Gender Identity: Who Do You Think You Are?
Last fall there was a protest at Washington College against a professor from another university who was scheduled to give a public lecture. He was well-known for his personal negative opinions on LGBTQ+ sexual orientations and gender identities. One of the protesters stated, “My rights are not an opinion! You know how many death threats I get from being trans?”
What is “trans” and all those other new words? They seem opaque and even nonsensical, but let’s look at them. We will also need to consider the concept of gender. It hasn’t always been in our vocabulary — not until it became evident that sex and gender were not the same thing.
Do you remember when you went through puberty? Was it easy going or did you have to struggle with labels such as “sporty girl” that implied you were not pretty? Did your gym teacher call you a “sissy” when you weren’t anxious to be tackled? Did you rebel against having to dress in a style that you detested and against not being allowed to put on what you wanted to wear? Did it rankle that teachers or parents wouldn’t let you consider a career because girls were destined to be housewives and mothers but not scientists? Or were you shamed for liking to cook because men only grilled food outside, not in the kitchen?
These are examples of ways in which our culture has tried to mold adolescents into the kinds of people that males and females should be, based on the ideas associated with their anatomical genitalia that were visible at birth. If those sexual characteristics seem to clash with our stereotypes of what men and women are, young people are scolded, punished, and shamed.
We thought that relationship was unchangeable.
We have changed some of those ideas, but even today we tend to apply the same criteria. The sonogram that shows a penis says, “It’s a boy!” And blue, not pink, becomes the required color for his clothes. However, in his teenage years, he may be longing to wear pink gowns and feel that he is more a girl than a guy. This is a quandary: Does his sex assigned at birth not fit how he feels who he really is?
Gender identity doesn’t always align with the sex that was assigned at birth. Why? One’s hormones may not harmonize. The invisible chromosomes may have variations. And the experiences of living through childhood and puberty may create inner conflicts. In other words, biological sex does not determine gender identity. Many individuals find themselves in between the ideals of simply male or female. These people are “intersex.”
Instead of thinking about male and female as opposites that come together to produce children, we discover that there is a wide range of characteristics that influence how people think about themselves. There always have been intersex persons, who are about 1-2% of the human population, about as common (or uncommon) as red hair. Basically, we need to recognize that gender identity can be quite complicated.
Based on the way a person understands who he/she really is, it is helpful to introduce the concept of “transgender” — that means the uncoupling of the sex assigned at birth based on the visible genitalia from the whole conglomeration of experiences, hormones, chromosomal variations, and the shape of the reproductive organs. Instead of a simple binary framework, we need to consider using TNG that stands for the “transgender, non-binary, and/or gender expansive” or TGD that stands for “transgender and gender diverse.”
The terms individuals use to classify themselves are not cut and dried either. In fact, they vary widely. The best advice is to ask someone how they identify themselves. Some trans people feel that they are just plain men or women like the others, even though they have anatomical features that would indicate otherwise. How do they talk about themselves? Some just say “man” or “woman” and some say “trans woman” or “trans man.” Others may feel basically “non-binary,” neither completely male or female, and some persons define themselves as “non-binary transmasculine” or “non-binary transfeminine.”
Our language is expanding to include a more comprehensive understanding of sex and gender.
Other societies have found other ways to classify people. Some refer to non-binary persons as being “third gender.” Six different categories of gender are found in the Bible. In the United States, “two-spirit” people may be used to indicate them. Some societies prudently wait until a young person has passed through puberty until they assign them a gender category.
The factors that contribute to the formation of a mature gender identity are internal (chromosomes) and external (lived experiences). For transgendered persons it may take longer to come to a feeling of being comfortable with themselves, but when they do, researchers find that “brain sexual differentiation and the development of gender identity have a polygenic basis, involving interactions among multiple genes and polymorphism.”
In sum, it’s the brain that needs to find a way to harmonize how a person self-identifies. It’s not the external genitalia at birth that is the answer. Often the brain needs more years to create that comfortable gender identity in persons who are non-binary and trans. There are many factors involved, many genes, chromosomes, anatomical features, hormones, and the whole history of lived experiences.
For the well-being of all, we are challenged first to be non-judgmental of individuals who are LGBTQ+. There are many more terms that people use, and the exact meanings of many terms change frequently, so we must be open to informing ourselves, accepting that our culture is in a kind of culture shock. We are still learning. Our goal should be understanding, not condemnation. It’s not a willful choice to upset one’s parents. It’s an internal dilemma that creates incredible discomfort in our society and makes a trans person the target for shunning, abuse, and murder.
This is just the briefest of introductions to the topic. A short but comprehensive introduction to gender is Gender is Really Strange by psychiatrist Teddy G. Goetz, MD, MS (2024). Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place (2019) is a transgender memoir by Jackson Bird, who also has podcasts.
Jeanette E. Sherbondy is a retired anthropology professor from Washington College and has lived here since 1986. In retirement she has been active with the Kent County Historical Society and Sumner Hall, one of the organizers of Legacy Day, and helped get highway /historical markers recognizing Henry Highland Garnet. She published an article on her ethnohistorical research of the free Black village, Morgnec.
Common Sense for the Eastern Shore
