difficult to define.  It is an emergent phenomenon that appears during fetal development and the early years of childhood.  It can be influenced by errors during fetal development and by fetal stress.

Homophobia (and transphobia) are actually more about gender than sexuality; still, people do worry about incorrect instances of sexuality.  People can only speculate about what those of us who are different do in private, so they must resort to variations in appearance to make biased judgments.

Some groups, such as fundamentalists, often contest everything in the previous paragraphs.  To them, sex and gender are the same, and any claim to the contrary is a form of cultural defiance.  They even question the concept of a personal identity, saying that the only valid identity is an absolute obedience to the will of God.

Some religions claim that our sex and gender are eternal, defined long before we were born.  I view our qualities of sex and gender as biological conveniences which drive our evolution.  While it all seems very important and even cosmic, it is still nothing more than what we personally make it to be.  Still, when it comes to gender differences, all things are never equal between males and females, due to all the functional differences.

We like to label and define everything.  It something seems very binary on the surface, there is a tendency to try to define it using binary logic.  Thus, it is simpler to say gender equals sex, and everyone alive can be divided up by their sex.  However, our genes are not that precise, so the best that can be said is that everyone is approximately male or female, if they are lucky.

As embryos, we all start out as female; then sexual differentiation occurs.  This is why males and females share several secondary sexual features.  There can be errors, since there are at least nineteen categories of intersexed persons.  One of the most famous intersexed categories is called androgen insensitivity, which affects many persons, including famous models and actresses.  In this case, a fetus is definitely an X-Y male, but the genes ignore the hormonal signal to convert the fetus to male, so the child is assumed to be female at birth.  It is usually only later in life, when a woman does not have periods and does not get pregnant, that doctors correctly diagnose the intersexed condition.

Traditionally, people, who are male, grow up to view themselves as men, and, who are female, grow up to view themselves as women.  Alternately, some males can grow up to view themselves as women, and some females can grow up to view themselves as men.  This is what it means to be transgendered.  People, who just crossdress, may or may not be transgendered. Some transgendered persons fully-transition surgically to become legal members of the opposite sex, but many more are simply transsexually-oriented.

Just a few transgendered individuals view themselves having been born-into-the-wrong body.  These transsexuals grow up with an extreme desire for surgical correction.  However, it needs to be emphasized, that no one has ever really changed their functional sex, per se.  Only certain intersexed individuals, with both sets of sexual organs, are able to have their functional sex changed.

All the concepts I have just discussed are often attributed to subjective whim and cultural defiance.  The word unnatural keeps popping up; some of us have purposely chosen to go against the prevailing culture and even God’s will.  The concept of messy and wasteful raises its ugly head.  Of course, this is all very human-centered, since the rest of Nature has been left out of the equation.

Nature is not just about human beings; it is about the endless diversity and variation of other animals too. Messy and wasteful can scarcely describe all the scripts that animals follow.  Much of the extravagance documented in journals never reaches textbooks, especially whenever articles describe instances of gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered behavior.  Transgendered behavior, especially, can require a lot of interpretation, because animals are seldom able to change their physical appearance.

Certain species of fish can even change sex.  Black mollies and clown fish can occasionally change sex, but gobies can change sex serially.  There is a rumor that, after the success of Finding Nemo, Walt Disney Enterprises was going to do a documentary about clown fish, but they were turned off by the instances of sex changes.

Such variations are documented in Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People, by Joan Roughgarden, a transsexual woman. 

Animal societies do not tend to discriminate against gay, lesbian, bisexual, or alternate-gendered members.  Where dominance is present, animals usually worry only about male-female matings.  Many animal societies prosper when normal and alternate-natured members work together, since such complex relationships can lead to more young living to adulthood.  There were often similar cases in so-called more primitive human societies.  Unfortunately, in our modern world, more and more off-center persons are considered to be disposable.