So, in honor of our first event last week, I wanted to write some on its topic: Transexuality.
To cover some of the basics - a person usually identifies as transgendered if they feel like their internal concept of their gendered self is different than the external expression of the sex of their body. Most transgendered persons report first having these feelings at a very young age, usually 3 to 10 years, although many do not come forward to others with these feelings until much older.
Some examples that you may recognize from the media:
Max, the Female to Male transgendered character on the Showtime show "The L Word," played by Daniela Sea
or
Katelynn, the recent cast member of The Real World: Brooklyn
or
Thomas, the "Pregnant Dad" who is a Female-to-Male transgendered person who assumed the external appearance of a man by taking hormones, but never did the surgery to change the female genitalia. Thomas was happily married to his wife, Nancy, but she was not able to conceive a child so they carried their baby in Thomas's perfectly healthy uterus.
Another topic relating to the oppression of the falsely black-and-white limitations on gender in our society is the persons who are born Intersex. The basic definition of a person born intersex is having "ambiguous gentaila". This quirk of biology can occur because when we are all developing fetuses we all start out as female, and then the determination of the sex depends upon whether or not the Y chromosome signals the tissue of the ovaries to descend into testicles and the clitoris to grow into a penis. However, growing a person is a very complex process with many opportunities for something to go wrong, and occasionally the thing that goes wrong is the genitalia development. Some of the many possibilities where the results don't fit the mold are when a person has a normal looking vulva on the outside, but instead of a uterus and ovaries has un-descended testes internally. The person could also end up with external genitalia that is somewhere between a large clitoris and a small penis. There are other variations, but you get the idea.
The latest media example of this is the runner Caster Semenya, who won a woman's race by quite a bit, and then was later discovered to not actually fit completely into the cut and dry XX category after all.
The tragic part of this issue is that, due to our society's inability to accept anyone who is not easily identifiable as completely male or completely female, doctors and parents often decide to surgically alter an infant's genitalia to look as close as they can get to one or the other. This decision is made before the person can voice their own wishes as to which gender they feel they are and would like to be assigned as, and also typically results in a significant loss of genital sensitivity. The surgery is purely for cosmetic purposes; the life or health of such individuals is not at risk. But they wouldn't match either mommy or daddy, which is not something many parents are willing to allow until the child can speak for itself.
Another interesting fact about gender:
Hormone levels have nothing to do with one's personal gender identity or sexual preferences in others. Studies were done to measure the testosterone levels of different men, some straight and some gay. And, in fact some of the highest levels of testosterone were found in the men who most strongly identified as homosexual. In addition, genetic females who take testosterone do not report a changing of their identity or preferences, but they do experience a significant increase in libido - it's just the same version of the libido as before.
And, finally, the inspiration for today's post (in addition to the event last week, perhaps "catalyst" is a better word):
My new discovery on MySpace today - Jeffree Star
From Jeffree's MySpace bio:
The appearance of my own body is cut and dissected every time I breathe. My horror of beauty is not when I’m laying naked on the bathroom floor, but when I’m staring at myself, wondering what’s underneath the painted-on feelings and made-up eyes. I’m not a fucking beauty queen. When I walk into the bathroom, I’m not getting pretty.. I’m destroying myself. Repairing myself from the damage I’ve done. Whether YOU like it or NOT. The ceiling of fear crashes down on me when I pick up the latest fashion magazine and find that no one else looks like me. But what is ME? Where has the word "real" gone to? Maybe reality is blonde hair, plastic body parts, tan skin and porcelain teeth? I think it’s sweaty skin, smeared lipstick and a big mouth, being afraid of nothing and truly LOVING yourself without BEING someone else. The vanity sanctuary will keep me safe and you can try to break me down but you’re only hurting yourself, just like you’re supposed to be doing.
I want out of the labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure. A sphinx. A mystery. A blank. Unknown. Undefined.
The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open. Sure, everybody wants to play God, but for me it's a full-time job. What you don't understand, you can make mean anything.
What do you think? What does looking at Jeffree make you think about yourself and the world?
For further reading: Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of Two Sexes by Gerald N. Callahan PhD
Post Script:
Another fact I learned at tonight's Domestic Violence presentation: the number one public health risk facing transexuals is murder. Please go forth and spread love and acceptance and knowledge and wisdom.
Saying Hormone Levels have nothing to do with one's gender identitity or sexual preference seems to be true when applied to post-uterine human life, but there were several interesting studies we went over in my abnormal psychology class that had some amount of evidence to the fact that the balance and levels of hormones in a mother's body is critical to the normal sexual development (Male/Female) of fetuses. The one I remember most fully was a study conducted comparing women who were pregnant in late-WWII Berlin to other German women in the same time period in the countryside. They found that there were many more transgenedered and homosexual children born to the women who were enduring heavy allied bomobing in Berlin. Other Studies we looked over put a period on when this effect can be induced, all of which manifest themselves fairly early in the pregnancy... I need to pull out my notes to find the times and associated effects, but there are a good number of studies to support these assertions. As to how to treat a child born with this ambiguity, it seems to me to be a complex issue, and I can't blame parents for choosing a sex for thier child... They are only trying to protect them from the dangers of being different. I also sympathize with the child, who, when this decision is made for them, has no voice. A complex issue indeed!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the excellent and informed comment!!
ReplyDeleteYes, I absolutely agree that the hormone levels in the womb are an ENTIRELY different situation, I'm glad you straightened out a fact that I rushed through detailing properly.
I mainly meant the "hormone levels don't affect orientation" as a counter to the uninformed idea that floats around that goes something like, "I bet gay guys just weren't born with enough testosterone in their system and if they got injected with all the right ratios of manly hormones they'll straighten right out." Which is of course not the case.
But yeah, I would not doubt for a second that being pregnant while your country is being repeatedly bombed would cause all kinds of physiological/environmental/hormonal things to seriously not go as normally as they should.
But then this takes us back to a central argument of: Should we even be bothering to look at non-"normal"-heterosexuality as a disease or defect or something to learn the "cause" of (as there is well documented evidence of homosexuality centuries before we were bombing each other with toxic chemicals) or just let it go and work on accepting each other instead?