Gender (Part 1)
Chapter from “Culture Is Not Your Friend: Sex, Death, Drugs & Madness”.
“I think she’s a lesbian. Just look at how she dresses. No guy would go for that.”
Making assumptions about someone’s sexuality based upon how they dress and behave is commonplace.
We tend to confuse gender, sex and sexuality and mix it all into the same pot, run it though our culture filter and think we have got the other person figured out. We have done is mix fowl with fish and called it beef.
So let us first start with defining what these three things are that we confuse so often.
Sex:
Related to the physical body and its role in reproduction.
Often determined by examining the genitals of the person.
There are three sexes: Male, female and intersex.
Gender:
Cultural expectations of appearance and behaviour based upon sex, but not limited to it.
There are a number of gender variations, but the ones we are most familiar with are male and female. Some of the other genders are androgyne, agender, genderqueer, bi-gender, hijra and two-spirit.
Sexuality:
Who and what you are attracted to sexually, or the lack of sexual attraction.
Now, if we look at the quote again we can get a sense of why this is wrong. ‘She’ refers to a female. So the speaker assumes that the person is of the female sex. The next assumption is that they are lesbian because of their gender expression.
A person of the female sex, is expected to ‘look like a woman’ (whatever that means) which is what the male of the species presumably finds attractive. So when the person does not present themselves as other females do, the assumption is then made that they are not attracted to men. Logical, but not necessarily correct.
What if the person is transgender? They could be a pre-op FTM (female to male) transsexual, genderqueer or agender. Or, it could be a slightly feminine looking heterosexual male with a serious case of man boobs. If it is, then please do not offer him helpful hints on how to dress to attract a man, or ask if he is a lesbian. That poor guy has enough to deal with. So, just be careful with how you approach people. Your gaydar could be defunct.
But why do we make these assumptions in the first place?
“Heteronormativity is the belief that people fall into distinct and complementary genders (man and woman) with natural roles in life. It assumes that heterosexuality is the only sexual orientation or only norm, and states that sexual and marital relations are most (or only) fitting between people of opposite sexes.”
Or, as I like to put it for the sake of simplicity:
Heteronormativity: The curious idea that your genitals dictate your behaviour. Share on X
Now you know what it means when someone tells you ‘that’s not very ladylike” or tells you to ‘man up”. What they are doing is reminding you to act like your genitals.
…and then they shake their heads and wonder why the world is being run by dicks and pussies.
Sex Chromosomes And Intersex
“But everybody knows that women have XX chromosomes and men have XY, so there’s really nothing to talk about.”
Actually, nature is a lot more complex than that. And what ‘everybody knows’ in this case, is false. Although these are the most common sex chromosome varieties, there are many others. Such as 45X or 45Y (sex monosomies), or 47XXX, 47XYY, 47XXY etc. (sex polysomies).
You could say that if there is a Y chromosome present, then it is a male, and anything else then must be female. But this is too simplistic, and it completely overlooks the third sex – intersex.
“Intersex is a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male.” – Intersex Society of North America (ISNA)
So, what happens when a child is born and the doctors can not immediately answer the question “is it a boy or a girl”? We tend to think that this would be easy to do. All you have to do is check if there is a tap or a funnel present, job done. But what if there is both a tap and a funnel, or neither?
Only a few years back the standard approach would be to surgically alter the child to make it appear female as that is easier to do. Especially if the child has a tap smaller than 1cm.
“Is it a boy? I thought I saw a penis.”
“Nah, it’s just a big clit. Too big actually, but we’ll fix that.”
Thankfully, this practice of surgically altering healthy babies to fit into a socially acceptable gender mould is one that is dying away. In 2015 Malta became the first country to completely outlaw the practice. Hopefully, other countries will soon follow their example.
Some intersex children appear as normal boys or girls at birth, but may later discover that they are not like everyone else. Those with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS) have XY chromosomes but appear female and are raised as females. It is only during puberty that they discover they are different when they are unable to menstruate. Most of these women are born without reproductive organs and are infertile.
Another interesting intersex condition is the güevedoce (meaning ‘penis at twelve’). The medical term is 5-alpha-reductase deficiency. This condition is especially prevalent in the small community of Las Salinas in the Dominican Republic where children who at birth appear female and who are raised as females, change sex at puberty when they develop male genitalia.
© Merlyn Gabriel Miller
