What is "gender", anyway?

Well, for starters, it's a question too few people ask. And something a lot of people really don't understand. Which is why you'll find a couple of definitions at the bottom of this post for words you may be unfamiliar with.

When most *cisgendered (see definition below) people speak of "gender", what they're actually talking about is "sex" - the genitalia you're born with. Or the DNA, in the case of intersex people. For most of the population "sex" and "gender" are synonymous. But for people with gender issues, they aren't.

Now, before we get into gender issues, let's talk about why sex and gender are different things. Let's say a child is born with ambiguous genitalia, and, for example, in the case of a male child (in terms of DNA), this lack of appropriate equipment cannot be effectively remedied by current surgical techniques. If this child is raised as a girl, as David Reimer's parents discovered, it will affect them. David wasn't even born intersexed - his deformity was a result of a botched circumcision. David committed suicide at 38, after being raised as a girl until 14, when he was told the truth. He also rebelled against the gender he had been raised as. This had to be an ordeal for him, considering the hormones and surgery he had to face to "become a girl." Before his untimely death, he transitioned to male and married a woman. But his situation still obviously impacted him.

But gender - that internal feeling of who we are on the gender spectrum - and yes, it is a spectrum, which I'll get to later, is overpowering. And I believe it goes beyond DNA or genitalia at birth. It goes beyond the "sex" we are born as, as many cases of intersex infants has shown - I'd do your research for you, but you have access to google, folks. But, and here's the part where most cisgendered people get lost, it isn't just about the xx or xy chromosomes. It's about the brain.

Many people attempt to blame "gender confusion", as they call it, on the child's parents. But there have been studies conducted, for example, that show that excess testosterone on female fetuses in utero produces girls who think and act more like boys. There have even been documented cases of this producing a "male" finger pattern in these girls. There have also been studies that suggest certain areas of the brain differ in size in male-to-female transgendered people, and it has been suggested that the sex hormones - like testosterone and estrogen - play a part in the development of our brains in utero.

I'll grant you, we have no hard-and-fast scientific explanations yet. No more than we have a genetic code for why some folks are gay or bi or straight. But we do know this - some people do NOT feel like their gender matches the sex they were born as. Some people do not even feel that one sex or the other fits how they feel. This is sometimes referred to as transgendered, but often, it's simply a case of someone existing at a different place on what some people refer to as the "gender continuum." Some people use the term "**genderqueer."

In other words, the brain may not match the body - or the DNA that determines the sex of that body, to various degrees. Obviously, a lot more scientific research needs to be done to understand why that is, but transgendered people have existed for centuries - possibly since people have existed. We have no way to determine how long this feeling of being something you were not born as goes. What we do know is that there are many, many people in the modern era who did not feel that their "sex" matched their "gender", to some degree.

There were also many people most would now call transgendered who existed in the past. The Native Americans called them "two-spirits." They were usually revered, and often became spiritual leaders in those cultures. They weren't condemned and despised as they so frequently are today in America, and were found in most Native American tribes. They were considered the embodiment of both the feminine and masculine spirits in one body.

But today, it seems a lot of people judge transgendered people harshly - or anyone who breaks gender expectations. They are often victims of violence, and that even crosses over to those in the gay population who exhibit gender traits that are not traditional male or female traits. We get tagged with terms like "flaming queens" or "butch dykes." It has become a morass of hatred against those who express their gender differently than their genitals indicate they should in the opinion of *cisgendered persons who will only accept a dichotomy of sexual existence. This isn't solely a problem in the heterosexual community, either. Even other gay and bisexual people have these prejudices.

And honestly, I've met several transgendered people who started out believing they were just 'gay', but discovered on their journey that the issue they had to deal with first was where they were on the gender continuum. Not all transgendered people are gay after transition. Not all transgendered people are straight after transition. People confuse the issues of orientation and gender, in addition to confusing sexual presentation with gender.

Take, for example, those of us who are androgynous. We identify with both ends of the spectrum to some degree. Does that mean I want to be a man? No, it doesn't. If I wanted to be a man, I wouldn't have given birth to four beautiful children. But you also won't catch me dead in a dress, nail polish, or make-up. I like my hair short. My natural mannerisms lean more to male than female mannerisms. I have been "sir'd" repeatedly, mainly by people who weren't paying much attention. Sort of like the clerk who mistook my youngest daughter for a boy recently, because her hair is short, and she likes to wear more "boyish" clothes sometimes - or the one that mistook my oldest grandson for a girl simply because he has longer hair than most boys (he's also very pretty for a boy).

Now, I didn't always accept my own androgyny. In fact, I tried very hard for much of my life to be the "girl" I thought my mother and others wanted me to be. I wore dresses on occasion. I tried to figure out make-up, too. Frankly, I felt like I looked like a guy in drag. But I had an experience that forced me to face my fears of being who I was. It was the sort of experience most people don't have the opportunity to experience.

After many years of attempting to be bisexual, and developing a major painkiller habit in order to tolerate what I was doing to myself, I went cold turkey. Now, I'll grant you, my substance abuse was a means of enforcing my denial of who I was. My fear of not meeting other people's expectations of who and what I should be fueled a desperate need to escape my own discomfort. However, the withdrawal I experienced, given the extent of my addiction, was traumatic, overwhelming, and extremely eye opening.

To begin with, I didn't recognize myself in the mirror. The image I had built in my head of "who I was" bore absolutely no resemblance to the image in the mirror - or my actual feelings about who I was. My internal "image" was far more feminine than what I saw, or how I felt. This was part of my denial that led to my addiction. The addiction helped me suppress my preferences, both in terms of gender and sexual orientation.

It was another month before my brain was ready to tell me the Big News. I woke up one morning from a dream about my first girlfriend, who had broken up with me at 16. I had totally suppressed her from my memory during my addiction. I had forgotten, in fact, that I ever identified as bisexual. But that morning the truth hit me like a large boulder - I woke up and realized I'm gay.

Now, I was 41 when all this happened. In retrospect, I can see how it happened, and how much of it was simply due to the expectations I had internalized that I didn't feel I could live up to. But having all of it hit me at once forced me to face my fears. The first thing I did when I was well enough to go anywhere, after about 7 days of absolute physical and mental torture from that withdrawal, was go shopping.

Nothing in my closet felt right. Not even my shoes. So I bought jeans and t-shirts and shoes that felt more like "me." It took a few months to work up the nerve to cut my hair short. It had been in a virtual boy-cut until I started first grade, which I think is when I began to develop these expectations of myself based on other people's reactions. But I had so much shame that I was afraid of doing things I wanted to do. I was afraid of expressing my preferences.

Four years later, I still struggle with that shame sometimes. There are a lot of clothes in the men or boy's department (and being 5' 4" and 116 lb., I can generally shop in the boy's department) that I *like*. The cut of boy's shirts is more comfortable to me than the fitted cut of "girl clothes." I wound up buying a lot of my clothes at The Gap and Express, as a result. At least what they sell is more androgynous - at least enough to cause me little discomfort.

Still, it took me a good 3 years to really get to a point where I was okay being who I really am. I had to work at it. I had to bend gender rules and face my fears. And to some degree, I still have to. But by examining my gender, my preferences, my likes and dislikes, I've begun to get in touch with both my masculinity and my femininity. In the beginning, it was all so confusing. The image I had held in my head for so many years wasn't me - so who was I really? I've had to answer that question for myself, and find my comfort level. And given how late in the game I got started, it is still an ongoing process.

Because of my experience, I understand the confusion, judgment, and fear that cisgendered people have of people who don't conform to a gender dichotomy. The first time I actually saw a transgendered person who was in the process of transition, it terrified me. Because it touched a deep fear in me. Something I still can't really identify. Something that comes from that deep childhood fear of rejection and abandonment.

But the more I learned about gender, and how it exists on a continuum, the less judgmental I was. It became easier to address someone going from male-to-female as "she." It was natural when one of my friends began transitioning from female-to-male to refer to him as "he." I began to understand that we are not always what we feel we are, and some people feel a desperate need to change that, in order to be comfortable in their own skin.

When I was 13 years old, shortly after my father's suicide, I changed my name. For years I've wondered why I really did that, but I understand now why I did. I was named after my father. I identified with him. I even have mannerisms and speech patterns that duplicate his - which is why people always wonder why a life-long Texan has Wisconsin speech patterns. But all I had left after he died was my mother - and my mother was all girl. And I needed my mother. So tried to become what I thought she wanted me to be, whether it was really what she wanted or not.

Society, and sometimes families, impose a lot of expectations on children. Many of those expectations - like don't lie, don't cheat, take responsibility for your actions, etc. - are all good, and reasonable, expectations. But when we place an expectation on someone regarding their orientation or gender, we are essentially telling them that they cannot be who they are, or we will not love them. We will reject them, ostracize them, and abandon them. Until you feel that conflict in your own soul, you cannot imagine the damage that can do.

There is a gender continuum. I consider my self to be androgynous, and to some extent "genderqueer." I don't feel like I always belong to one gender. Sometimes I feel more boyish, sometimes I feel like a girl. But I know in my heart, I embody both. I know that my brain operates differently than either the male or female sex.

It took me 41 years to even start to figure that out. It took several years to accept it. It also took that acceptance for me to get over my fear of people like me. People with gender issues. I have nothing but admiration for the people who transition because of this. However, I think society at large has a long way to go in understanding that just because a person is not cisgendered, that doesn't make them "wrong." It just makes them different from people who are comfortable in their male or female role assigned at birth (or through early childhood intervention). And everyone has a right to be who they are, if you ask me. No one asks to feel uncomfortable in their own skin. But everyone ought to have the right to do so - without judgment.

So if my daughter wants her hair short, or my grandson wants his hair long, if my daughter wants to dress in drag for a school report, or my grandson wants to wear jewelry, I say more power to them. Gender roles should not be determined by people outside you. Society has no right or obligation to stick a round peg into a square hole. We are all individuals, and the sooner we learn to treat each other as such, the sooner tolerance will truly be a human trait.

Love, compassion, understanding. These are the spiritual principles that tolerance is made of. We need more of all four, and less hate and judgment.



*Cisgender is a "newer term" that means "someone who is comfortable in the gender they were assigned at birth." see this Wiki.
**Genderqueer - People who identify as genderqueer may think of themselves as being both male and female, as being neither male nor female, or as falling completely outside the gender binary. Some wish to have certain features of the opposite sex and not all characteristics; others want it all. See this Wiki.