There is a lot of talk of Gender Identity as different from Sex. Usually it follows on the line that gender is what you feel you are, and sex is what you physically are, or what your biology tells us you are. As such Sex has become a major shackle with which trans people are burdened. Cis and trans people both do this, it is a false burden and is often used to exploit us along the lines that it ‘exposes the lie’, or at least it reminds us forever of how we will always be defined in the binary and are forever doomed to be trapped as good enough for neither. But it is a false chain holding us to a Dark Age definition.

The classic methods to define sex are in order, genitalia, gonads and chromosomes.  Each of these, it is said, defines male or female. Therein lies the rub. Why only these three? What about that giant organ on our shoulders that defines for us what we feel we are? Is sex not also in the brain as well (not on the brain you fiends).

Well there have been a few tantalizing studies that suggest sex is biologically, i.e. physically, in the brain too, that is to say there are physical centres of the brain that are different between trans and cis people of differing gender identity that are not there in trans and cis people of the same gender identity. To me it was obvious we were going to find this and more than likely we will discover what areas of the brain are related to sex and gender. But again we are living in the lie.

The truth is the scientific definition of sex is a lazy definition. We used to define it as genitalia only because it was very common to have only two more or less different looking things. Of course no two people look the same, but what the hell they are all sort of either penis or sort of vagina…except the few that were not, but those were deemed ‘experimental  error’ as a statistician might say.

Well we are not an error no matter how much society wants us to be. So we moved on to gonads which didn’t help much and finally genes. Everybody loves genes since they are sold to us as the be all and end all of demonstrable proof. But most everybody loves to look at genetics in lazy ways. Well we found a gene that seems to code for the genitalia case closed. We have found in most cases those we choose to identify as female have XX chromosomes and those we choose to identify as male have XY chromosomes, case further closed. Have we thought of looking deeper? No? Why not? We are lazy. It always seems when we explore a touchy issue like gender (or sex) we stop the moment we can.

Whether this is because we want to fit in with the popular view, we are afraid or we just don’t care, the result is the same, we stop looking. And as a result a portion of the population is ‘the error’. Of course, since we defined what is correct anything that does not fit that definition must be error. We begin to see the failure of our assumptions and our definitions. Trans people are thought of as a mistake at best or evil at worst because of the assumptions we refuse to give up.

Such is the truth with research on trans people. Very little has been approached from the biologic side. Most research was devoted to mental health, since being trans was and still is deemed to be a mental health issue and not a physical one (note: I do not believe in the ghost in the machine), where the best we could do was statistical analysis of what people report or to be more accurate, what researchers report people report. The broken telephone effect of psychological research is well known and dangerous, particularly when the field is controlled by only a few since the rest are socially stigmatized for daring to investigate. Let’s face it, research into gender is a career killer for any scientist much in the same way SETI research is a career killer.

When the community turns a blind eye or blindly accepts whatever a handful of researchers are saying about a subject because they do not wish to look at it themselves, the results are often disastrous as most trans people well know. More than likely this is because those people who actual risk career ending research are chasing it for a preconceived answer, and their research is permanently coloured as a result. We have seen so much research into trans people that was cherry picked (meaning picking only cases that match their preconceived notions when documenting research and leaving all other cases out of the data they use), use insignificant sample sizes, use poorly worded questions or interpretations of what those answers meant, use ‘logical conjecture’ (e.g. not bothering with research, instead just theorizing based on assumptions, such as the assumption that there are only two genders, or that we are indeed a ghost in the machine) or were just simply using outright lies in their data.

Because there was hardly any (sometimes none at all) peer review of any of this work, it was allowed to become the standard of the day. Only now are organizations like WPATH and the like attempted to rectify the mistakes of the past. That is often a painfully slow process for trans people, especially when we consider WPATH has no control to impose its standards, and as a result doctors are even slower to adapt to them.

If we look at nature with an open mind, as free as we can from person bias, it becomes clear there are more than two genders and more than two sexes. In truth I think gender and sex is the same thing, and one day when the research is done we will be able to say being trans is a broad range of physical differences in the body and brain (the brain is part of the body, when we separate them it feeds the belief that all is a choice). More than likely we will end up refining the different forms being trans takes and create a series of new sexes out of it. And it with luck one day people will no longer live in the binary that tell trans people to fit into one or the other.

I feel it is important to speak on one major argument imposed upon us comes from those who suggest that gender is a social construct and sex is physical biology. I point out the very existence of trans people as disproof of that. There is clearly a need to identify one’s own gender to oneself and society, whatever that expression need be. There are a variety of potential reasons for this but at its foundation I think the root will be discovered in the biology of the brain. We are pattern seeking creatures and social creatures. Most of us desire a mate and a mate of potentially only a few gender designations and want to present as more appealing to those gender designations in order to attract said mate. As a result the desire for a set of rules as to how to do that is built into us. What those rules are is up to us as a society to define.

P.S.

It is no wonder to me why radical feminism has lost women since many women and trans people feel a draw to gender expression. Denying that, what is more than likely a biological drive to identify ones gender, will by nature drive people away. What at best can be said is the way in which we identify gender, i.e. the rituals we use, make up , wallets, haircuts, etc. may well be a social construct, but the actual desire to identify is not.

One further note I do find it very sad that often in radical feminism they fall into their own trap of denying gender and then demanding women be more masculine, often in less than subtle ways. In that sense many feminists have simply bought into the notion that being masculine is superior and as a result fall right back into the gender binary.