Obviously, this will not come as new information to everybody, but I feel it is important enough to warrant repeating again and again, especially where issues of gender and sex are going to come up more than once. I believe that in the few comments I’ve already received this requires clarification.

Listen carefully:

There are not two genders. There are not even two sexes.

This is fundamental to understanding my point of view and any feminist or queer discourse. Without realizing that this is the underlying assumption within my arguments, misunderstandings are certain to arise. Even those who know what I am talking about without an explanation could stand to keep it in mind, because the people who do not fit into these narrow categories of male and female, masculine and feminine, are too often forgotten and marginalized within the greater context of feminist debate, which is entirely unfortunate. I know I do this too on occasion, in order to simplify my explanations, however, I hope that everyone will realize that I do carefully consider every gender when I form my opinions, not simply a narrow binary of male and female, and that I try to carefully craft my language to be as inclusive as possible, even if it goes unappreciated by those unfamiliar with the idea of gender and sex as a spectrum.

Sex:

A person’s sex is dependent on genitalia. A penis is a male sexual organ, the vulva, female. Sex is physical a combination of medical, biological, and genetic characteristics. Not everyone’s sex is purely male or female — there is a wide range of variation. Intersex people are born with a medical condition where they possess ambiguous or mixed physical sexual characteristics. Usually, in the past, these people were called “hermaphrodites” (now an antiquated term which can be considered offensive). Advances in medicine also allow for sex-reassignment surgery and hormonal treatments which may leave a transsexual patient “in between” sexes, so to speak, and therefore sex is a continuum between male and female features.

For this reason, rather than discussing “male” and “female” medical issues, I will always refer to “people with testicles” if I am discussing testicular cancer for example, “people with uteruses” if discussing women’s reproductive issues, “people with vaginas” if discussing the vagina, et cetera. This is also more inclusive and acknowledges the existence of women who have had hysterectomies and men who have had their testicles removed, as well; thus, no one’s gender identity is contingent, in my writing, on the presence or absence of a certain set of narrowly defined physical characteristics.

The idea that a woman is not defined by a vagina, by a vulva, by a womb, is one of the basic ideals of any truly meaningful and inclusive form of feminism. Any feminist who defines a woman based on her genitalia is fundamentally no better than the systems of oppression that we try to fight. I am a radical feminist, meaning I believe in the deconstruction of every assumption and framework used to define and oppress women and other marginalized genders, but I am willing to accept almost anyone under the feminist umbrella who has the basic ideals of male and female equality, even if we have wildly divergent ideas about what this means or what is important. However, any so-called “feminist” who defines women based on their bodies will not be considered truly feminist by me, because that is the same attitude utilized by the patriarchy to strip women of their identities.

No one would say a cisgender woman without a womb was no longer a woman if she’d had uterine cancer and had it removed. I don’t see why this is any less true for a transwoman born without one — any argument that these issues are not the same is nothing more than hypocrisy and transphobia. The problem is, a transwoman may need specialized medical care based on the body parts she does have, and this is why the recognition of those organs is still important despite the wide range of variation in physical sex.

Because sex is changeable and sometimes is not clear due to birth defects, genetic abnormalities or whatever other reason, I think sex as a category is a useful tool of categorization for the vast majority of the population but from a real standpoint, essentially a meaningless concept with no real definition. I rarely speak of physical sex for this reason. It may be based in statistically relevant biological human trends, but that does not make it a reasonable indicator of very many things beyond the chromosomal level — and, sometimes, not even then. It is good for sweeping generalizations and nothing else.

This is, incidentally, also why I think any claims of inherent biological differences between the sexes are bunk. We can’t even clearly define what sex is, at least not from a two-sexes perspective, because it’s entirely too complex. A binary division of sex is totally arbitrary and ignores the reality of many individuals who do not fit within either category. They are only a very, very small percentage of the population, but that makes it all the more important to recognize their existence because otherwise they will not receive the specialized medical care that they need. They are effectively rendered invisible by the assumption of an absolute binary system.

The problems with gender and sexual identity raised here are easily solved through simple, conscious re-structuring of language. Hence, I refer to people with certain body parts when I mean to talk about certain body parts, rather than relying on sex as an indicator. This is more precise and accurate language anyway. I do not see why this would be an issue of contention, though I know some people are very defensive about having their dualities challenged and will rail loudly in favor of their right to free speech even when it hurts, dismisses, and denies even the existence of certain groups of other people. These people are being cruel, dismissive of others’ unique experiences and issues, and enforcing their own views of what other people are onto people who do not themselves subscribe to that identity. This is Wrong. I am not willing to say that many things are absolute moral wrongs, but the absolute sense of entitlement over another person’s very being is one of them.

This is not up for debate in this forum: the entire premise this blog is based on is the basic human right of every individual to self-identify, and that another person questioning the existence or validity of another’s identity is a violation of that right. If you do not agree with this idea, even in the abstract idealism of a perfect world, you need to stop reading and leave now, or otherwise realize that I will never engage you in a debate on this topic and will not allow you to post comments questioning this subject. This is not censorship; you’re free to disagree elsewhere and I’m free to judge you and believe this to be not only unspeakably rude behavior, but a fundamental moral flaw. You’re free to call me a bitch, and I’m free to ignore you and continue a blissful life which does not involve rude people derailing, invalidating, and clogging up my blog.

Gender:

Gender, at least in the modern academic sense, as used in feminist and queer theory and thus in my writing, is a function of personality. It is not in any way necessarily connected to physical sex. It is an identity, a label one gives oneself. (It goes without saying that the paragraph above applies to this definition of gender, too. Debate elsewhere.) That is the point of self-definition. Gender is a characteristic integral to one’s identity which is defined only by oneself to define oneself. No one else can tell an individual what hir gender is. Ze can only decide for hirself. (Note: confused? Ze and hir.)

Most people are cisgendered. They identify strongly with their physical sex as male or female. For them, this issue is simple and the words “gender” and “sex” seem synonymous and interchangeable. However, they are not. I will never replace one for the other because I use them with extremely specific definitions. I try to refer to “wo/men” in terms of gender identity, “fe/males” in terms of sex. There is evidence that gender is a product of brain structure, which does not always correlate to physical sex, however, I’m inclined to say that the reason is a fascinating scientific inquiry but largely irrelevant. People ID as they ID. The reason why has no bearing on their identity, and identity can be fluid.

Some people ID as the “opposite” gender from the sex they were born into. They are transgender. Often, the traditional social role of gender is confused with gender identity. It is assumed that certain behaviors are part of gender identity, when, in fact, there can be many reasons for a person to behave as they do and form the preferences they have which have absolutely nothing to do with either gender identity or biology. (As some who believe either in brain structure differences or the correlation between sex and gender would have us believe.) This is a huge issue with trans people who are attempting to medically transition — the medical establishment is usually discriminatory and assumes that a person who does not act the part of a certain gender role cannot possibly really be the gender they ID as. This is a very real and extremely harmful effect of people’s personal identities not being taken seriously, and is exactly why the right to self-definition is not up for debate. There are too many real victims in this and many other cases for me to give any ground on the pretense of being friendly or approachable. The search for radical change in the name of justice and human rights is not going to be soft and fluffy and accessible to those who oppose this goal.

Cisgender people are given a greater range of expression within the confines of the social gender role, although when they step outside of that box, their sexual orientation or, to a lesser extent, gender identity is often questioned. This is often more lenient for women than it is for men — which may be counted as a blessing but not a feminist victory. The fact that women can act in a “masculine” way, but men who act in a “feminine” way are often mocked, derided, and sometimes even targets for physical violence is unfair and horrible for the man who does not fit the masculine gender role. However the patriarchy hurts these men, it is a side effect of the real problem; they are still not the real victims, because the idea that being feminine is inherently “bad” or “lesser” is evidence of the deep misogyny of society. Women’s relative freedom in this regard compared to men may seem to be the oppression of men at the hands of the patriarchy, but it is merely an incidental effect of the oppression of women. This is not to say that this is not horrible for everyone involved or that it should be accepted, but that the continued fight for feminism is the solution to this problem as well.

Not everyone’s gender identity fits into one of these categories, and most people’s fall somewhere between gender roles. Genderqueer is a blanket term used by anyone who IDs somewhere outside the binary and wishes to describe hirself this way.

Sexuality:

Because of the complexity of the gender and sex spectrums, sexuality is an increasingly difficult subject. I find most existing terms to be problematic because they equate sex with gender and operate based on binary assumptions. In general, heterosexual people identify strongly as one gender and are attracted to people who either have the “opposite” sex, gender identity, or gender role. It can be a combination of these. Homosexuality is the compliment. What it means to that individual is up to them to decide. What attracts people to certain partners is a deeply individual thing which may have more to do with appearance than sex, sex than gender, gender identity than sex or appearance, or, well…you get the idea. And it can be none of these things.

Bisexuality, strictly speaking, by operating on the assumptions of the binary, excludes genderqueer, trans, and intersex people. Many people who ID as bisexual do not actually feel this way (some do), but I still see the binary assumption to be an issue. For this reason, I ID as pansexual, meaning that I have the capacity to be potentially attracted to members of any sex or gender, although I will not lie and say there are not certain physical or aesthetic characteristics which appeal to me more physically, and that there are not certain self-identified characteristics which I find more attractive. However, I, personally, fall into the “primarily attracted for none of the above reasons” camp and am mostly only physically attracted to people with attractive personalities.

So there is pansexual and the synonym, omnisexual. There is pomosexual, or Post Modern Sexuality, which rejects gender as a social construct and not an actual meaningful descriptor, which is, again, problematic, because while I believe gender roles are a social construct, and think that in many cases gender identity is similar — I do not have the right to question that identity, an artificial social construct in my mind or not. All that matters is that others ID that way, and by labelling that identity a “construct” I would be implying it is false. I don’t have the right to do that. I think that pomosexuality is well-intentioned and, at heart, mostly a good idea, but it skirts shady ethical territory for me.

In Conclusion:

Well, there really is no conclusion, except to say that gender, sexuality, and even physical sex have no real boundaries, and work together but don’t necessarily have anything to do with one another. All of them exist on a wide and diverse spectrum upon which the individual in question has the right to place hirself, however ze likes, wherever ze likes, whenever ze likes, and for whatever reason, without needing to explain, justify, or prove hirself to anyone else. This is the one basic underlying principle upon which all of my philosophy is based.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 16th, 2006 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Gender and Sex, Queer Issues, Sexuality, Theory.