We are born with a consciousness, a body and a mind. Whether that birth biology can be overridden or denied, is debatable. When it comes to gender is it - mostly fixed at birth, a purely external outcome of our biology? Or is gender constructed and elaborated upon by each individual in the context of their biology and surrounding social culture? All of us get muddled about what exactly we are talking about once we enter this area. In truth biology, sexual orientation, gender and identity all these things overlap and intersect. Not everything fixed can be as fluid as we'd like, and not everything fluid can become fixed. Gender is an ongoing conversation between ones internal experience and external influences.
The convention of our culture is that gender is fixed, and its part of a binary, immovably male or female. For most of us that can be how it presents itself. I've never thought of myself as anything other than male. I have a male body that I inhabit with a gay sensibility and mode of expression. I inhabit it with, for want of a better term, a 'gay soul'. This has always felt the most normal natural thing. It wasn't a problem for me. But what if it was? Imagine what that would be like?
My feelings, however, did force me to question who I was and the surrounding male heterosexual conventions I was encircled by. Without that experience perhaps I too would be a baffled, defensive, angry man when faced with a view of gender that was open and fluid? However, I am sure all of us, whether male, female, heterosexual, homosexual or otherwise, have all had our issues and struggled in our own way with traditional gender roles and conventions that are forced upon us. If only in trying to live up to them. So much psychological distress arises out of them - what is it to be manly or womanly? - what it is to be a good parent, the pressures and expectations differing whether you are a Father and Mother - what do we need to do in order to be accepted, respected, loved and successful?
Once I became aware of and more involved with gay sub culture, I began to conform the sense of myself to align with it through my appearance and behaviour. It was as if I needed to pass my exam in basic gay. Chiefly in order to feel I belonged there. I'll admit to camping myself up a bit and sharpening my tongue. I could have remained more flexible and fluid, and just allowed my way of being gay to unfold naturally. But I had neither the confidence or life experience to do that at the time. Instead I did what most people would do, I tried to adjust and fix myself to resemble the gay template I held in my head.
That didn't last long, as this soon began to grate on me, it felt, and was, inauthentic and lacked integrity. Fundamentally this wasn't how I felt I wanted to be as a gay man. I'm not effeminate or particularly camp, I'm a relatively straight looking guy, with an occasional flamboyant streak, lets say. All I needed to do was stop pretending, stop the performing and allow myself to be whatever I needed to be, whenever I needed to be that. To be flexible and responsive in my way of being me, gay or otherwise. As a gay man, I didn't need to be switched to 'Gay On' all the time.
I've known trans women and lived around one during their transitioning. Twenty plus years ago there was a huge emphasis then on being able to 'pass' as a man or woman. This was easier for some to achieve than others, and a lot of psychological upset and distress haunted this desire to 'pass' and the emotional and financial toll it took to get there. Sadly some became very bitter, did not cope at all well and some unfortunately ended up taking their life. This is likely to still be so today. But there is something in the contemporary non binary fluidity that feels fundamentally a much healthier attitude. People are permitting themselves to be whatever they want to be, and that doesn't mean they have to necessarily transform themselves into any binary gender or cultural stereotype, if they do not wish to. They can construct their own gender, one that can be adjusted and evolve in response to the deepening understanding of themselves.
Because of my experience as a gay man, I have no problem with the idea, that there are people born male or female who inhabit their birth bodies in an entirely different way than I do. Being female in an entirely male orientated world or a male in an entirely female orientated world is invariably discomforting. We continue to struggle as a society with the issues of gender, equal treatment and opportunity. What would it feel like to have the 'wrong' genitalia for your body, or an indeterminate sense of your gender? Despite my empathy, I can find it difficult to grasp how this might feel. I try to make the imaginative leap, but it is too far beyond my experience. If binary gender difficulties have proved so intractable to resolve, you can see why non binary gender fluidity will just drive some individuals frustratedly up the wall. Unless you've been a wallflower at a wild party, you'll never know what that really feels like.
Women's liberation is built on very clearly expressed views on gendered power relations. If men can assume a female form of self expression, or women can assume a male form of self expression, or any permutation between. This might appear, on the surface at least, to be pushing that binary gender equality way way off message. So trans has been presented as being all about men disempowering women. This time by usurping the boundaries of their gender. This seems to somewhat misrepresent the point by burying it under a standard feminist convention- that trans is entirely about male power. Completely ignoring the women who wish to be transformed into a man. You may have thought defying gender stereotypes and expectations could be viewed as a shared point of view. Providing more energy to a general personal liberation message. But apparently not. Gender fluidity itself is being viewed as part of the usual problem with men. When both pro and against adopt defensive positions unwilling even to be debated. Neither side attempts to understand where other people and their views are coming from. We have a war of screaming attrition going on.
Gender dysphoria, of being externally one gender but feeling internally you are another, can be clinically diagnosed. This indicates gender has a potential range of expression that goes beyond the binary gender presented at birth. Its worth looking at it on the genetic level. For in amongst the dominant XX's and XY's there are rare conditions of three chromosomes XXY and one chromosome XO. There are XY genotypes who develop female characteristics, and XX genotypes who develop male. People have been born, throughout history, with either different genitalia to their biological gender, or have both forms, if only vestigially. Hermaphrodites were often treated as revered and treasured figures, sages and oracles. There appears then to be the potential for significant nuances within what appears on the surface at birth to be a clear binary. The degree of human genetic variance has been hard to establish, with the arrival of genomics this may change.
Human genes don't appear to always take an identifiable linear path when evolving either. Quite often genetic changes drift off from the norm in an indirect, experimental, almost random manner, as if to sees what floats. So it could be misleading to talk about biology, on a genetic level at least, as being fixed. Gender literalists out there for whom everything thing is formed and fixed at ones birth, please pay attention.When you are given tubes of oil paint on your birthday, its more important what make with them in a painting, than keeping the box they came in, in pristine condition.
No matter how many operations you have, or tablets you take. Trans will always be for some a sort of shallow vanity, infecting contemporary discourse, akin to an elaborate way of dressing up, of playing lets pretend. From this perspective being gay could also be viewed as an affectation. 'Posing as a sodamite' as the Marquess of Queensbury once accused Oscar Wilde. Gay can be seen as an erroneous choice you talk yourself into, or are in some way converted or perverted into by unnamed nefarious others. So it is no surprise then that someone who is anti trans may broaden their ire and become anti gay too.
If you've never had to question your sexual orientation because how you feel is the considered norm, you'll tend to kick back hard when the linguistic minefield of a non binary fluidity to gender identity rears its head. Such a thing is not in their experience at all. What they hear sounds like the worst form of deluded fantasy, they're being asked to go along with or actively support the promulgation of. And indeed what is being requested of society is a change that is seismic in its consequence. Perhaps one ought to expect massive resistance and uproar from both ends of the binary genders. For the imaginative leap required is huge.
As I've said before, how you subjectively feel about yourself does not necessarily have anything factual behind it, to support it. It is simply how you feel about your identity. True as this maybe, fighting on this ground would seem to me to be unwise. Facilitating a persons freedom of choice to love how they wish, to chose how they wish to present and express themselves to the world, would perhaps be more fruitful ground. In a democracy its about the liberty to be what we want to be. Are we allowed to choose or not? When one person's liberty conflicts with another person's liberty, how do you resolve that? Particularly if self denial is not an option.
My personal opinion is that there are many forms through which gender can be expressed. There are innumerable him ways to express masculinity. There are innumerable ways to express femininity. There are innumerable ways of expressing asexuality, or of presenting oneself as niether specifically male or female. Gender seems to me to be more of a spectrum, not a monochromatic filter.
If we allow things to evolve, I see this as only healthy in the longer term. It maybe some of the intractablity within gender equality lies in the rigid adversarial fixedness of its binary arguments. Whatever softens the hard lines of masculinity and femininity might be a good thing. Its about everyone feeling at liberty to live how they wish, free of the obstacles of prejudice and stereotypes. And this can only make our culture richer. As it has throughout history.
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