Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how beliefs around sex and gender are changing and how these changes are generating confusion and upheaval in society particularly in the United States where I live. Acceptable gendered expression is rapidly changing on individual and collective levels. In the confusion created by changing norms, gender-related constructs are being weaponized against us by people and systems with power interests. We have choice to believe those who would turn us against our differences, feeding on anger, fear, and aggression. Or we can be ever more curious and explore greater possibilities in emerging human potential through our differences and divergent expression. Change is happening; standing still is not an option. I choose to be curious and open to deeper understanding.
Some confusion and resistance are understandable. I know I’m confused. Things once generally considered to be binary - male/female, man/woman, masculine/feminine, - are now emerging in our human understanding as much more complex than those old simplistic either/or choices. People express themselves across a broad spectrum of identification including biology, gender, and sexuality. These spectrums, recently hidden to most, have emerged into mainstream human awareness.
And wow, people are confused! Many struggle to imagine that what seemed black and white is now emerging through a prism lens as a vast array of colors of human variance.
Our language hasn’t changed enough to help us talk about these things. We have the words sex and gender that we try to use to talk about a complex group of things: human biology, how people feel about their biology, how they are attracted and behave as sexual beings, and how individual humans experience themselves and claim identities. Society assigns roles, qualities, status, and value based on sex and gender. We try to describe all this complexity using just these two words, sex and gender, which are inadequate to the task. No wonder so many of us are confused!
When I started writing this, I initially intended to write about my own confusion within cultural expression of femininity and power. More specifically, I’ve been thinking about how I’ve worn clothes that help me fit in rather than for my enjoyment and self-expression. But I found I needed to explore the background around what gender and sexual identity means before I can explore the how masculine and feminine expression cause constraints in our society…or affects what clothes I wear. Here’s what I found as I looked more deeply.
Even though I trained as a physician, I had forgotten that biological sex is a spectrum, not an either/or situation. Many components of our genetics and fetal development affect our biology. These include our sex chromosomes - XY for male, XX for female plus many other combinations of X and Y. We are affected by complex systems of chemicals and hormones (maternal and fetal), all carefully timed to bring about development of internal reproductive organs and external genitalia. These genes, and internal, and external structures don’t always align as the same sex, but can be expressed in many different combinations. Regardless of internal organs or genetic code, sex is assigned at birth based on what the external genitalia look like. Someone exclaims “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” This is recorded in the medical record and one’s cultural place is proclaimed.
Although for most people the gender assigned to them at birth aligns with the rest of their biology, about 1.7% of people are intersex1. Intersex is the proper term now for people who have biologic characteristics that place them in categories of being in between male and female, having some characteristics of each. One example, a baby might have female chromosomes (genes), but have male appearing external genitalia or any number of other variations. Many types of intersex biology are possible. All together people with these biologic variations make up at least 1.7% of people. So, biologic sex exists on a spectrum. It is not a binary thing like we have been taught to believe. Our language fails us. They’re a boy, they’re a girl, they’re a…human.
I don’t know about you, but I find an inner discord when I don’t know the sex of someone I’m interacting with. I’m aware of it and find it curious and a bit humbling because I believe it shouldn’t really matter but my mind latches on and wants to know. I suspect this disconcerted feeling is true for most people, although most probably haven’t thought about it. Why is knowing someone’s sex so important that it’s the first label we give a newborn baby? Do we need to know sex to know how to indoctrinate them into their appropriate social position? Or to decide whether they’re in the category of people we might want to have sex with? Or to decide whether that person might be an assault risk? Or to decide whether that person should be admitted or excluded in whatever activity or situation is at hand? This compulsion to relate to another based on their sex seems deeply embedded in the enculturation of our brains and is difficult to escape.
We’ve talked about how biology is not an either/or proposition for humans. Almost 2% of us have biologic traits that are somewhere on a continuum. That’s kind of mind blowing. So, what about gender? Currently, the term gender usually refers to how a person identifies themselves related to assigned birth sex. Gender based language is also used by power systems to impose roles, value, and status upon people based on perceived sex. Many use the word gender interchangeably with sex. I’m going to use gender to mean a person’s self identification related to their birth assigned sex. According to recent survey data, about 1% of the American population identify as transgender2. That’s about 2.6 million people or about 1 in 100 who feel uncomfortable enough, dysphoric enough with the biological sex of the body that they are in, that they want to change it. They strongly identify as different from the sex they were assigned at birth. That’s a lot of people. Still others don’t really identify with a sex or gender, identifying as gender fluid, non-binary, or other descriptors to try to create identities for themselves that feel like who they are. Sex and gender are more than male/female. People experience themselves across a spectrum of possibilities and many are no longer accepting binary boxes.
Another spectrum of human expression is through sexual orientation, which is about who one is attracted to sexually. This is another layer of human expression that is different than biologic sex or gender identity. Another recent survey affiliated with the US census found 3.3% of the US population identifies as gay or lesbian, and 4.4% identify as bisexual3. Another 1.9% identify as other and 2.1% say they don’t know. Again, a lot of people identify as something other than heterosexual.
My point with this discussion is that the binary ideals of sex and gender that the greater culture is fighting about are myths. Human expression is vast and diverse. Most of sex, gender and sexual orientation expression seem to be inborn, hardwired human traits that people probably don’t have a lot of choice around. So, why are we fighting about these things? I suppose we humans fight about anything perceived as other whether it be skin color, language, religion, you name it. Isn’t it ridiculous and futile to fight over things that no one can control?
Personally, I hadn’t given sex, gender, or sexual orientation very much thought for much of my life, because I fall within the majority range of people who identify with their sex assigned at birth. I’m a woman, I’m attracted to men. The world is arranged for that to be considered normal. I didn’t need to think about it because my identity fits the culture I found myself in.
Instead, I focused on the male-female issues, particularly the lower status of most women in western society and the struggle for women’s rights and freedoms. Although women gained the right to vote in 1920 with the passage of the 19th amendment and we made steady gains into most professions during my lifetime, I experienced the career struggle firsthand; that was personal. Women still lack equality under US law, struggle with issues around motherhood, caring for children, and we lack the rights to reproductive health care, equal pay, and general safety from assault and harassment. I’ve personally seen many gains. I can now get a credit card without my husband or father’s permission which I couldn’t in the early 1980s. I have better job opportunities and can act with more autonomy. But we have a long way to go to full equality. Thus, I was focused on gendered roles imposed by society because those affected me in ways I noticed. I rebelled against them.
Although I recognized that many things imposed by society as gendered made little sense, but I hadn’t realized that gender and sex aren’t even binaries. They are continuums, they are spectrums. We can’t create a society based on equality if we’re only thinking about male-female equality or fighting for narrowly defined “women’s rights”. True equality will need to flow across all of human expression.
I am grateful for the people who refuse to be stuffed into binary boxes. They bring all of us deeper understanding of ourselves as humans through their insistence on being themselves, calling us to more freedom. The binary boxes imprison us all in rigid and limited expressions of ourselves, perpetuating the systems that enforce sex and gender stereotypes. Let’s not be distracted by those who want to leverage human differences to divide us for their profit and power. Instead, let’s open to ever more diverse expressions of what being human can mean.
Our entire culture is built on the premise that sex and gender expression are binary, that there are appropriate masculine and feminine roles covering everything from how we speak, gesture, move, clothe, and adorn ourselves including the things we are allowed to do and express. These restrictions sorely limit the potential everyone, even the people in power. And we all lose.
What kind of culture and society might we build if we allow our minds and hearts to be blown open to the reality that human expression is continuous, non-binary, a vast spectrum of possibilities? What if all people, you and I included, were allowed to fully express ourselves (without harming others)? What might we be capable of together then?
Further reading:
More about intersex biology.
Human rights perspective on intersex people.
Other articles on the percentage of people who identify as transgender can be found here and here.
Footnotes:
https://www.intersexequality.com/how-common-is-intersex-in-humans/
https://usafacts.org/articles/what-percentage-of-the-us-population-is-transgender/
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/11/census-bureau-survey-explores-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity.html
Thank you Cynthia for this perceptually expanding view of the spectrum of gender and sex assignment. We are, as a culture, just beginning to "take off the blinders" around these issues. However, many cultures have historically held and defined these issues in very different ways. In ancient Egyptian culture there were 16 different gender descriptions. In indigenous cultures, most often, the Shaman would describe themselves as transgendered or fluidly gendered. We , as a culture, are new to these nuances of describing the wide variety of human experience. And because we are new at looking at these differences, we are "wobbly legged" at coming to stand clearly around these nuanced issues. In that, my hope is that we can stretch our awareness to INCLUDE rather than ridicule and judge what appears to be "other" than what our culture defines as appropriate or sanctioned. I so appreciate Cynthia's coming to that conclusion in this beautiful exploration of not "othering" other beings choices, rather holding a position of compassion and acceptance of our unique differences (whatever they are!). Thank you Cynthia for your meticulous research and deeply felt and thought through writing!! You ROCK!! ariel spilsbury
Brava Cynthia! You managed to handle this difficult subject with surgical precision AND with a heart of compassion. Thank you;)