I have been thinking a lot about gender lately, in part because many of my friends and acquaintances have now come out as nonbinary, an identity which earlier in my life I may have chosen to embrace. (Back in my day, ‘genderqueer’ was the preferred moniker, and pansexual was only just becoming a thing. But I digress.)
My feelings about gender are conflicted, both as someone who previously considered myself to be genderqueer and who now identifies as a gender nonconforming woman, and as someone whose first marriage was, as it turns out, to a transwoman. But my experiences have led me to draw a few conclusions, some of which are, on the surface, contradictory:
- I believe that how someone identifies should be respected, whatever their biological sex and wherever they may or may not be in their transition. This includes respecting pronouns as well as granting access to single-sex spaces with the same caveats applicable to the cisgender people also using those spaces – eg, there are laws against assault and privacy invasion which also apply to cisgender people, and these shouldn’t be weaponised against transgender and nonbinary people.
- However, I also believe that gender identity is an interaction between an individual and the culture in which they reside, and that feelings of dysphoria experienced by many trans/NB people result from cultural restrictions associated with their assigned gender.
- Additionally, I view gender identity as only tangentially related to the body dysmorphia which compels people to transition medically – for me, it is unfortunate that such stigma surrounds the term ‘transsexual’, because from my perspective the process of medical transition treats a distinct medical condition wherein the brain is hardwired to respond to hormones not sufficiently produced by the body. This condition and its ramifications differs significantly from the social transition undertaken by trans/NB people who choose not to medically transition, and while one could argue that medical transition represents the far end of the entire transgender spectrum, to lump it in with other trans/NB identities risks either needlessly medicalising trans/NB people who do not require medical transition, or – more dangerously – trivialising trans/NB people who desperately require it in order to continue living.
The easiest way for me to illustrate point 3 is with the vastly differing experiences of my ex-partner and me. When I was younger, I identified as genderqueer, in part because of my androgynous gender expression and in part because I felt a kind of ‘male-ness’ in how I interacted with others, particularly women. However, I never felt a powerful urge to medically transition, and in fact experienced significantly less dysphoria once I discontinued hormonal contraception, which as it turns out was exacerbating any gender dysphoria I felt. Sometimes I still think about the what-ifs of medical transition, and am actually somewhat grateful that I have a nice female body which could in no way, shape, or form pass as male because of its almost childlike proportions. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for those whose body dysmorphia compels them to medically transition despite being unable to pass as their correct gender.
My experience as a butch-presenting, gender nonconforming – dare I say, cissexual rather than cisgender – woman, differs greatly from my ex-partner’s experience. When she came out to me as transgender, I was shocked but not surprised – she had always been a feminine man, something I loved about her, and indeed took greatly after her mother in personality and mannerisms, but I had never considered that her ‘female-ness’ was any different to my ‘male-ness’, or that her dysphoria was any deeper than my own. Having said that, there was never any question in my mind that she needed to transition, or that I could or should somehow deter her from the process.
As I supported her through her medical transition, I was lauded by many heterosexual, cisgender friends and acquaintances for supporting her quest to ‘live her truth’. While I knew they meant well, the phrase rankled – her need to transition wasn’t based in some vague notion of wanting to live ‘authentically’, or present as her ‘real self’. Her need to transition was based in the need to live – period. Had she not been allowed to medically transition, my ex-partner would have died. It was never about ‘living her truth’ – it was about living at all.
And this brings me to point 2, which is the concept of gender as a culturally-negotiated phenomenon only tangentially related to medical transition. Lacking that essential dysphoric urge to medically transition, my ex-partner could have identified and presented however she wanted, within the growing number of gender roles afforded by Western society. However, her medical transition was distinct from her social transition, and was a necessary mitigation to actually keep her alive. Could she have socially transitioned without medically transitioning? Yes, but in her case, she needed – and was fortunately granted – timely access to life-saving medical treatment.
Many people both within and outside of the gender-variant community wish to de-medicalise the experience of being transgender, nonbinary, or otherwise gender nonconforming. While I agree that immediately placing gender-variant people into a medical silo is unnecessary, I feel it’s important to question how gender variance which requires no medical intervention differs from dysphoria requiring cross-sex hormones and surgery. And the difference comes down to how one views gender itself.
In Western culture dominated by late-stage capitalism, the wants and needs of the individual surpass all other considerations. Gender is therefore regarded – erroneously, in my opinion – as an entirely personal matter, to be decided and declared by the individual. Additionally, gender expression – how one ‘performs’ gender – is seen as distinct from gender identity, which is defined as how one regards oneself, without any consideration for how one presents to the outside world.
However, divorcing gender expression entirely from gender identity not only removes the element of cultural negotiation from one’s self-perception, but also leaves a void where any coherent definition of gender identity ought to be. So is gender identity based upon biological sex? Often, but not always: transpeople who medically transition have a gender identity opposite to their birth sex; nonbinary people have a gender identity not at all contingent upon their birth sex; and intersex people often have a male or female gender identity despite having both sexual characteristics. But if gender identity doesn’t correlate with biological sex, then how does it relate to gender expression? Without the recognition of cultural factors in declaring and shaping gender, we’re stuck with an unsatisfactory parsing of what it means to think of yourself as a man, or a woman, or gender-variant. Gender becomes an algebraic function with three variables: solve for X.
In Judaism, six gender identities are discussed in the Talmud. These are male; female; androgynos, which corresponds to the modern-day understanding of intersex; tumtum, which is someone whose sexual characteristics are ‘hidden’ – this is a somewhat more complicated identity than nonbinary, although it maps reasonably well; ay’lonit, which is a woman who doesn’t develop at puberty and is infertile – perhaps corresponding to transmen; and saris, which is basically a male eunuch and corresponds most closely with transwomen.
These identities are formed as a combination between sexual and cultural characteristics, and each role is associated with different laws and cultural morés. For example, the Talmud extensively discusses whether androgynos and tumtum people are obligated to observe male commandments, female commandments, or both, with some rabbis arguing that because of their ambiguous sexual characteristics, these gender-variant people should adhere to the stricter interpretations of the commandments for both men and women. An easy example of this is that, within Judaism, women are not obligated to observe time-bound commandments – in other words, commandments contingent upon being performed at a certain time. But because androgynos could be classed as both men and women, and because tumtum could be either men or women, they would be obligated to keep these time-bound commandments.
For me, this points to the importance of maintaining culture which both welcomes and examines gender-variant identities – a culture which finds a role, a place, for everyone. For example, I know several people who become dysphoric if addressed with the wrong pronouns, and while this is understandable and every effort must be made to respect how people identify and present, I can’t help but wonder whether Western cultural expectations surrounding the gender roles with which those pronouns are associated play a part in generating this dysphoria. Is a nonbinary person misgendered as a ‘she’ reacting strongly because they don’t ‘feel’ like a woman, or because the idea of being a ‘woman’ within the confines of Western cultural parameters is upsetting to them? At what point does presenting as – ‘performing’ – one, both, or neither gender become a fundamental expression of identity such that external perception of being a particular gender has the ability to affirm or wound it?
Funnily enough, some of my staunchest allies while my ex-partner pursued her medical transition were members of the Asian, and specifically Pakistani, community. Within the subcontinent, the gender identity of hijra – someone born male who transitions to female – is well-known. I remember visiting the home of one of my children’s school friends, and his mother told me that all of the Pakistani mothers at the school knew I was married to the hijra. She said, ‘In Pakistan we are told to respect the hijra, because they are following their heart.’ The hijra is not an unproblematic role to have in Asian society as they face the same hostility and violence as transwomen elsewhere, but it is a gender role which has existed since the time of the Kama Sutra, in which it is referenced, and is enshrined and protected in Indian and Pakistani law.
In fact, Western colonialism can be rightly blamed for the erasure of gender-variant roles in colonised cultures, and thus for the increased threat of violence experienced globally by many gender-variant people. I have detailed two cultures wherein gender variance is recognised, but there are many indigenous cultures which recognised and honoured gender variance. Indeed, gender-variant people often held ceremonial roles, becoming shamans and medicine-people. Gender variance had a cultural place, a role, which was steamrolled by Christian European dominance.
We are now in a postcolonial era, an era where indigenous cultures are being rediscovered and reconvened. In the West itself, spaces previously governed by Christian values are now governed by a tenuous secularism, which struggles to classify and understand cultural phenomena suppressed for hundreds of years by its colonial predecessors. Gender variance initially emerged as a medical phenomenon, studied by doctors; now it is also a social one, studied by psychologists and anthropologists. But unless gender can be rightly understood and situated as a negotiated cultural phenomenon, gender-variant people will constantly deal with pushback from the last vestiges of a secular-Christian culture in which they have no defined role, by people unable to create or expand cultural institutions to accommodate them.
Sonya Blanck writings 