Why Are We Hung Up On Gender?

Radio talk-show lines across Canada are sizzling with angry denunciations of Kathy Witterick and David Stocker, parents of two boys, Jazz (5) and Kio (2), plus baby Storm.
The Globe and Mail

Why all the fuss over the gender of Storm? Why are all the comments on articles about Storm so negative? You would think that our society is hung up on the gender binary, but gender is not a binary, we like to make it a binary; however, nature very rarely does anything in black and white terms.

Why do we feel uncomfortable when we do not know a person’s gender?

Toronto parents hide child’s gender in bid for neutral treatment
National Post
By Tom Blackwell
May 25, 2011

It is nothing if not an unorthodox approach to child rearing: A Toronto couple says it is trying to raise a genderless child, refusing to reveal baby Storm’s sex to encourage a more neutral approach to the infant.
[…]
In fact, there is little hard, scientific data on exactly what does make people feel and act like a boy or a girl, but some evidence points to gender identity being hard-wired, says Michele Angello, a U.S. psychologist.

Dr. Angello specializes in helping “gender-variant” people — those born with the body of one sex but convinced they are the other. Many go on to have sex-change operations.

The way people act toward them certainly affects how they feel about themselves; whether it actually molds their identity to start with is another question, she said.

“People come into my office saying ‘I knew from an early age I identified as a female, even though I was born with a male body, but it was made clear to me that was unacceptable,’ ” said Dr. Angello, based in Wayne, PA.
[…]
One of the most controversial explorations into the issue involved David Reimer, an identical twin from Winnipeg whose penis was accidentally removed during a botched circumcision as a baby. John Money, a controversial U.S. psychologist, oversaw his case and saw his genitals partially converted to female ones, female hormones administered and Mr. Reimer raised as a girl. Dr. Money argued that sexual identity was fluid until a certain age, and pointed to the Canadian’s case as evidence of it. Mr. Reimer, who was raised as Brenda for years, revealed later, however, that he never felt like a girl. He committed suicide in 2004.

If creating sexual identity is not a simple matter of surgery and pharmaceuticals, what are the key factors then? The case of transsexual people who feel trapped in the wrong body would suggest a strong biological component, but that could be a faulty assumption, said Dr. Edgardo Menvielle, a psychiatrist who treats gender variant people at Children’s National Medical Centre in Washington, D.C..

Gender is not visible; gender is hidden inside of us. There are no tests to say if you identify as a boy or girl, we self-identify, we say who we are. Sex is between your legs, gender is in your head. I like to use the analogy of a row of telephone poles, when you look down the row of them you only see the first telephone pole, but if you stand off to one side you can see that there are more than one telephone pole. The same is true for sex and gender, when both are in-line we only see one pole. However, for those of us who are transgender we see that there are really two poles, sex and gender.

The story about David Reimer that was mentioned in the National Post is a case in point. David was surgically altered to make his gender and sex out of line. When David looked between his legs he didn’t believe what he saw, his brain said it was wrong. All the visible clues said female, but his brain screamed male.

In a 2005 New York Times an article, Declaring With Clarity, When Gender Is Ambiguous, the writer Claudia Dreifus tells of an interview with Dr. William G. Reiner, a professor and researcher at the University of Oklahoma and Johns Hopkins about babies born with an intersex condition. In the interview Dr. Reiner said,

…Until the 1950's, when an intersex child was born, they were let be. But starting in the 1950's, the general approach was to make the child into one sex or another. If it was a partially masculinized female, there was a surgical attempt to turn her into a "normal" female. Structures were created so that she could have intercourse later.

If the child was a genetic male, the question was, Will the adult penis be large enough for sexual intercourse? The vast majority of the children with severe inadequacy of the penis were converted to "female" surgically and then raised as girls.

Q. So the prescription for the intersex boys was castrate them and put them into a dress?

A. The problem was, In a large number of children, as with my first intersex patient, it never took. Gender has far more to do with other important structures than external genitals.

Q. How do you know what constitutes gender identity?

A. As part of a research study, I've personally seen and assessed 400 children with major anomalies of the genitals. Of those, approximately 100 might be called "intersex." Our findings have been many and complex. The most important is that about 60 percent of the genetic male children raised as female have retransitioned into males.

We also found that of this group there were some genetically male children, who despite genital anomalies were raised as males, and they continued to declare themselves as male.

Gender is not what is between your legs, gender is in your brain! A transgender person is born. It is not a “lifestyle”, it is not a “choice”.

There are those who call us perverts, there are those who call us sexual predators and they have spew their hate for us. It is just as Rep. Fawcett said on the House floor when she voted for the anti-discrimination bill HB6599, that there are organization opposed to the bill that "who have slandered the intent of the proposal before us" and "stirred up fear” against the bill and that they have "not stood up for the same God or the same faith that I hold so dear".

We expect that the Senate will vote on the bill today or tomorrow. They submitted all the amendments that they tried to pass in the House, plus the amendments that they tried to add in the Judiciary Committee. Please help us and call or email your senator, you can find their contact information here, tell them to vote for HB6599 as passed by the House.

We need to pass this bill as amended by the House.