'I Was Born A Baby, Not A Boy'
I've always been fascinated with people who seem to exist around the fringe of what is acceptable in a cultural and temporal context. Prejudices of all kinds have existed throughout history. In my time, the biggest struggle for acceptance that I've seen has centered around transgendered individuals.
I'm not sure when I became aware of transgendered people. Likely it started in biology class when we learned about sex-reversal where an XY (genetically male) individual has the secondary characteristics of a female or an XX (genetically female) develops male sexual characteristics due to transposition of certain genes. Other chromosomal changes can result in androgynous, ambiguous or hermaphroditic individuals.
Whether because of increased incidence or increased reporting, more and more individuals are opening up about being transgendered and taking steps to express their gender. These aren't necessarily the sex-reversal cases I learned about in biology class. These are people who biologically identify with a gender that isn't the same as their chromosomal sex or physical sex organs.
It's taken me a long time to wrap my head around just what that means for them and what it means for how I treat them. I had a wonderful chat with a transgendered person who spoke quite frankly with me about what it meant to him.
CNN recently posted an article about the top ten offensive statements not to make to a transgendered person. Some of those things were questions that I didn't realize were offensive. Then I heard Janet Mock's chastisement of Piers Morgan's comments and finally understood.
Her statement 'I was born a baby, not a boy' really drove home the point that gender is a role, something that is thrust upon children based on their organs. As a woman, I've run up against numerous gender stereotypes that I refuse to accept or be limited by. Thankfully we no longer live in a world where girls can only play with dolls and boys play sports.
It used to be that sexual orientation was assumed based on sexual organs. That's no longer the case. Can you imagine if your were told your profession based on appearance?
There is definitely some complicated biology at work in transgendered people. I'm so glad we've moved beyond it being termed a disorder. I've seen interesting research about differential gene expression in the brain associated with expression of sex hormones. But science is a long ways away from determining how sexual orientation and gender is established.
On things is for sure, gender is more than the physical nuts and bolts you are born with.
