Talk:Gender identity/Archive 2

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2004 March

I know this hasn't been touched in a while, but seeing the current state of the article, I'd like to get the discussion again. Personally, I'd like to go back to the original article, and get rid of the entire proposed replacement. The old one, though short, was a fairly accurate coverage of the concept of gender identity. (However, I'd also question whether gender identity needs its own article, as it's probably duplicating other articles on the topic.) The "new" one, is a confused ramble about gender roles, identities and a bunch of other stuff - that at the very least, doesn't belong in this article.. Ambivalenthysteria 12:36, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[P0M:] It might help to make an entry on "gender identity and gender role" the main one. John Money created these concepts to help him accurately discuss the problems of people who found themselves "a lady with a penis," or in analogous situations, and he made those two terms (GI and GR) the complements of each other. Earlier articles were problematical because they confused sexual identity (whether one is capable of producing sperm or capable of producing ova, or...) and gender identity, and because they did not understand gender role to be the external expression of gender identity.

[P0M:] The whole thing is a bit of a mess to talk about because it is not obvious at first that a back-and-forth occurs between the individual and the society. For instance, a baby is born with genitals that look male. [He] is introduced to the world as Ziggie. [His] parents tell [him] that [he] is a little boy, will grow up to marry a woman, etc. [He] is given male-appropriate clothing to wear, a boy's haircut, etc. Somewhere along the line [he] decides that [he] is a "she" and wants to wear the frilly dresses, high heels, etc. that [she] has learned from society are appropriate to signal [her] feminine identity. Some members of society check this lady out, discover what at least appear to be male genitals, cry foul, and demand what they regard as something like truth in advertising. Lost in all of this, of course, (and perhaps irrelevant in the real world) are questions of whether this individual is XX or XY, whether this individual is XY but suffered some special hormonal condition that prevented his/her body from being masculinized during gestation, whether this individual is XX but has external genitals that were masculinized during gestation, etc.

[P0M:] There are at least two sets of perceptions involved whenever one's external genitals are different from what one feels "internally" is one's true gender. The individual may say, "I am a lady with a penis," and some would-be authoritity figure may say, "You are a man who tries to make other people believe he is a woman." A discussion about "gender identity and gender role" could side-step those issues by stating that each gender identity is matched with a specific gender role. People are represented as men by wearing trousers that zip open for standing urination, not wearing bras, not applying lipstick, not working in certain occupations, etc. People are represented as women by wearing dresses, bras, not hawking and spitting, applying lipstick and other such cosmetics, working in certain occupations, etc. One problem with even the simplified indications given above is that they are culture-specific. Wearers of kilts and male-appropriate sarongs do not have to fool with a zipper to permit standing urination, for instance.

[P0M:] As long as the gender role characterizations are accurate I think saying that "people who represent themselves as men do such-and-so" and "people who represent themselves as women do such-and-so" should work. (I have deep reservations about statements like, "Boys prefer the color blue.")

I never knew Ziggy Switkowski felt that way ;)

You may want to consider situations where some butch woman may "wearing trousers that zip open for standing urination, not wearing bras, not applying lipstick, not working in certain occupations", but still self-identify as female. You can't always so easily dichotomize and classify things... Dysprosia 10:31, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Firstly, who is John Money? I'm a bit surprised that I haven't heard the name, as both a transsexual and a psychology student. Secondly, P0M's example makes it seem as if gender identity is a choice "oh, I think I'm going to become a woman today...", which isn't too factually correct. Thirdly, I'm in favor of keeping Gender Identity and Gender Role seperate. Though they're similar, they're quite seperate concepts - (speaking both as a transperson and a psychology student). Fourthly, be very, very careful about saying "people who represent themselves as women do such-and-so", as Dyspropria said. These are whopping stereotypes. I've known people all over the gender specctrum - including transwomen who were stone butch. Ambivalenthysteria 11:00, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[P0M:] If you run the name John Money through Amazon.com or, maybe better, through the on-line catalog of a major university library, you will find that he has made enormous contributions to the field of sexology. He came from New Zealand and just retired recently from Johns Hopkins.

[P0M:] No. Gender identity is not a choice. John Money started out investigating people who insisted that they were [women] when they were XY and had the appropriate genitalia to fit their chromosomal status. He was broadly enough educated and inquisitive enough to realize that they were not just "trying to act like women for some damned reason." Before John Money there were males, females, sexual identities, and some awareness that intersexuals were not merely the stuff of ancient myths and old wives tales. He appropriated the term gender, which had previously been used in grammar, to talk about the individuals of male sex and feminine gender and the individuals of female sex and masculine gender -- and all the other complications. He invented the terms "gender role" and "gender identity". To some other people they have become mere buzz words or words to use to avoid the word "sex."

[P0M:] I'll come back in a minute to answer your third point and address Dysprosia's points as well. For the moment I'm trying to avoid another edit conflict.

[P0M:] Aha! When I said "[he] decides that [he] is a "she" and wants to wear the frilly dresses, high heels, etc. that [she] has learned from society are appropriate to signal [her] feminine identity," I didn't mean he was being arbitrary about it. I meant that he had made a discovery about himself. Sorry, that wasn't clearly stated. P0M 11:41, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Patrick, you have been told this before, but you may want to watch your pronouns carefully when you are talking about transgendered people, in the interests of not offending others. (For example, one would say "I didn't mean that she was being arbitrary about it. I mean that she...") Dysprosia 11:46, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I second what Dysprosia said there, too. On Money, however, it seems to me that we should be careful with this. Though he first used the term, I believe it has been expanded upon since, and it may leave the article incomplete to focus on only his interpretation of the concept.Ambivalenthysteria 11:56, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

{P0M:] Sorry, it's past dawn and I haven't had enough sleep. Sorry for the pronoun switch above, it was unintentional. I will come back later when I can think straight. For now, check out Dr. Diamond. He has very solid credentials, a good website at his university, and he is someone who argues with many of Money's position -- however the last time we spent some time on these issues I wrote to him and got some good information. (I have the URL somewhere.) Anyway, the way he uses these terms is consistent with the way I use them. The thing to avoid is letting precise concepts fuzz out to the point that "everything's everything" and nothing means much anymore. P0M 12:53, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

See http://www.hawaii.edu/news/kulama/000211/diamond.html P0M 12:55, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Fine with me. For a term that's in such common use these days, with a variety of interpretations, I objected to the article being based on the work of one theorist. I haven't read him either, but I did a little bit of research before, and he sounded as if he could be a good contrast. Ambivalenthysteria 13:27, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[P0M:] Two fundamental problems have come up.

[P0M:] The first problem is how to deal with terminology as it is used by scientists in the field of sexology as opposed to people in the general community who misunderstand terms and them misapply them. (For instance, “gender” was invented to describe a phenomenon broader than sex. One’s sex is male if one can produce semen, and one’s sex is female if one can produce ova. But some people who can produce ova understand themselves to be men, and some people who can produce semen understand themselves to be women. Those are issues of gender. Some TV announcer may understand "gender" to mean what previously was called "sex," and then things start getting confused again because we’ve lost the precision of language needed to discuss all the differentiation that can occur after a fetus inherits an X chromosome and a Y chromosome and grows male genitalia.)

[P0M:] The second problem is how to deal with the difference between a situation in a traditional society where there frequently seems to be a very limited number of choices on how to do things, and our present situation in which some people feel free to do their own things and some people feel free to engage in a culture war to protect "the way God meant things to be." There are far more than one or two situations such as the one Dysprosia brought up in which "some butch woman may [be found] 'wearing trousers that zip open for standing urination, not wearing bras, not applying lipstick, and not working in certain occupations', but still self-identify as female." There are, in fact, far too many gender identities and far too many gender roles to treat them all by enumeration. What would help most, I think, is to explain the function that the original institution played in societies, and then examine what happened when individuals realized that their realities could not be reduced to the dichotomy that traditional societies presented to them, and started playing around with them.

[P0M:] I believe that once people began to wear enough clothing to cover up their external genitalia they started to make distinctions in the kinds of clothing that were considered appropriate to each sex. Societies have sometimes taken these expectations so seriously that they have imposed criminal sanctions against those who cross-dress. Some of these clothing differences are functionally related to whether there are breasts that feel better when bound during certain activities, whether it is practical and convenient for an individual to urinate while standing, etc. But many of them are simply conventions and, indeed, different societies can code things in opposite ways. In such cases, it doesn’t matter which way things are done as long as everybody is “speaking the same language.” When people do not use the same convention, then miscommunications can occur.

[P0M:] In traditional societies there may be more than two choices. In India, the gender role of the hijra is different (both from men and from women) in regard to clothing and also in regard to occupations and other gender markers. In some Native American societies, intersex individuals have an honored position in society and it is signaled by special clothing and special occupational and other gender markers.

[P0M:] I think that the intent in all of this is clear. The reason that the tradition is there is that in most cases one can easily infer from gender role features what the sex and what the gender identity of the individual is. Being able to do so removes problematical ambiguity from many social situations.

[P0M:] The big problem, both for the individual and for the society, comes when someone’s external genitalia are discordant with that individual’s gender identity. The person may give every appearance of being a male and yet that person may self-identify as a woman. Or the person may give every appearance of being a female and yet that person may self-identify as a man. Or, actually, the fan-out at this point can be quite tremendous as individuals attempt to come to an understanding of themselves and to portray that understanding in some way that accurately conveys what they are to others – or perhaps they may even choose to portray themselves in yet another way for the purpose of making a social comment or for some other purpose.

[P0M:] One of the complications that often is ignored is that individuals may not have the correct information on their own chromosomal sex, on whether they actually have ovaries, testes, or some mosaic of the two different kinds of tissues, etc., etc. A person with a masculine gender identity may have been falsely informed that he has ovaries when in fact he has undescended testicles and a body that was not masculinized during gestation. So it may be that not only is the society holding false expectations for an individual on the basis of external genitalia, the individual may misunderstand himself/herself in a similar way.

[P0M:] Once we can lay out some good examples of traditional gender roles, it should be easy for people to understand what it means to go against those conventions. Perhaps it would be useful to treat some of these special cases separately. P0M 00:45, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Sociological usage question

Sociology's distinction between sex and gender, when referring to people's biological and cultural sexual identities respectively, seems to be gaining a acceptance outside sociology, and perhaps the distinction is useful. However the word gender predates sociologists' adoption of the word. This is illustrated on a form used in the UK that has to be filled on during the process of adopting children. The form asks for a list of family pets and their genders. Now I do not believe that it has ever been established that, say, a hamster can have a gender under the sociological definition. To be consistent in this respect the form should ask for the sex of pets, but somehow this seems wrong, i.e. the sociological usage is not appropriate in all circumstances. I do not believe there is consistency in the definition, and certainly not in the Gender identity article here, to help people ensure correct usage. I would suggest that in ordinary usage (rather than specialist sociological usage), the definition of gender includes that of sex and hence the former should be the preferred term in all circumstances except where human identity is being discussed. To further illustrate, in linguistics we talk about the gender of nouns and adjectives, not the sex, and again no one would suggest that mere words can have a gender as the term is used by sociologists. It is therefore refreshing to find that the UK adoption form makes correct use of the word gender when referring to pets, evidently uninfluenced by an inappropriate application of policital correctness in thi area. Matt Stan 08:14, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Isn't this point made at gender (the disambiguation)? This page discusses gender identity, which is different from gender and sex Dysprosia 08:23, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Firstly, Dysprosia has a point. That argument is best saved for gender. Secondly, I don't think the UK adoption form is the best way of defining gender. Going by the sociological usage, which is slowly becoming accepted across the board, the adoption form is incorrect. I'd bet that it will be changed within the next few years, particularly considering recent legislative developments in the UK. Secondly, it is perfectly acceptable to refer to gender in linguistics, using the sociological definition. The sociological definition simply defines gender as being different from sex - this has no effect at all on linguistic use. That argument is irrelevant. Ambivalenthysteria 09:36, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I take your point, and I see how political correctness (which I am not using as a pejoratrive term) has crept into the language here in order to engender (!) respect for trans-sexuals, etc. However I merely point out a slight semantic absurdity, or contradiction, that arises if we are to narrow the usage of gender as the previous contributor suggests is occurring. If the adoption form (mentioned above) usage of gender in regard to pets is wrong, as Ambivalenthysteria suggests, then so surely is the usage shown on the gender disambiguation page for the technical term gender changer. By Ambivalenthysteria's token, this should be sex changer, which would, of course, have entirely different connotations. I use this merely to illustrate the issue further, and I stick by my notion that gender has a wider remit as a word and therefore that its restriction to the sociological sense, no matter how highly desirable this is from a humane point of view, is unfortunately incorrect. Matt Stan 19:03, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well, connectors don't have a "sex" in the human sense, so maybe "gender changer" and "sex changer" are both inaccurate terms for the word. However, it is the most common and colloquial name given to that device.

What do you suggest be changed to the article, however? Dysprosia 22:11, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

See 1st paragraph of MER-B for use of gender in regard to objects. Of course there also ships - they are traditionally referred to as she. (We don't talk about the sex of a ship). I think the Gender identity article maybe does not need changing in respect of this discussion, but that the article on gender could do with some more on that topic. Problem is that the gender article is itself a disambiguation page, so I'm back here again with the view that the points I raise about usage might better be covered under gender identity than anywhere else. However I realise that gender identity is at the moment specifically to do with the sociological usage. Guidance, please. Matt Stan 00:13, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I think I understand you now, but I don't know whether calling objects by "she" or "he" is actually giving a gender to the object - gender includes a lot more than that. Are you suggesting mention of this point however in a new article/existing article? (Sorry about my miscomprehension, I tend to be rather slow at times ;) Dysprosia 04:10, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

You can't be that slow to come in at number 26: Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits
Matt Stan 08:56, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

:) I think I'm going to work on a parent for GI and GR where it'll work well to mention there. Dysprosia 09:32, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Maybe this could be the basis for another article, based around gender-related terms and inanimate objects? Ambivalenthysteria 05:10, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Re whether calling objects by "she" or "he" is actually giving a gender to the object. This is back to etymology. When we use gender in the linguistic sense, we're saying for instance that the French word for table is feminine: la table. No one is suggesting that a table possesses femininity per se, but the word is feminime, i.e. of feminine gender. Similarly with a ship or a space wagon, although here it is not the word, but rather the identity that is being given a gender (or perhaps it is, and this is just a sort of Latinisation of English???). Anyway, I'm suggesting that the word gender is a kind of meta-word, if that is the right term. The same idea, incidentally, can I think be traced to the sociological sense. When a biologically male person adopts a female gender, s/he is not saying that s/he is a woman, but that s/he wishes to be referred to as such and has a female identity. Matt Stan 14:47, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Most of what you say there makes perfect sense, in regard to linguistics. However, the second part is simply untrue. As Dyspropria has illustrated below, people do not generally "adopt" a gender - "oh, hey, I think I'll become a woman today". Secondly, in the case of transsexual people, (again, in general, there are exceptions, but comparatively rare ones), the vast majority ARE saying that they are that gender. Suggesting that transpeople just want to be referred to as men/women when they're really their birth sex is blatantly offensive. Ambivalenthysteria 15:01, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Why it's important

What the article isn't saying, is that gender identity is important primarily because of people who don't identify with their natural gender. For example, men who want to "live as women", like the patient described here by Dr. Stephen B. Levine.

The article also ought to be fleshed out, in terms of how gender identity relates to other protests about traditional gender roles, notably the response of feminism. Even better, would be if someone could be found who could distinguish between innate gender distinctions (e.g., how boys and girls are naturally different) and socially-programmed gender distinctions. --Uncle Ed 18:43, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Ed, may I just point out:

* the article does make mention (two paragraphs) of gender identity with respect to transsexualism, but it is not the sole reason for having a gender identity article, nor vice versa; important points have been made in this article in that gender identity and the sex of the person are not linked.

* natural gender - there is no such thing as a "natural gender" - gender is assigned to children at birth, on the basis of some external characteristics. The person's innate conception of what gender they are may agree with this assignment - or it may not. So it may be more accurate to say that someone's "natural gender" is the gender that the person feels they are/belong to - but this "natural gender" is simply gender identity.

* men who want to "live as women" is a term that is almost Jerry Springer-esque, as well as inaccurate.

Your other concerns, however, I do agree with, but I think some of them should be made at the Gender role article, which is more appropriate for those matters. Dysprosia 22:03, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Text from Talk:Homosexuality

I don't like to edit the gender articles, but some one put this on the Homosexuality discussion, and it was suggested that it may be useful in this article. Text below: (Paige 19:16, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC))

Determination of neural gender in utero

I think this associated press quote has interesting bearing on this topic:

"The scientific dogma used to be that hormones alone could “masculinize” the brain, he said. But he identified 54 genes that work differently in the brains of male and female mouse embryos just 10 days after conception — before sex hormones are ever produced. Doctors also once thought that how people were raised and their genitalia were enough to determine gender...But Reiner began seeing children who had been assigned to one sex as babies and a few years later began identifying themselves as the other." [1]

--Nectarflowed 19:28, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sex vs Gender as well as their Identification

Sex is a concrete noun (refering to male, female, intersex). Gender is an abstract noun (refering to masculine, feminine, androgynous). However, laymen sometimes borrow the word Gender to refer to concrete noun (male/female/intersex). Sexuality is an abstract noun. Sexuality and Gender can be used interchangably.

Sexuality can refer to sexual-identity (masculine, feminine, androgynous), sexual-orientation (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual), and sexual-receptivity (celibacy, hypersexuality) depending on the context. Gender Identity and Sexual Identity can also be used interchangably.

aCute 04:57, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

No, "sexuality" and "gender" are not interchangeable. I suggest reading Gender if you want to understand why this isn't so. Catamorphism 18:30, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Gender is abstract social construct, Sexuality is abstract psychological construct, and Sex is concrete biological constuct. I suggest explanding to the section Gender#Social_Category of the Gender article to include atypical genders. For example:

1. The gender label "two-spirited" is commonly used to refer to androgynous males and androgynous females. The sexual-identity of two-spirited individuals is androgynous.
2. The gender label "butch" is commonly used to refer to homosexual masculine males and homosexual masculine females. The sexual-identity of butch individuals is masculine and their sexual-orientation is homosexual.
3. The gender label "femme" is commonly used to refer to homosexual feminine males and homosexual feminine females. The sexual-identity of femme individuals is feminine and their sexual-orientation is homosexual.
4. The gender label "trans" is commonly used to refer to heterosexual masculine females and heterosexual feminine males. The sexual-identity of trans male is feminine and and the sexual-identity of trans female is masculine. Their sexual-orientation is heterosexual.

Labels of Gender (cultural) are given to a set of attributes of sexualities (psychological) including but not limited to sexual-identity and/or sexual-orientation. The labels of Gender are culturally determined and the terminology of Sexualities (sexual identity/sexual orientation) are scientific. Since wikipedia includes both cultural studies and science studies, the terms are interchangable if given correct context. aCute 20:33, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I think it's not as simplistic as you're making it out to be. "Butch" and "femme" are both terms that are more commonly applied to females than males, for example, even though there's nothing contradictory about using them to describe males. Also, your description of what "trans" means is completely inaccurate. Trans people aren't any more likely to be heterosexual than non-trans people. If you want to edit articles on gender, please do some research on it first. I suggest Kate Bornstein's My Gender Workbook to start with. Catamorphism 05:29, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

aCute, sex en gender are two different things, both are scientific. Trans has nothing to do with what gender you are, but whether you transgressing gender borders. Sexuality and gender cannot be used interchangably. --KimvdLinde 06:03, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

On the Confusion of Terms

Here's a brief table based on my understanding of the terminologies.

Umbrella Terms		Specific Terms	Example of Sub-Topic
	Sex	Sexual Activity	Desire, Relationship, Signals, Intercourse
Gender		Sexual Characteristics	Male, Female, Hermaphrodite/Intersex, Asexual
	Sexuality	Sexual Identity / Gender Identity	Masculine/Martian, Feminine/Venusian, Androgynous/Third-Gender
		Sexual Roles / Gender Roles	Segregation of sexual roles, Integration of sexual roles, Cultural norms
		Sexual Orientation / Gender Preference	Heterosexual, Homosexual, Bisexual
		Sexual Receptivity	Celibacy, Virginity, Promiscuity, Hypersexuality
		Sexual Materials	Romantic Literature, Erotica, Pronography

Historically, Gender is abstract concept (Sexuality), but laymen has borrowed the term to refer to concrete concept (Sex). aCute 21:52, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Maybe this issue must be argued out again and again. Sex is not as concrete as it may seem, since merely having a normal-looking penis and scrotum does not rule out the individual's genetic sexual identity being XX. And gender does not seem to be an abstract thing to many people since they fail to see that it, as well as sex, is socially constructed.

It's confusing, but both sex and gender are socially constructed, and things that are socially constructed typically have an objective component upon which subjective interpretations/explanations are built up. The reason that we now have the two concepts is that people researching some issues pertaining to sexual behaviors found that the external genitalia were sometimes at odds with the perceptions of individuals as to whether they were men or women. It became apparent that chromosomal sex did not adequately predict behavioral outcomes, and researchers hypothesized that developmental features might be involved, e.g., that there might be brain structure differences that would account for human differences in sexual behavior and/or sex-adjunct behavior in a way analogous to the atypical behavior of chromosomally XX cows that behaved as would bulls (freemartins).

The sex of an individual is defined by whether the individual is capable of producing sperm or ova. The gender of the individual is broader and involves issues of presentation of self, sexual behavior, etc., etc. The whole area is a field of landmines because of unclear definitions. For instance, some people maintain that a male human who regularly has sex with a male human who has a female gender role is not a homosexual. Some people believe the opposite. Some people believe that a male human who regularly has sex with a transsexual currently of female body type is not a homosexual. Other people believe the opposite.

Gender identity has two faces. Under one set of circumstances, an individual is observed to have male sexual characteristics and that individual's community defines the individual as a man, i.e., assignes a masculine gender identity to the person. The society may then insist that the individual maintain a masculine gender role. But from the standpoint of the individual, the appropriate gender identity may be feminine--despite the fact that the gender identity is cross-coded to the individuals sex, and the individual may insist on maintaining a feminine gender role.

The conceptual area is hard to keep straight even when it is appropriately presented, but in the hands of radio and television announcers and other people publisng in the mass media the word "gender" has been taken as a euphemism for "sex." So the difference is not between abstract and concrete but between dirty and nice. 金 (Kim) 06:32, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

My impression is that the discussion about what exactly is sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation etc is much stronger in the USA than in for example Europe. It is there also much more accepted that gender identity is probably not so much cultural, but actuall more biological. --KimvdLinde 06:46, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Someday the differences in brain structure will be clarified. What we have learned so far is in many cases anecdotal, or just clinical reports, and it is difficult to be sure what is biological and what is the result of nurture. It's hard to put up an airtight case. So many people who want things to be black and white, male and female, and no nonsense are likely to reject the idea that somebody really could be "masculine" even though all the chromosomal characteristics and the genitalia look consistently female -- and vice-versa. Actually, I think lots of people will ask, "Why is he' trying to act like a girl, and why is she trying to act like a boy? Why can't they just be what they are?" Then when these people push people to be what is expected of them there can be tragic events. 金 (Kim) 07:19, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I think you got me wrong, it is much more accepted that gender identity is biologically determined, and that it can mismatch with the physical sex of the person. The work of Swaab et al. is much more accepted. --KimvdLinde 07:44, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't trying to disagree with you, only to explain why it may be more difficult to get people to look at the truth in the U.S. Much of the problem seems to me to be an underlying ideological issue. 金 (Kim) 08:07, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Argument against the concept of gender identity.

Nowhere in the gender or gender-related articles could I find a "Critisism" section, and I think there needs to be one (but don't consider myself as qualified enough to be the one to write it up). Specifically, some people profess the idea that "gender" is a social construct and only exists insofar as people believe in the concept, that people only have a sex, and the concept of a gender beyond that is fabricated/imagined. This seems important to address. Or maybe this is covered somewhere and I just missed it. In that case, could someone point me in the right direction?

Evidence for the part after "only exists"? 金 (Kim)

Maybe the article is not clear enough in this regard. The whole point with Gender role is that it is a social construct. One's gender role is the easy part to get ahold of -- that and one's apparent sexual characteristics. And John Money appears to have believed early on in his career that one's gender identity was entirely a social construct. He believed that it could be controlled at will by the family and the community, and that if a child happened to be born with a far-from-perfect penis then the child could be "surgically reassigned" as a female (could be castrated and given a vagina) and raised as a girl. Even at that early time in his career he raised the caveat that the longer the family waited to treat Francis as Frances the less sure was the prognosis. So one question is what has to be done to construct a gender role?

A gender role, like Janus, has two faces. One is the face that the individual sees or wants to see, and one is the face that the society sees or wants to see. If the individual decides, "I am a boy," then it is understandable that "he" would not want to behave in sissy ways, wear sissy clothes, etc. What the individual does to "be like a real boy" depends on the culture. In ancient Scotland, the boy would want to wear a kilt like his father. In ancient Ireland, the teenage boy would perhaps want to wear his hair long and go naked into battle like his elder brother. The problem would come when he disrobed and his clan members discovered that he did not have male genitalia. They would then define him as a female (if nobody had figured it out before) and insist that she stop deceiving people.

The trouble is that we do not easily understand why an individual who appears to have male external genitalia may experience herself as a girl and later as a woman. We know that one of John Money's patients was surgically reassigned as a female but stubbornly asserted a masculine gender identity -- despite having all objective factors constrained to support the fiction that "she" had always been a male. We may suspect, and Money's research supports this conclusion, that brain developments must occur to turn the individual into a boy/man mentally, and that this transformation is irreversible. But the physical evidence for brain differentiation is not yet conclusive in the opinion of most specialists who study these matters.

Something is there in the beginning. It happens that regardless of whether one is XX, XY, or one of the other possibilities, one will turn out to have a female body type unless masculinizing hormones are present at appropriate times and in appropriate amounts during gestation, and that means that XX individuals can turn out to have a "male" body (except for the absence of functioning testes) if something goes drastically wrong during gestation (such as the mother's having a cancerous growth in tissue that produces androgens). So one starts as XX, XY, XYY, etc., and then things happen during gestation that interact with those chromosomal conditions. So it's already a "construct," it's something nutritive being used to construct something on the original genetic identity. And after birth the way the child is socialized will add further modifications and fulfillments. Children learn gender signals that we are typically unconscious of even though we react to them. In the dominant U.S. culture, for instance, boys learn to tilt their pelvises back (keeping those nasty genitals from poking an outline out through one's trousers), and girls learn to tilt their pelvises forward. In China and Japan, however, it is the men who tilt their pelvises forward and the women who tilt them back out of harm's way. (See Edward Hall, The Silent Language.) So the modest Iowa farmboy who goes to China looks a bit... odd... but nobody can figure out quite what it is about him. Male children who grow up without any male role models may pick up feminine mannerisms that become problematic because the only way they see things done is the feminine way. So these things are clearly social constructs. That's almost the whole point.

That it is a social construct is almost the entire point when the worst mis-match we have to deal with is the man or woman who moves to a new culture--and in those cases people normally learn to make allowances on both sides, but it is not the whose story when the individual has a clear and powerful awareness of self that is opposed to his/her external genitalia. It would be extremely arrogant for me to assume that someone else has decided that "he is a boy," "she is a woman," "he is a man," "she is a girl," or whatever it may be -- just to give me a hard time. To the best of my knowledge, people are much more likely to hit themselves with a hammer than they are to decide on a whim to offend their parents, their church, their schoolmates, their community, the law enforcement people in jurisdictions where being a "transvestite" is a crime, and anybody else who is nosy enough to intervene in their affairs. People who do decide to offend on such a whim typically wear a Mohawk for a while and then give up on it in favor of something else about equally ephemeral. People who express a gender identity and role that is at variance with their external genitalia typically do so at great cost, even anguish, to themselves. The only worse thing for them seems to be the anguish of living as one thing knowing oneself to be the other. 金 (Kim) 04:35, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Development of the concept of gender identity

Does anyone have a suggestion for a better title for this section? "Theoretical development"? "Conceptual origins"? The current section title seems a bit verbose. Kaldari 22:56, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I've changed it to "Conceptual origins" for now. Let me know if anyone comes up with a better idea. Kaldari 21:09, 19 October 2006 (UTC)