What is gender?
I’ve often asked the question, “what is gender?” and follow that question with “why is it so important?” Usually when I ask them it’s to try and make people think, though I also ask them to see what I can learn from their answer. I believe most people don’t think too much about it, maybe not at all, they just kind of take for granted that they are what they are. Sometimes I envy them...
I have heard several attempts at defining gender, some better than others. Many feel that it depends on what is between your legs, if you are an innie or an outie. But then, what gender is an intersexual, someone born with poorly formed genitals, or genitals that appear somehow between male and female? What gender is a man who has an accident and is castrated? Or even a woman who has had a hysterectomy? There are those who believe that gender is complex, that there are many more than just two genders. For example, there is the femme man, the “nice guy” man, the manly man, the butch women, the list goes on and on.
I was talking with a friend and came up with an idea for how to answer what gender is. When I asked her about gender, the way she explained how she knows she is a girl was, “... i guess it comes down to the fact that im comfortable with the fact that i was born physically as a girl...” To me, that sums it up, that we are what we know we are.
I remember when I realized I was in denial. For years I had been playing with ideas, trying to convince myself I wasn’t female. I came up with all kinds of rationalizations. When I couldn’t rationalize, I’d grudgingly give a little ground but refuse to admit the real truth. It started something like, “well, maybe I’d like to see what it would be like to be female.” When I couldn’t con myself with that lie anymore, it changed to something like, “maybe I’m transgendered.” That slowly became “maybe I really do want to be a woman.” I’m probably missing some of the steps but they never felt quite right. Each time I ended up KNOWING that I was lying to myself. I was never satisfied with those answers but they allowed me to keep my illusions. One day, I simply realized, “I am a woman.” It was amazing the freedom I felt when I realized that, how everything fell into place. I KNEW this time that it was the truth.
I talked to a therapist I was seeing about my realization. He indicated that he was going to be asking me some tough questions about it in the next few sessions. I remember he asked why I thought I was a woman. He added that there are men that act quite feminine, as well as men that have interests that are quite feminine. He even mentioned one man he knew as a specific example. I didn’t think it was a hard question, I answered that I knew that I was, that it wasn’t I was female because of my interests or how I feel I should act, it’s just who I am. A few weeks later, not having been asked a question I thought was tough, I asked when he was going to start asking me his tough questions. He told me he had already asked them.
What I’ve decided, though, is that there are two genders. They are a very basic part of us, are part of our genetic makeup, even beyond the X or Y chromosomes. Researchers have recently found that there are many factors to both gender and sexuality that are genes within the X and Y chromosome that determine who we are and our sexual orientation. Beyond that, there are problems that can occur before we are born that effect how our genitals and our minds develop. Since they are imprinted at different times, our brain and our genitals can end up reflecting opposite genders.
What I’m discovering is that the gender in our brain is the one that controls us. It is from our brain that we develop our sense of self, our personality, and learn how to relate with the world. It’s also been verified that male and female babies are treated differently from birth, also that they act differently. Some studies suggest that we treat babies according to gender because of how they respond, others will say that babies learn to respond based on how they are treated. What I know is that somehow the way people related to me was different than how I wanted them to.
My idea of two genders is how it seems people “know” what gender they are. The femme man my therapist refers to knows he is a man. The lesbians I have heard of or talked to know they are women. Even an effeminate gay man, one who will even sometimes refer to himself as a girl, knows that he is a man - and wants to be a man. The people I have typically heard of that question if there are more than just two genders are the transgendered, usually transsexuals, and often because after changing sexes things aren’t as they imagined. They find that they are not a stereotypical girl, but something much more. They find they still have many manly interests, and miss some things about being a man - though they don’t regret the sex change. Which leads to the second part of my theory.
The question I’ve always had a problem with is, “why is gender so important?” Most people, as I mentioned, don’t really ever think about gender. So what makes it so important to those few of us who end up labeled transgendered? Obviously it must have some importance, there are statistics that show 50% of transsexuals are dead by the age of 30 and the most frequent cause of death is suicide. Beyond that, despite not being able to answer the question to my satisfaction, I knew what it had done in my own life and the pain I had felt. In many ways I feel fortunate to still be away.
But while talking to SweetCarolinaTiger something finally made sense to me, I finally believed I understood. Gender is simply a building block, a very basic part of who we are. Once we have determined our gender we build on top of it. There are some basic things that make up who we are, like gender, sexual orientation, and our genetic makeup. We build on top of that foundation to create who we are, to form our personality and our relationships with other people.
The problem, for someone like myself, when brain gender and physical gender don’t match, is in attempting to build our personality and relationships with other people on this base, it isn’t stable. It just doesn’t quite fit. Until genders match, people don’t relate to us in a way that is immediately natural to us. The way we are perceived by others is skewed. Often, we act in a way unnatural to us to help us blend in, to try and make sense of our lives. Our personality ends up skewed, partially by trying to make ourselves socially acceptable, but also by the skewed feedback we get from others. That is what makes gender so important.
I have heard several attempts at defining gender, some better than others. Many feel that it depends on what is between your legs, if you are an innie or an outie. But then, what gender is an intersexual, someone born with poorly formed genitals, or genitals that appear somehow between male and female? What gender is a man who has an accident and is castrated? Or even a woman who has had a hysterectomy? There are those who believe that gender is complex, that there are many more than just two genders. For example, there is the femme man, the “nice guy” man, the manly man, the butch women, the list goes on and on.
I was talking with a friend and came up with an idea for how to answer what gender is. When I asked her about gender, the way she explained how she knows she is a girl was, “... i guess it comes down to the fact that im comfortable with the fact that i was born physically as a girl...” To me, that sums it up, that we are what we know we are.
I remember when I realized I was in denial. For years I had been playing with ideas, trying to convince myself I wasn’t female. I came up with all kinds of rationalizations. When I couldn’t rationalize, I’d grudgingly give a little ground but refuse to admit the real truth. It started something like, “well, maybe I’d like to see what it would be like to be female.” When I couldn’t con myself with that lie anymore, it changed to something like, “maybe I’m transgendered.” That slowly became “maybe I really do want to be a woman.” I’m probably missing some of the steps but they never felt quite right. Each time I ended up KNOWING that I was lying to myself. I was never satisfied with those answers but they allowed me to keep my illusions. One day, I simply realized, “I am a woman.” It was amazing the freedom I felt when I realized that, how everything fell into place. I KNEW this time that it was the truth.
I talked to a therapist I was seeing about my realization. He indicated that he was going to be asking me some tough questions about it in the next few sessions. I remember he asked why I thought I was a woman. He added that there are men that act quite feminine, as well as men that have interests that are quite feminine. He even mentioned one man he knew as a specific example. I didn’t think it was a hard question, I answered that I knew that I was, that it wasn’t I was female because of my interests or how I feel I should act, it’s just who I am. A few weeks later, not having been asked a question I thought was tough, I asked when he was going to start asking me his tough questions. He told me he had already asked them.
What I’ve decided, though, is that there are two genders. They are a very basic part of us, are part of our genetic makeup, even beyond the X or Y chromosomes. Researchers have recently found that there are many factors to both gender and sexuality that are genes within the X and Y chromosome that determine who we are and our sexual orientation. Beyond that, there are problems that can occur before we are born that effect how our genitals and our minds develop. Since they are imprinted at different times, our brain and our genitals can end up reflecting opposite genders.
What I’m discovering is that the gender in our brain is the one that controls us. It is from our brain that we develop our sense of self, our personality, and learn how to relate with the world. It’s also been verified that male and female babies are treated differently from birth, also that they act differently. Some studies suggest that we treat babies according to gender because of how they respond, others will say that babies learn to respond based on how they are treated. What I know is that somehow the way people related to me was different than how I wanted them to.
My idea of two genders is how it seems people “know” what gender they are. The femme man my therapist refers to knows he is a man. The lesbians I have heard of or talked to know they are women. Even an effeminate gay man, one who will even sometimes refer to himself as a girl, knows that he is a man - and wants to be a man. The people I have typically heard of that question if there are more than just two genders are the transgendered, usually transsexuals, and often because after changing sexes things aren’t as they imagined. They find that they are not a stereotypical girl, but something much more. They find they still have many manly interests, and miss some things about being a man - though they don’t regret the sex change. Which leads to the second part of my theory.
The question I’ve always had a problem with is, “why is gender so important?” Most people, as I mentioned, don’t really ever think about gender. So what makes it so important to those few of us who end up labeled transgendered? Obviously it must have some importance, there are statistics that show 50% of transsexuals are dead by the age of 30 and the most frequent cause of death is suicide. Beyond that, despite not being able to answer the question to my satisfaction, I knew what it had done in my own life and the pain I had felt. In many ways I feel fortunate to still be away.
But while talking to SweetCarolinaTiger something finally made sense to me, I finally believed I understood. Gender is simply a building block, a very basic part of who we are. Once we have determined our gender we build on top of it. There are some basic things that make up who we are, like gender, sexual orientation, and our genetic makeup. We build on top of that foundation to create who we are, to form our personality and our relationships with other people.
The problem, for someone like myself, when brain gender and physical gender don’t match, is in attempting to build our personality and relationships with other people on this base, it isn’t stable. It just doesn’t quite fit. Until genders match, people don’t relate to us in a way that is immediately natural to us. The way we are perceived by others is skewed. Often, we act in a way unnatural to us to help us blend in, to try and make sense of our lives. Our personality ends up skewed, partially by trying to make ourselves socially acceptable, but also by the skewed feedback we get from others. That is what makes gender so important.