A queer exploration of all things gender

Posts tagged ‘Intersex’

Non-binary genders have Thousands of Years of Precedent

The enormous extent to which the binary gender system has been enforced – which claims everyone can only be male or female –  has left many people unaware of the existence of anything (or anyone) else. A lot of this has to do with a phenomenon that sociologists understand as the ‘medicalisation’ of sex. Differences in gendered behaviour (whether that be a man doing ‘women’s things’ or vice versa), sexual attraction, or clothing choice became understood as sicknesses, best left to the expertise of a doctor -when before you would’ve called for a priest, or even more likely, not actually been all that bothered. Anthropologists in the 19th century gave fantastical reports of ‘exotic’, ‘alien’ cultures. These social models regarding gender and sexuality were unintelligible to people bound by the western model: that you could be a man (who was attracted to women), or a woman (who was attracted to men). And that’s that. Such ancient and enduring social systems which involve a third gender (or more!) and other ways for understanding sexuality that aren’t readily analogous to ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’, or ‘bisexual’ can be found all over the world, but it isn’t even these that I’m referring to in the title of this article. One doesn’t need to travel far to find hugely mainstream historical precedent for the concept of a third gender. How about one of the most important and influential civilisations in the western world? Ancient Greece.

I want to talk about a particular text, written by Plato. Student of Socrates, teacher of Aristotle, it’s fair to regard him as a founding father of philosophy. The text is a collection of speeches by different important Greek thinkers, written to reflect  each man delivering his speech to the others at a drinking party. This is Plato’s Symposium.

One of the speeches was given by Aristophanes, who was a comic playwright. He asks why is it that when in love, many people report feeling ‘whole’, as if previously incomplete? The explanation, he says, is due to how mankind used to be.

Humans were, according to Aristophanes, originally beings with two heads, four arms and legs, and two hearts, who were very powerful. Each head (and corresponding genitals) could be male or female – so there were three possible sexes! Male, where both were men, female, where both were women, and ‘androgynous’, where you had one male and one female. These powerful double-people decided to storm Mount Olympus, so to stop them Zeus smote them, tearing everyone in half. Each person then desperately tried to find their original pairing – which positions the male and female double-people as gay men and lesbian women, with the third gender representing what we would now label heterosexuality. This comic illustrates perfectly.

aristophanes

This importantly demonstrates how a two gender system hasn’t always had the total monopoly one might assume it has. Whilst this doesn’t say anything about the thoughts had about gender by the everyday ancient Greek, it simply shows there was recognition of a third gender through stories, and there wasn’t any strangeness or moral failure or sickness associated with it. The same culture gave us Hermaphroditus, the neither-male-nor-female divine child, and root of the word hermaphrodite, often historically used to describe intersex people.

SONY DSC

 

Whilst the identity labels are new (the word ‘homosexual’ only being created in the late 1860s for example), all evidence shows that the rich human variation of gender identity and sexuality have been around for as long as people have  thought about themselves and who they are.

 

Category:

Fictional Literature, Intersex, LGBT, Sexuality, Socialisation, The gender binary, Transgender

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Facebook Gender Categories Explained

In case you didn’t know, Facebook allows for a user to fill in their own gender identity, rather than be forced to select ‘male’ or ‘female’. This is great news for everyone, including many people who ARE male or female. But what is meant by many genders can leave some people puzzled.

gender options

Oliver Haimson et al. has gathered some data which shows what people who use the custom gender option actually define themselves as:

facebook gender options

 

Whilst the numbers total over 100%, that’s due to there being no restriction on how many gender identity labels a person can hold. It’s a good graph to get a rough sense of the identity categories that people are using. There’s also many categories where the differences may not be clear. What’s the difference between transgender and transsexual? What’s the difference between ‘trans’ and ‘trans*’?

Of course, the meaning of a label can differ depending upon who you’re talking to – different terms resonate differently with different people, and two people’s understandings may easily contradict, so there is never going to be an easy ‘factual’ list that can be referred to. Identity is a highly personal thing, and can only be defined by an individual. This post simply acts as a guide to give some basic explanation of these categories. Some labels may seem to overlap completely in one person’s eyes (say, trans man and trans male) whilst highlighting an important difference to someone else. I’ll be grouping some identities together due to similarity, but it’s important to bear this in mind and that of course, much variation can exist between people who may identify with the same gender identity. I’ll also explain some of the differences between some of the labels.

It is important to remember – gender identity is not sexuality! A person of any gender identity may associate themselves with any sexuality (though of course some may be more common than others. Whilst a cisgender man would not identify as a lesbian, a transmasculine person may have a more complex relationship with this identity for example).

This list is not intended to be authoritative or exhaustive. No-one knows your gender identity better than you yourself! If anyone wishes to expand or add in the comments section, please feel welcome.
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 Genderqueer/Non-binary

Often used as umbrella categories, these terms both refer to gender identities other than simply ‘man’ and ‘woman’ – people who exist outside of the gender binary. Neither tells you much about a person’s gender besides that they’re not (exclusively) male and not (exclusively) female. Some genderqueer or non-binary people may embrace or express masculinity, femininity, both, neither, a mix, or vary depending on time, place, or people – regardless of the gender that person was assigned at birth. The possibilities are practically endless.

Gender fluid/Bigender

Being gender fluid can mean that a person sometimes identifies as male/man, sometimes as female/woman, or sometimes as androgynous other non-binary identities. Similarly, people identifying as bigender may experience two differently gendered personas, typically ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ which may change. Whilst not frequent enough to come up on the Facebook chart, the identity of trigender may be used by people who can change between male, female, and non-binary identites too. Note that someone may potentially have more than two gender identities and still identify as bigender – a person cannot ‘identify wrongly’. It is simply what a person feels fits with their sense of themselves.

Agender/Neutrois

Sometimes also described or understood as ‘neutral’ or ‘null’, some people may experience these identities as an absence of any gender, or, subtly different, as a neutral gender identity that isn’t male or female. This doesn’t tell you anything else, such as whether a person identifies as transgender, or has any wish to engage with a transition.

Gender nonconforming/Gender variant

These gender identities are quite self-explanatory, and broad. These labels don’t share information about the person’s relationship with maleness, femaleness, masculinity or femininity – but that their gender expression may not fit with cultural expectations of their gender assignation. Someone identifying as gender nonconforming or gender variant may identify as trans, or may not.

Two spirit

A non-western gender identity, two spirit is an umbrella term for gender identities associated with the cultures of some indigenous North Americans, such as the Oglala Lakota (note: I say ‘cultures’ rather than culture to avoid conflating different tribes and groups, which are distinct). There isn’t a simple way to generalise, though historically two spirit people often engaged in work or cultural practices not associated with their assigned birth sex. Called ‘Berdaches’ (a problematic term no longer used, and considered a slur) by western anthropologists, two spirit people may identify with both male and female gender roles and thus be recognised as a third gender within indigenous American cultural contexts.

Transmasculine/Transfeminine

A transmasculine person identifies more with maleness than with femaleness, but may not necessarily identify entirely as ‘a man’ (some however, might – and use this label as an indicator of their position regarding masculinity). Likewise a transfeminine person vice-versa – identifies more with femaleness but not entirely as ‘woman’. In accordance with the ‘trans’ aspect of this identity, transfeminine people are assigned male at birth and transmasculine people are assigned female at birth.

Androgynous/Androgyne

This is an identification with the mixture of masculine and feminine presentation so as to be a mixture of the two, and ambiguous in gender presentation. The terms can be used quite broadly, however.

Other

What can be said here? Other. Something else. Gender unknown space unicorn. Being deliberately vague is often a deliberate political decision.

Neither

Not male or female. If you know the person well you may know more detail (though you probably shouldn’t ask out of idle curiousity). The individual themselves may not have a clearer definition than this – sometimes it’s easier to know what you aren’t than exactly what you are, and that’s completely fine.

Intersex

Intersex people, by arbitrary medical definitions, may not physiologically fit into the gender binary in one way or another (most commonly, through having what are termed ‘ambiguous genitalia’ at birth). Intersex infants may be surgically altered without their consent, in order to assuage the  gendered anxieties of parents and doctors. Some people who may be ‘diagnosed’ as intersex may identify as men, women, or other gender identities, whilst some may feel their intersex status is something they identify with.

Pangender

Whilst pangender may imply an identification with all genders, more usefully it can be understood as fluidly experiencing a multiplicity of genders. A FAQ can be found here – where it is also clarified that appropriation of gender identities from other cultures (such as two spirit, or hijra) isn’t okay.

Gender questioning 

This is the process of questioning or working out one’s own gender, and may not be a permanent identity – though there’s no set amount of time someone might do this for! A questioning person may not be sure of what they identify with, and might not come to an answer – which is absolutely fine.

Transgender/Trans/Trans Person/Transgender person/Trans woman/Trans female/Transgender female/Transgender woman/Trans man/Trans male/Transgender male/Transgender man

Transgender people are people who do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. Trans is a shortening of transgender. The differences between ‘man’ and ‘male’, and ‘woman’ and ‘female’ may be something an individual has a solid opinion on, or they may feel unconcerned about the implied difference, or not see one. By specifying ‘person’ in a Facebook gender identity, someone may be iterating that whether they identify as male or female or otherwise isn’t something they want to share there.

Trans*/Trans* Person/Trans* man/Trans* male/Trans* woman/Trans* female

Some people use the asterisk to specifically highlight they are using ‘trans’ as an umbrella term, rather than to refer specifically to (binary identified) transgender people. There have been discussions both for and against the use of the asterisk, further indicating how personal comforts are a big part of identity label choice.

FTM/Female to male/MTF/Male to female

Often used by binary identified transgender people, these identity labels are used as a shorthand way of indicating the gender the individual was assigned at birth, and what they currently identify as. The terms don’t necessarily imply ‘I was a man and I am now a woman’ for example, as many MTFs would also say that they were always women, simply assigned incorrectly at birth based on their genitals. Thus the implication of having changed from one thing to another is something some trans people have a problem with, whilst others still find the identity label useful.

Transsexual/Transsexual person/Transsexual female/Transsexual woman/Transsexual male/Transsexual man

Transsexual is now quite an old-fashioned term, most associated with medical language and discourses of the mid-20th century. Many trans people don’t like the term or may find it offensive, but others may embrace it, particularly older trans people. The term is also typically used in a binary fashion.  Transsexual females/women are women who were assigned male at birth. Transsexual men/males are men who were assigned female at birth. Some people make a distinction between transsexual and transgender based on whether gender affirming surgeries have been undertaken, but this isn’t very common and can problematically create some artificial distinction between men and women who have certain medical procedures and those who don’t.

Cis/Cisgender/Cis female/Cis woman/Cisgender female/Cisgender woman/Cis male/Cis man/Cisgender male/Cisgender man

Cis is simply short for cisgender. Cisgender is the ‘opposite’ of transgender, and is used to indicate that a person identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth. So if at birth the doctor exclaimed ‘it’s a girl!’ and that person grew up to say ‘yes, I identify as female’ – that person is cisgender. Some individuals have claimed this is a slur, which is nonsense – the term exists as a neutral way to talk about people who are not trans, without positioning cisness as ‘the normal’ gender identity, or that ‘man/woman = cis man/cis woman’, which is the product of cissexism.

Category:

Intersex, LGBT, The gender binary, Transgender

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The story of Agnes – Gender recognition and surgery in the 1950s

This post is based off a chapter of a book. It’s a rather obscure book called ‘Studies in Ethnomethodology’, which may be among the least catchy possible titles for a book, even given that the chapter was originally published as a paper in 1967. Bear in mind that much of the way in which this story is discussed will be reflecting on attitudes held widely on gender in the 1950s and 1960s.

Don’t give up on me just yet, as the contents are rather unexpectedly fascinating.

The paper was written by one Dr. Garfinkel and his experience treating a patient called Agnes, whom he first met in November of 1958. Agnes had sought medical attention in her home town, been referred to a doctor in Los Angeles, who referred her to a colleague of Dr. Garfinkel who saw her with him.

The nineteen year old Agnes was the youngest of four children, supported by her mother who worked in an aircraft plant. Her father died when Agnes was a child. She was raised Catholic, but no longer believed in God.

These particular sisters may not have put Agnes back on the path to righteousness…

She also had a penis, and testes.

Agnes was presenting with what nowadays would be referred to as an intersex condition – in that she possessed physiology typically associated with the social categories of ‘male’ and ‘female’ at the same time. To quote from Dr. Garfinkel’s account directly:

Agnes’ appearance was convincingly female. She was tall, slim, with a very female shape. Her measurements were 38-25-38. She had long, fine dark-blonde hair, a young face with pretty features, a peaches-and-cream complexion, no facial hair, subtly plucked eyebrows, and no makeup except for lipstick. At the time of her first appearance she was dressed in a tight sweater which marked off her thin shoulders, ample breasts, and narrow waist. Her feet and hands, though somewhat larger than usual for a woman, were in no way remarkable in this respect. Her usual manner of dress did not distinguish her from a typical girl of her age and class. There was nothing garish or exhibitionistic in her attire, nor was there any hint of poor taste or that she was ill at ease in her clothing, as is seen so frequently in transvestites and in women with disturbances in sexual identification. Her voice, pitched at an alto level, was soft, and her delivery had the occasional lisp similar to that affected by feminine appearing male homosexuals. her manner was appropriately feminine with a slight awkwardness that is typical of middle adolescence.

As tempting as it is to pick apart the frankly amazing number of problems there are with anyone, let alone a doctor scrutinising someone in such terms, this isn’t actually the focus of where this is going. Please feel free to pick it apart in your own delicious, juicy minds.

This is a fairly common intersex (and more generally, trans) pride symbol. To think that being intersex is to be a ‘mix’ of male and female (rather than its own state of being, not framed in terms of a binary) as the stereotypical pink-purple-blue colour scheme suggests may be a bit simple.

Agnes wanted to get treatment for what she regarded as a very problematic condition. She thought of her penis and scrotum as being nothing more than a tumour that she wished to have removed so she could get on with living a ‘normal female life’. The fact that she had been born with a penis had meant that for the first 17 years of her life she had been treated and socialised as a boy by her family others who knew her. When she was around 12 years old, she was delighted when she noticed breasts beginning to develop, and other female secondary sex characteristics associated with the onset of puberty.

After much medical scrutiny, it was decided Agnes had a rare disorder known as ‘testicular feminisation syndrome’ , where the testicles, rather than producing testosterone, instead produce lots of oestrogens, causing an XY fetus to develop female genitalia and female traits at puberty. Agnes was seen to be a unique variation on this, in that she had a penis and scrotum and no vagina, and also no ovaries or womb. The doctors were a bit confused by this, but it was the best they could come up with – particularly given how ‘obviously female’ Agnes was to them in all other respects.

Agnes considered herself to be entirely apart from feminine homosexuals, “transvestites” (n.b. I put this in inverted commas because this was the term Dr. Garfinkel and Agnes herself were using at the time to refer to cross-dressers. The term ‘transvestite’ may be considered offensive, and it’s important that this be borne in mind), or any other gender variant individuals, considering them to be “freaks”, and nothing like her whatsoever. She went to an incredible amount of trouble to ensure that she was never scrutinised as being anything other than a ‘normal female’. To again quote directly from Garfinkel’s account:

“I’m not like them” she would continually insist. “In high school I steer clear of boys that acted like sissies … anyone with an abnormal problem … I would completely shy away from them and go to the point of being insulting just enough to get around them … I didn’t want to feel noticed talking to them because somebody might relate them to me. I didn’t want to be classified with them.”

Just as normals frequently will be at a loss to understand “why a person would do that, i.e. engage in homosexual activities or dress as a member of the opposite sex, so did Agnes display the same lack of “understanding” for such behavior, although her accounts characteristically were delivered with flattened affect and never with indignation. When she was invited by me to compare herself with homosexuals and transvestites she found the comparison repulsive.

Agnes was also very anxious about how her situation may affect her relationship with her boyfriend, Bill. Agnes met bill in April of 1958, seven months before she received medical scrutiny. Her refusal to let him allow his hands to wonder below her waist was met with much frustration by him, only temporarily alleviated by claims of her modesty and virginity. Agnes disclosed her situation to him in June, and whilst Bill accepted that it was “like an abnormal growth”, he found it difficult to understand why Agnes attended sessions every Saturday to discuss the condition with the doctors (over 70 hours of interviews were recorded and analysed). This was because Bill did not know that Agnes had been raised as a boy, and she sure as hell wasn’t intending for him to find out. She was also somewhat scared about the fact that Bill might himself be ‘abnormal’ (i.e. homosexual…) due to staying with her after disclosure – though she put this worry to rest after remembering that he took interest in her before he ever knew.

In March 1959, Agnes received a castration operation, where her penis and scrotum were removed, and a vagina constructed in their place. Before the surgery, she was scared that the doctors would make the decision that she was ‘actually’ male, and would amputate her breasts without telling her – but was reassured when told this definitely would not happen. With some time for healing and the use of a penis shaped mould, she was able to acclimatise her new genitals such that she was able to have vaginal sex.

After surgery, Agnes was well accepted by her immediate family and Bill. This was because the doctor’s treatment legitimised her claims of having been ‘female all along’, and that her being raised as male was simply an unhappy mistake due to a condition. The medical justification also meant that her “man-made vagina” was seen as ‘legitimately deserved’ by her, unlike individuals making claims of being women, whilst being ‘unambiguously’ physiologically and genetically ‘male’. Sorry for all the inverted commas, but I hope you see I’m illustrating the beliefs of Agnes and wider society at the time, rather than my own.

PRIDE SHARKTOPUS. I swear, coming up with images to break up the text of this post in a relevant way has been nearly impossible. But I could not resist this badass. For anyone wondering, they’re brandishing the (from bottom left going clockwise): the STRAIGHT ALLY flag, the ASEXUAL flag, the BISEXUAL flag, the PANSEXUAL flag, the GENDERQUEER flag, the INTERSEX flag, the TRANSGENDER flag, and the rather more common LGBT flag. This link is the best I could do towards crediting. 

Five years after her surgery and consultation sessions had finished, Agnes returned to catch up with the doctors who had helped her. Whilst she was no longer with Bill, none of the men she had been with sexually since him had ever given any reason to think they found her in any way out of the ordinary. She was still worried however, so Garfinkel arranged for her to see an expert urologist, who confirmed that “her genitalia were quite beyond suspicion”.

Agnes then dropped a massive bombshell.

During the hour following the welcome news given her by the urologist, after having kept it from me for either years, with the greatest casualness, in mid-sentence, and without giving the slightest warning it was coming, she revealed that she had never had a biological defect that had feminised her but that she had been taking estrogens since age 12. In earlier years when talking to me, she had not only said that she had always hoped and expected that when she grew up she would grow into a woman’s body but that starting in puberty this had spontaneously, gradually, but unwaveringly occurred. In contrast, she now revealed that just as puberty began, at the time her voice started to lower and she developed public hair, she began stealing Stilbestrol from her mother, who was taking it on prescription following a panhysterectomy. The child then began filling the prescription on her own, telling the pharmacist that she was picking up the hormone for her mother and paying for it with money taken from her mother’s purse. She did not know what the effects would be, only that this was a female substance, and she had no idea how much to take but more or less tried to follow the amounts her mother took. She kept this up continuously throughout adolescence, and because by chance she had picked just the right time to start taking the hormone, she was able to prevent the development of all secondary sex characteristics that might have been produced by androgens  and instead to substitute those produced by estrogens. Nonetheless, the androgens continued to be produced, enough that a normal-sized adult penis developed with capacity for erection and orgasm till sexual excitability was suppressed by age 15. Thus, she became a lovely looking young ‘woman’, though with a normal sized penis…

This 19 year old girl with no medical training, by sheer, unadulterated luck, and using a method that now would be essentially impossible, managed to achieve the treatment and recognition she desired in a time when any gender or sexuality variance was seen near-universally as sickness and/or criminal.

Try reading all that again, bearing in mind what you now know about Agnes. Do you find yourself thinking of her in any way differently? It’s quite amazing how even today, many people still consider legitimacy in gender identity to require the green light from the medical establishment. Agnes’ genius manipulation of the system gives a great big middle finger to anyone who would try and question or prevent her legitimacy. For her, being transgender wasn’t an identity she felt any connection with. She had no interest in waging a political fight, or in challenging any aspect of social norms. There’s no way to really comment on whether her disgust at gender and sexual minorities was an act or real. She got what she needed.

Respect.

The original chapter can be read here (at least in part), through Google books.

Category:

Children, Intersex, LGBT, Science, Socialisation, Theory Literature, Transgender, Women

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Is there a clear way to define a ‘biological’ sex?

One of the most fundamentally obvious things people might think when they’re asked what ‘Gender Studies’ actually is, is that it may look at differences between men and women… in some way. An interesting question to ask might be what actually is it that makes a man ‘a man’ and a woman ‘a woman’? It’s not as obvious as one may think.

When this question was first asked in a legal context (roughly 50 years ago), three factors were used to define ‘biological sex’: the chromosomes of an individual, what gonads (ovaries or testes) they possess, and their genitals. This is overly simplistic as it turns out that many different combinations of these three factors exist than the two categories everyone was assumed (or expected?) to fall into.

The rest of this post will contain science. For anyone apprehensive, I dare you to read on. I double dare you.

We are all told in school that with regards to chromosomes, men = XY and women = XX. For many people this is true. On the Y chromosome, which is a small, stumpy little thing, lies a gene called SRY, which stands for ‘Sex Determining Region Y’. It is responsible for unspecified gonads in a foetus to develop into testes. Seems pretty straightforward. However this area of the Y chromosome can in rare cases cross over to an X chromosome. If this X chromosome is then inherited, an individual who is XX but in all other ways ‘male’ (gonadally, genitally, and in appearance when older) will result. If the SRY-less Y chromosome is inherited, then the foetus will be XY, but otherwise ‘female’. Because sex on a birth certificate is decided just from someone taking a cursory glance, these conditions may be undiagnosed until the age of puberty, or sometimes not at all.

Individuals who possess a SRY gene will develop testes. Testes then produce testosterone, which is responsible for the development of typically male external genital structures (penis and scrotum) and internal genital structures (the bits needed for reproduction inside that aren’t the testicles themselves – mainly specific tubes).

Before sexual differentiation, all foetuses possess two structures where their internal sex organs will be, called the Müllerian and Wolffian structure. Testes produce a substance called ‘Anti-Müllerian Hormone’ (AMH), which causes the Müllerian structure to regress. The testosterone produced by the testes causes the Wolffian structure to develop into male internal structures. Lack of testosterone prevents the Wolffian structure from developing and causes it to regress, and lack of  AMH allows the Müllerian structure to develop into ‘female’ parts.

The ‘triggering amount’ of testosterone needed to cause penis and scrotum development is lower than the amount needed to make Wolffian structures develop – so if a foetus has a condition that results in lower levels of testosterone (and there are quite a few that can), the result will be someone without the corresponding male internal organs to match the external ones.

Whilst there are many, many different genetic conditions that can make fitting clearly into a ‘social sex box’† problematic, there are a couple that illustrate the potential ambiguity in defining sex very well.

The first of these is called CAH, or Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia. This is a mutation in a gene which causes a particular enzyme the body normally produces, to not work. This enzyme is essential for the production of the substance cortisol, and so people with CAH cannot produce cortisol. The result of this is that the hypothalamus (the region of the brain which monitors certain hormone levels among other things) says:

“There is no cortisol! Release precursors!”

Various human brains (paraphrased)

In normal circumstances such precursors would get made into cortisol – but because the enzyme responsible doesn’t work, the precursors end up getting made into testosterone and other ‘masculising’ hormones – giving XX foetuses male genitalia. Due to not actually having testicles, no AMH gets produced, so female internal structures still form. Sometimes the genitals of such individuals are judged to be ‘ambiguous’, and tests are done at birth that reveal the condition. Some however look like entirely unremarkable boys, and may go completely undetected.

Another interesting condition is Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, AIS. This is a mutation that occurs on the X chromosome, and happens in a gene that encodes a receptor (protein that senses when a particular thing is present) for testosterone. This means that in XY foetuses, even though testes are produced normally, and testosterone is then produced normally – none of the rest of the body can detect that the testosterone is there…so female genitalia develop. AMH is produced which prevents Müllerian structural development, but the Wolffian structures can’t develop either as the testosterone can’t be detected. AIS babies show no signs of being anything but female, though are XY and have testes. There’s no clearly agreed reason or way to decide whether possession of one trait or another is what indicates a foetus or babie’s ‘true’ sex, if such a truth can actually be said to exist.

AIS can be ‘complete’ or ‘partial’, with the ‘partial’ condition resulting in ambiguous genitalia. To quote from the book ‘Brain Gender’ by Melissa Hines:

The direction of sex assignment of individuals with PAIS depends to some extent on the appearance of the external genitalia; those judged to have a penis too small for success in the male role may be surgically feminized and raised as girls, whereas others are reared as boys and treated with andogens to try to stimulate penile enlargement and development of other male secondary sexual characteristics. In this syndrome and others involving undervirilization in XY individuals, however, additional considerations, such as the desire of the parents for a son versus a daughter can also influence the direction of sex assignment.

It’s fair to say that the result of accident or injury resulting in penile loss wouldn’t result in an individual who would be unable to have ‘success in the male role’, regardless of the fact that they have already been raised and socialised as male. This discussion hasn’t even touched on the importance of how personal understanding and identity of one’s gender can reflect on how one is defined. If an individual ‘feels’ strongly that they are a given sex, how is this necessarily any less biological? Whatsmore, is there even reason why choice of identity (particularly beyond the strongly binary male-female that is enforced by much of society) is ‘less valid’ as a way by which sex can be defined? It’s easy to get into some very tricky philosophical areas related to this, and certainly the arenas of biology and socialisation are virtually impossible to disentangle from each other.

When it comes down to it, none of these factors are how people judge the sex of people they see day-to-day. We look at what clothes people wear, their size, build, and where they have hair. We listen to what they sound like, and what their name might be. Most people rarely question what they’re presented with assuming they can easily put a person into one box or another. The questions asking why people feel the need to do this, and why people react the way they do when they can’t, are further huge areas to consider!

†If you’re into that sort of thing.

Category:

Intersex, Men, Science, Transgender, Women

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