the significance of anatomical gender
There are a lot of things in this world I don’t know much about but unfortunately I don’t think I need to be an expert to comment. One thing that I’m pretty clear about, is that parents who listen to their children and take them seriously, cannot justly be accused of ‘child abuse’.
I have never been under the impression that anatomical gender is massively significant. I know it determines our biological input into any potential breeding activity. I know that every culture generalises about the roles that each person of a particular anatomical gender is likely to have. But in terms of the way life is lived, in terms of the way personality is expressed, in terms of the emotional and intellectual characteristics of each individual, there is so much overlap that I couldn’t possible view gender as a black and white issue.
For those of you who are a fan of the strict religious “God created man and woman” line, I’m not sure why the intelligent design included hermaphrodites, who are born with both ovarian and testicular formations. If little ‘errors’ like this can creep into the absolute division of gender, why is it beyond comprehension that some people may feel they got the completely ‘wrong’ body bits?
There is a fantastic diagram, the Genderbread Person (a work in progress), that goes some way to describing the myriad possibilities of gender and sexuality. Have a look at it and think about where you, and the people you know, lie on each of the handy slidey scales. In terms of gender identity, it’s interesting to note that I would place myself somewhere near the bottom of both slides – I’m in an anatomically female body but I have no sense that I wouldn’t feel equally comfortable in a male body. I suspect that’s why gender has never seemed massively significant to me personally.
But I don’t assume that every other woman on the planet feels the same way. From what I understand, many women feel strongly about being anatomically female. So it’s not an enormous leap of imagination that some males could feel strongly about being anatomically female, or some females could feel strongly about being anatomically male. We don’t need to rely on my imagination though. Here’s one post with personal evidence and a link to scientific evidence.
I’m not suggesting that “three and four-year-old children commonly raise … “gender identity questions””. I suspect the vast majority of them have absolutely no need to. But in the rare case where a child does specifically ask to be treated as a particular gender for a period of time that would make it more than a ‘pretending to be a cat’ phase, I personally would be more concerned about parents who refused to listen and tried to force their child to be whatever they assume she or he should be. But I won’t even suggest that this would be ‘child abuse’, because that would be slandering and degrading the whole, incredibly complex and serious situation, that any sensible family should evaluate with the help of experts, and with careful consideration to the needs of their individual child.
There is a documented case of a boy, with a male gender identity, being brought up as a girl: David Reimer. He fought it. I don’t think it is possible for an abusive parent to manage against the child’s will.
Have a look at Pasupaditasi’s blog, about her own daughter (who has testicles at the moment).
Oh, and Galatians 3: In Christ there is no Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female.
LikeLike
Thanks! I’ll definitely have a look at that blog.
LikeLike
I can’t find it, do you know what the correct spelling is?
LikeLike
I should have left a link. Here it is: http://pasupatidasi.wordpress.com/ I thought, but I spelled it- Oh.
Thank you for the ping.
LikeLike
This is as much about the identity of the individual as it is about the accepted norm within a society. It is generally expected, that gender is defined by our reproductive organs. However, the stereotypes people have about gender are often amalgams of a bunch of other attributes most of them even less significant, than the reproductive organs.
Men are supposed to be stronger and taller than females, wich in general applies, but not nearly as often to claim it is a norm everybody should be fitted in. Such norms cause anxiety not only to tall, or strong women but also to short, or weak men. In some cultures men are also thought to be more intelligent, even though there is no reason to come to this conclusion, other than the false positive, that men in those cultures are often better educated. In my opinion this invention is the attempt of the weak short men to feel equal with the tall strong men. Even certain colours are attributed to a gender.
In many cultures men are expected to not show emotions, wich leads to emotional men to seek feminine gender identity. However, if that is the only way they are able to express their emotions it is better that they found a way to do so through different gender identity, than that they abide to the macho expectations and finally reach a culmination point where all the suppressed emotions come out in a conflagaration of mad actions, or simply self destructive behaviour.
Some parents are silly. They think, that when a little boy plays with toy car it is a sign of male gender identity and if a little girl plays with a doll it is a sign of feminine identity, somehow inherently manifesting because of what reproductive organs or cromosomes these children have. What about a kid that plays with a toy horse? Today in western society it is mostly girls who go riding and tend to horses while boys play with engines, but for thousands of years horses were part of the realm of male identity. Parents also think they can controll, or as they percieve it, protect their children from a bunch of stuff that happens to the child as a result of so many different accumlative factors, that they possibly can not define such development of the individual. Like, how the gender identity will be formed. Even though the parents cannot “program” their child to develope a certain kind of identity, they may cause terrible emotional wounds, by resisting in vain the natural development of an individual. And the surrounding culture may also cause terrible scars, by trying to fit a developing person into a certain kind of norm, or role.
Little children who try out different identities will propably grow up to be more empathetic adults, if their experiments are not judged, or shunned in horror. Since, that sort of panic reaction might lead to them have a emotional life, where they percieve other people expressing different identities from the social norm as some sort of abominations.
Most trouble about gender identity seems to be derived from people putting too much weight on the gender identity and from being too eager to define what kind of identity other people should be allowed to manifest. Not from the fact that there is a variety of gender identities in existance. What should a gender identity define in human life? What clothes are we allowed to wear? Who gets to marry whom? What professions a person may pursue? How much education a person may have? Who does all the chores in a household? Who decides what to do with the family money? I think none of these are restrictions suitable for the modern world.
We have had a bunch of women cosmonauts and astronauts, as well as men, but would it be too much for the general public, if we had an astronaut representing some other gender identity, and if so, why?
A nother rather long comment, but you do write thought provoking stuff.
LikeLike
Thanks Raut! I enjoy your carefully considered thoughts on every subject, you always bring new angles and questions. I think with the internationalisation of the world, people are realising how culture specific their understanding of things like gender are. We’re so lucky to live in the internet age – information on everything!!
LikeLike
I really like this post. It made me think of iO Tillett Wright’s experiences. She lived as a boy for a few years and describes how this wasn’t a problem in the milieu she grew up in. She’s on TED.
http://www.ted.com/…/io_tillett_wright_fifty_shades_of_gay.html
LikeLike
That looks really interesting! Thanks for the link!
LikeLike
I know nothing about this stuff. I have a willy. I am a boy. You don’t so you are a girl.
If you have both, penis/testicles and vagina – a la Castor Semenya – you fit somewhere in between.
Boys and girls can mostly do the same things in the workplace and on the sports field.
Girls can go to space, boys can be nurses.Girls can lay bricks, men can make cakes.
Girls can be boxers, boys can be dressmakers.
Girls and boys can be soldiers sailors and airmen
But..and it is a bit BUT….Girls can have babies. Boys can’t.
Did I miss anything?
LikeLike
That’s pretty much what I said. But much more poetic 🙂
LikeLike
Ah, well, you see, I operate on the straightforward principle of KISS Keep-It-Simple-Stupid.
Oh, and when I referred to a Big But I want to point out there was only only T involved.
Oooh…weekend’s almost here!
LikeLike
“Boys” can have babies with “girls”. 🙂
LikeLike
And ‘practicing’ is half the fun, right?
LikeLike
Haha. What do you mean “half”? A friend of mine used to say, that he likes children, it is only the ikky way to make them, wich holds him back. For me it is more like the opposite. Thank gods (as a figure of speaking), we live in an age when the contraception works quite well. Alltough they tell me abstinence works even better, but that sounds a bit too much like saying, not sailing works better than life jackets. It may do that, but you loose the all the fun.
LikeLike
Well, in this case half is used in the colloquial sense. 😉
My mother began to nag for grandchildren after we were married, as mothers are wont to do, and this was where the ‘practicing’ saying originated in our house.
After much pestering she eventually gave her frustration full vent one night over the phone,
“How much more darn practice do you need, son, you’ve been married for two years, for goodness sake!”
Lol…Mothers!
LikeLike
Don’t put yourself down, it was indeed simple, but it was only a little bit stupid.
Oh, and when you referred to Big But, you actually typed ‘bit BUT’ – where’s that damned edit button and your glasses.
LikeLike
Silly wisp … of course it’s important. If you don’t conform to the pack you get ostracised by the bigger/stronger. Mavericks in any group are estranged and individualists often shoved out of the herd.
The ‘intelligent design’ must have incorporated hermaphrodites and things deliberately or it wouldn’t have been design, now, would it? And God of course (being omnipotent) couldn’t possibly make a mistake, not even deliberately. Perhaps being three of Him one of Him could have snuck off and done it without telling the other 66% of the Trinity but I think omniscience would kybosh that too. Damn.
People in the ‘wrong body’? Doesn’t make sense in the modern Christian franchises but does in context of reincarnation.
Choice of toys could be simple social conditioning. Would a boy play with dollies, or a wee girl get herself a machine-gun or cannon if kept isolated but free to choose?
“Daddy …”
“Yes, little Virginia?”
“Daddy … Mummy isn’t due for months yet, so why are you buying all those pink dresses and dollies?”
“Our wee baby, when she comes, has got to have clothes and toys, my Darling Child.”
“But Mummy refused the scans and we just don’t know, Daddy—what if it’s a boy?”
“Then he’ll wear the pink dresses and play with the dolls and I’ll teach him karate!”
LikeLike
Thanks Argus! That’s one of the weirder comments I’ve received, and I do like being called ‘silly wisp’.
“Perhaps being three of Him one of Him could have snuck off and done it without telling the other 66% of the Trinity.” That’s genius! Maybe we’re not understanding omniscience correctly and this accounts for some of the slight discrepancies! Maybe it’s logical after all.
LikeLike
Weird? I like that—recognition, and in my own lifetime (sniff) there’s hope for me after all …
LikeLike