#“well intersex people are a very small part of the population so lets not look at that group [when discussing transgender people]”

[terrorbirb]

I honestly think we should consider adding "anti-intersex" to "anti-trans legislation". I think intersex people are explicitly also the target as much as trans people. Hormones save lives for trans people, but they also do for intersex people? If I do not have access to hormones for my condition I would bleed out and literally perish. Like I understand how "biological gender is only male or female" hurts trans people, but I don't understand why it's not said that it hurts intersex people as well? I feel like intersex people are just a "gotcha" to conservatives and not seriously considered past that.

[khali-shabd]

Gender Theory

Readers, let us begin with a simple question- what is gender?

The Biological Theory Of Gender, and a majority of society, would say that gender is defined by biological sex, namely hormones and chromosomes. If you release estrogen and have XX chromosomes, you are female, and if you release testosterone and have XY chromosomes, you are male. However, this is an extremely flawed vision of gender for two reasons: one, that whatever proof of hormones altering gendered behaviour has been found only in lab rats1, which possibly will not exhibit the same extreme change in behaviour if the hormones were administered to them naturally in their own environment- and rats are not human- we have far too many differences as species for this study to be considered valid for homosapiens as well. And two, chromosomes are not strictly XX or XY- around 1 percent of the world population is intersex (and a similar percentage is redheaded, so its not inherently ‘anomalous’ or ‘unnatural’) , which means that they can have chromosomal variations such as XXY, X, XXXY etc, all of whom develop differently as compared to people with the traditional chromosome combinations. 

Further, there are far more things that define ‘biological sex’, namely:

chromosomes

gonads

sex hormones

internal reproductive anatomy (such as the uterus)

external genitalia.

Out of these, in humans, genitalia and internal reproductive anatomy can be changed without there being a significant change in gendered behavior. Sex hormones, when administered to bodies change secondary sex characteristics more than any sort of behavior; with the exception of testosterone increasing sex drive and sometimes increasing ‘ego’. Every single part of this definition of binary biological sex is challenged by the existence of intersex people, henceforth proving that sex is not binary and never has been, unfounding the existence of a sex-based gender binary in itself. Further, transgender individuals have a completely different gender identity as compared to their biological sex, and it has been scientifically proved that this is because their brains develop in the same way the brains of the children of the gender they identify with do. That essentially means that the brain of a transgender woman develops similarly to the brain of a cisgender woman, and the brain of a transgender man develops in the same way the brain of a cisgender man develops. All in all, there are far too many differences in the experience of biological sex to confine it to a binary, hence unfounding the theory that gender is based on biological sex.

Then how do we define gender?

There are a number of theories, but the most logical one at the moment would be Judith Butler’s Theory of Gender Performativity. Butler says that gender, as an abstract concept in itself, is nothing more than a performance. We ‘perform’ our gender by carrying out actions that we associate with it. They further say that this does not mean that it’s something we can stop altogether, rather something we’ve ingrained so deeply within us that it becomes a part of our identity, and it's the part of it we call gender identity. Gender, hence, is created by its own performance. Butler also implies that we do not base gender on sex, rather we define sex along the lines of established lines of binary gener, i.e. male and female- despite the fact that more than 10% of the population does not fall into this binary sex, and has some variation in their biological sex that does not ‘fit’ into either category. Gender in itself is so culturally constructed by western society that anyone who does not perform their assigned gender ‘correctly’ is punished- this applies to not only queer individuals but even men who do not ascribe to or criticise predefined ideals of masculinity. They are made social pariahs and excluded as outcasts, leaving them to find and create their own communities and safe spaces. This is shown in the way society ostracises queer-presenting individuals, makes fun of ‘soft’ men, and forcefully tries to ‘fix’ intersex children whose variations in biological sex cause no harm to them. I quote:

“Because there is neither an ‘essence’ that gender expresses or externalizes nor an objective ideal to which gender aspires; because gender is not a fact, the various acts of gender create the idea of gender, and without those acts, there would be no gender at all. Gender is, thus, a construction that regularly conceals its genesis. The tacit collective agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions is obscured by the credibility of its own production. The authors of gender become entranced by their own fictions whereby the construction compels one’s belief in its necessity and naturalness.”

One of the criticisms of Butler’s theories is that it does not seem to apply to transgender individuals, whose innate gender identity is not the one that they have been assigned to perform at birth; whose brains develop the same way that their cisgender counterparts’ brains do from birth. Butler themselves have responded to this, saying:

“I do know that some people believe that I see gender as a “choice” rather than as an essential and firmly fixed sense of self. My view is actually not that. No matter whether one feels one’s gendered and sexed reality to be firmly fixed or less so, every person should have the right to determine the legal and linguistic terms of their embodied lives. So whether one wants to be free to live out a “hard-wired” sense of sex or a more fluid sense of gender, is less important than the right to be free to live it out, without discrimination, harassment, injury, pathologization or criminalization – and with full institutional and community support.”

Later on, Butler goes on to say that the main point of their theory is that identity is constructed, which means that it allows us to change how we view it as a concept. It leaves room for us to subvert gender roles, challenging the status quo on what it means to identify as someone of a particular gender, and re-structuring society such that we rally for change not along gender lines, rather on the basis of what’s right.

Further, if we combine the work of the psychologist Sigmund Freud with Butler’s theories, the latter does actually apply to transgender individuals. Freudian theory states that we internalize concepts of gender based on our parental figures at birth. That is, if you are born female, you begin to look towards the person who closest resembles your gender identity; which in this case would be your mother, to be your role model for your behavior as to how women are meant to act. Your mother would be your guide to how you perform your gender. If she crosses her legs, you cross your legs. If she dresses in a particular way, you would too, until you were exposed to the exterior world and allowed to develop your own sense of style. As such, you create your own gender identity within your mind, and perform that identity the way you have been taught to by your maternal figure. When you are transgender, you view yourself as innately as the gender you identify with, hence you base your gender identity off the parental figure of that particular gender. This means, if you are female to male trans, you would base your gender identity on your father, and accordingly perform your gender in that way.

Now the question arises: How do we create gender identity outside of gender roles? How do we identify anywhere on the gender spectrum while abandoning the performance that comes with that identity? Why is it important?

Well, the answer isn’t simple. For its importance, I allude, once again, to gender performativity theory- Butler even uses some evolutionary stances to support her views, saying that gender performance stems from gender roles which stem from the fundamental differences between the prominent male and female sex at the very beginning of evolution. Now that 'evolutionary' behaviors don't matter at this stage of societal, cultural, and psychological development, it renders gender roles and hence the performance of gender redundant. However, we still perpetuate these ideas regardless of their importance, or rather their lack of such. And in this process, we end up defining and segregating far too much on the basis of gender- from small things like friendships to even the feminist movement, which is majorly perpetuated and held up by people who identify as female. Other groups like men end up purposely excluding themselves from a movement that can benefit them as well(through deconstructing and eradicating ideas of toxic masculinity) just because of how strongly it is divided on the basis of gender lines. And as for how we create gender identity outside of gender roles; it takes a lot of work, at first, to unlearn all the biases you have internalized about what it means to be a certain gender. You have to actively work towards deconstructing what gender and gender identity means to you, and how much of it comes from societally misguided stances about the ‘role’ of a gender is. It may mean ridding yourselves of the school of thought that women belong in the kitchen and men belong in workplaces or even identifying and removing hidden biases such as those of toxic masculinity and/or toxic femininity. Lastly, it takes an understanding that often, gender expression is not the same as gender identity; and also that most gender expression is how people show how they feel the most comfortable viewing themselves. Once you’ve managed to deconstruct your biases, it’s just a matter of how you feel comfortable viewing and expressing yourself; and what label, among the myriad, you identify with the most. That would be your unique self-expression and identity.

[elementale]

According to your “logic” being non binary (which is made up) means you’re neither male of female (makes no sense) so how the fucking shite can lesbians date them and still be lesbians?

Well, if you’re genuinely curious to know I’ll be more than happy to explain if you’re willing to listen.

Let’s begin with context and transgenderism itself. I think if nothing else we probably can both agree that at the very least there are different contexts where it might make sense to distinguish people based on what they were assigned at birth. For example, medically speaking, you don’t offer abortions to cis men; likewise, you typically wouldn’t offer testosterone blockers to a trans man beginning his medical transition.

Socially speaking however, the same cut and dry approach dealing in scientific and objective absolutes cannot always be used regarding differentiation by gender. A person who looks and acts like a woman or man will be assumed to be one of the two by a society comprising of cisgendered individuals; if the person in question seems ambiguous in gender, cis society can be noted to have a notorious history of responding with the kind of ignorance and/or anger that no small number of people have had to pay for in blood. Regardless of what gender a trans person may have been assigned at birth, they will at some point realize that, at least psychologically speaking, that prescribed gender simply doesn’t align with their reality as a person in some significant manner that may vary from person to person. The ensuing discomfort that can potentially result from the dissonance between the person’s inner and outer reality as it pertains to their gender is known as gender dysphoria, and it can take on several forms. Some trans people (mainly the transmedicalist crowd) will insist that the discomfort is a necessary element and a person is not trans without the brand of discomfort that will compel them to take hormones and medically transition, but that tends to lead into another set of discussions altogether.

With that established, here’s the concept of nonbinary as an ism. You know how everything can fit your definition of binary gender and corresponding sex if you just dismiss all exemptions to your rule as inconvenient aberrations? Apply the XX vs. XY binary medically and you would be dismissing a lot of chromosomal variant and intersex individuals in the process (and make no mistake; 1.7% of the people in the population may sound small but that is effectively still hundreds of millions of people worldwide who do not neatly fit a “males=XY testes and females=XX ovaries” model of biological sex) if that binary were the only legitimate model. Biologically speaking, there’s already a grey enough region to establish that the most effective model of gender distinctions would have to include people who may not fit the pink and blue boxes. So if medically and biologically there’s already some undeniable ambiguities that bring the unwavering authority of a strict binary into question, where do you think that leaves us socially? Socially - where matters have layers of nuance to them and tend to be even less cut and dry? While there are social expectations on men and women that vary from culture to culture, a constant is that these rules and expectations are socially made and culturally imposed. When people say “gender is a social construct” it might be best understood that what makes the statement true isn’t that gender itself is inherently social in its construct, but rather that the social side of gender and the rules that come with it are socially changeable/pliable. GNC people are a great example of this in action: they break the rules prescribed by society regarding how they should be and express divergently. Non-binary identities are like GNC expression except unlike gender non-conformity in expression and practice, non-binary identities are more of an inner truth regarding gender identity itself. Since society at large has no place for the non-binary in its list of currently acceptable social genders, the rules to being non-binary are kind of non-existent right now; to express one such identity in a way that will register with a cisnormative society, individuals tend to choose gender non-conforming ways of expressing to get the memo across (this is not to say that NB people own GNC itself though). Medically speaking, NB people are as varied as they can be, and there are some for whom hormone therapy and surgery are part of their transition. Like with any other gender identity, there’s not much barrier to entry and the lack of any concrete way to go about being NB means people questioning their own gender are offered a conceptual space to explore being trans. For some folks, agender, genderfluid or demi-boy/girl fit like a glove; others realize it’s just not for them and either realize they’re trans binary later down the line, or realize they were cis all along - absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Non-binary identity does still remain a reality of a lot of people’s gender however whether or not you agree with that. I’m genderfluid myself and while being afab means I am medically recognized as female, I am genderfluid in every other relevant aspect of my life. It’s not a dysphorically-spurred thing for all NB people, but for me it actually is: for example, I have a gender confirmation class surgery I would like done at some point. Since I’m demi-ro and pan I personally don’t really have to think all that hard about any real gender-imposed limitations over what my orientation may entail, but here’s the thing regarding lesbianism as I currently understand it.. it’s not so much about wlw for the body as much as it is the lady in question. By including trans men as people who lesbians can be attracted to, there’s a gender ambiguous element one may inadvertently introduce in that if that were part of the definition. I’m going to assume you got here after having seen one of my responses to that one @empanado-feliz post, and the problem with restricting lesbian to afab people is, as I’d mentioned there in a later reply, that it is a definition that fails to account for and thereby excludes people like intersex lesbians and trans women who it should be accounting for (not to mention how transphobic it is to include trans men in that considering how most if not all of them are trying to reintegrate into society as men). Also expression in a femme fashion isn’t something exclusive to afab persons; women are not attracted to amab trans people because of their anatomy, they love the person and sometimes that person - binary or NB - carries themselves in a viscerally womanlike way. I’m not a lesbian so I’m not really someone who could explain it as effectively as a lesbian who’s had that as a lived experience, but I do know that it’s simultaneously more multifaceted and simpler than a lot make it out to be.

In conclusion, thanks to how ambiguous and multifaceted things regarding gender can be, gatekeeping the identities of lesbians who date non-binary individuals (regardless of whether they are afab, amab or intersex - something that is no one’s business but their own by the way) regardless of how they express helps no one. If nothing else I hope this does offer some food for thought at the very least.