Even today, some of the biggest barriers we have to
break down are those strict dichotomies between sexes and genders. The idea of
males doing feminine things or vice versa still makes us uncomfortable, even if
we have no problem understanding varying sexual orientations, since those are
understood in our minds as inborn and immutable. But there is still a strong
tendency to believe that our genders are conditioned and even determined by our
assigned sex. If we have male or female genitals, we commonly, almost
automatically, identify with masculine or feminine gender stereotypes and
behaviors. But this isn’t so rigidly true, even if many people tend to follow
this pattern, which is referred to in gender studies as “cisgender”. Anatomy
and biology do not absolutely determine one’s gender identity or psychological
makeup in terms of gender roles or enjoyment of perceived masculine or feminine
activities that conflict with their assigned sex and associated gender. Our
perception of ourselves as male/masculine, female/feminine, transgender, etc is
a combination of many factors, which I’ll give at least a cursory investigation
into, though I’m certainly not well versed in the vast amount of studies that
exist in this likely growing discipline.
It’s important to continue advancing the distinction
and nuance of the terms “gender” and “sex”. Gender used to be considered
identical to sex in common parlance, even on surveys, but this was before
psychologists began to distinguish between our biological sex and genitalia,
such as the penis, testes, vagina and ovaries for obvious differences between
the sexes, and our psychological state and perception, which reflects socially
constructed ideas about what constitutes masculine and feminine behavior and
tendencies. Intersexed people or those with what are called ambiguous genitalia
are potentially more prone to having confusion about their sex, not to mention
their gender. The problem people with otherwise normal genitalia have is the
conflation of our biological sex with our psychological gender and otherwise
using gender in the mistaken sense of sexual characteristics instead of what
can be shared in some sense by both males and females. Males can do feminine
things occasionally and even identify with the feminine gender from a young age
and vice versa for females in regards to masculine things. This does not mean
these people are insane or destructive, but merely that they have a disordered
relationship between what people identify them as in terms of what I would call
sexual gender, those physical traits that we distinguish as male and female;
and psychological gender, those ideas that group us into what are commonly a
binary of male/masculine and female/feminine, though there is always room for
inclusion of third gender understandings, not entirely female or male, but
almost androgynous. It doesn’t have to inspire fear or such negative emotions
in us, but merely open up our perspective to the diversity the human condition
has in terms of our ideas about what constitutes men and women, as well as what
is feminine or masculine, or even if these binaries make complete sense in
today’s changing world.
There are a lot of terms to throw around related to
the study of gender as a whole, but for the purposes of discussion, I think
it’s best to simplify this to a few key ideas: gender identity, gender role and
transgender. Gender identity is one’s personal concept of gender, both
psychological and biological. There is a wide spectrum of genders in society,
some including not only a third gender, but genderless and androgynous ones,
among others. One’s gender identity is something that is conditioned in part by
society’s expectations of oneself, but also chemical and physiological traits
that one is born with unknowingly or without a desire to change. A man may have
a higher pitched voice than normal and vice versa for a woman’s voice. These
create a variability with how one is approached. A higher pitched voice for a
mature male is not considered masculine and a deep voice for a woman is
similarly so. With this in mind, these individuals may begin to consider
whether they are strictly male or female as a whole. This doesn’t even cover
the entire topic that could be devoted to intersex and sexually ambiguous
individuals who have gender confusion primarily because of how genetics worked
before they were born in one form or another. This topic applies to those
people who had a sex assigned to them at birth, but feel that does not
adequately describe them or fully encompass what they are as a person who is
both a body and a mind in or out of synch with each other.
Gender roles are related to gender identity in that
the former are at least partly informed and motivated by the latter. Whatever
one’s personal sense of being a man, woman or other gender is, this effects
what kind of behavior you will do, which may or may not fit with social norms
of what is considered masculine or feminine, since a common, though not
strictly so across the world, structure is a binary one where the two genders
have some overlap, but some actions and habits are not considered feminine at
all, such as having a career and choosing to not have children for a woman in
this day and age. A man or woman crossdressing is still considered something
abnormal and even aberrant, but it isn’t so cut and dry. It doesn’t even mean
the man or woman in question is homosexual, but that they understand and
express their gender in this way. They certainly don’t intend to hurt people;
this may explain why many times they hide this practice from family and
friends, for fear of conflict rejection, and ostracism. But this sort of
behavior is hardly so damaging that we should treat those who do it as lesser
people.
Being transgender is a variable identity, since it
exists on a sort of spectrum, ranging from simple dissonance of one’s assigned
sex and one’s gender ideation as a whole to even rejecting the binary entirely,
identifying with both sexes and genders. Some might call it special treatment
if you allow transgendered individuals to use the opposite sex bathrooms, since
it gives them privileges without them deserving it, or some variation of a
claim that they are abusing the system. It is not unjust or unfair to permit
someone who identifies as the opposite sex to use the opposite sex bathrooms
even if unisex ones are available. The concerns of rape are unfounded if we
interpret that the people who have severe gender identity disorder are not
taking advantage of the permission, but simply trying to integrate into society
as a person of the opposite sex, sometimes because they are required to do so
for a year in order to be approved for a sex reassignment surgery.
Crossdressers are not afforded the same privileges, however. Being transgender
in the sense of wanting to change one’s sex to match one’s overall sense of
self as a person is not on the same level as dressing as the opposite sex for
reasons that don’t reflect the same level of need for accommodation. It’s not
even remotely unfair to say a crossdresser who is not trying to live as the
opposite sex and gender cannot go into the opposite sex bathrooms as if it is
normal. Unless you are crossdressing for that previously stated purpose of
sexual integration, then it is not the same category of consideration legally.
Of course there will be distinctions in one form or
another about what is manly or womanly and those who stand out may be ridiculed
or singled out. But we shouldn’t be ashamed of these people, but proud of their
diversity and uniqueness in a world where people are far too often uncertain or
pressured into their gender identity and roles and treat those who differ with
some measure of contempt or disinterest. We certainly shouldn’t be negative
towards a group of people who have a great deal to offer in terms of culture
and psychology, since they do not take their anatomy as the only means by which
they see themselves as a person, but they look inside. We shouldn’t condemn
those who are different, especially if they aren’t hurting anyone but those
that are insecure themselves because they aren’t willing to admit their own
uniqueness. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.
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