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Rethinking Sex and Gender?

Is it a boy or is it a girl?

by Sue Watling

eptember 1999

Foreword

by Christine Burns

Sue Watling, a postgraduate student at the University of Hull is collecting transsexual people’s autobiographies and experiences as part of her masters dissertation on transsexual narratives.

She writes, “While interested in all aspects of transgender, part of my dissertation hopes to demonstrate that there is an essential “feminism” as opposed to a socially constructed set of feminine attributes”, and she would like people to contact her to discuss her views.

I thought a dialogue like this would be easier to cultivate if Sue put forward more of her own ideas first, in an essay for the PFC web site.  The result you can read in the article below.

A month ago we were treated to one journalist’s rather simplistic view that people are defined by their genitals … essentialism at its’ most essential (see “Mutilation won’t make a man a woman”).  Conversely, some contemporary feminist writers argue that it’s in all in the upbringing as to whether you are really a man or a woman … a perspective which, although ostensibly rejecting the former sort of essentialism, replaces it with a fatalistic kind of its’ own.

The bodies over whom such people are fighting are, of course, OURS.  Both arguments are intended to invalidate our existence.  Trans people, AIS people, CVH people and hermaphrodite people are pieces of the jigsaw that don’t fit.  And, like the messengers bringing bad news in times past, the easiest thing to do (in some eyes) is to shoot them.

Without organisation, and all-too-often required to peddle a gross simplification of our reality to satisfy the narrow perceptions of psychologists, it is hardly surprising that we have been easy targets for a generation and more.  The essentialist message of trans people in particular, conveyed through the simple expression of faith in one’s own perceptions of self, is an easy target for both schools of thought.  It threatens because it is a form of personal essentialism in the face of a very different kind, and it threatens because it challenges the idea that nurture should have made you something else.  If nurture were all that it is cracked up to be then arguably there would BE no trans people.

The fact that the two schools contradict one-another doesn’t matter a jot, so long as they are united in condemning you.

So when someone like Sue comes along and wants to look at that deadlock in a way that hopes to integrate trans narratives into newer and more encompassing theory, it is something to be welcomed and supported.  I do hope you’ll think about how your own life relates to what she is saying, and think about how you can help her.

Christine Burns
Vice President, Press for Change

Re-thinking Sex and Gender?
Is it a boy or is it a girl?

Sue Watling
c/o Gender Studies, University of Hull, Hull, England
Suew@papillon.demon.co.uk

This is always the first question asked on the birth of a new baby.  And in spite of years of interest in gender and identity issues I found myself totally nonplussed when a message announcing the birth of a new baby was left on my answer phone.  I was told the place, the date, the time - all the details except one thing - the baby’s sex.  And I was amazed at how confused I felt.  I couldn’t relate to the idea of a new baby in the family until I knew if it was a boy or a girl.  Social conditioning runs deep!  But if we do happen to meet someone and are unable to “sex” them how does it make us feel?

On the first night of a British Sign Language class we had to write our names on the board.  One student had an ambiguous appearance.  We assumed the revealing of the name would reveal all.  With a smile and a wink at the assembled group the person wrote ’Sam’.  No problem to the tutor who had the necessary information but the cause of confusion to some students who, during the next exercise which involved counting the number of men and the number of women in the group, could not understand why their figures did not agree with the tutor’s.  As the tutor also used British Sign Language for communication the situation remained unresolved.  British Sign Language was not equipped to deal with gender identity confusion - at least not during the first session!

At birth the decision of sex is based on the appearance of the genitalia.  And once sex has been assigned it is expected that we will remain in that sex until we die.  There is something essential in our relationship with sexual identification.  As we go through life we may forget a person’s name, we may even forget their face but we never forget the sexual category they were assigned at birth.

However, because sex is decided on the basis of the genitalia, and as exposure of this area is not a method of disclosure which is encouraged in social situations, then we need other clues to decipher identity.  Gender can be described as the visible component of sex; the indicator of sexual difference.  Gender consists of expectations and attributes.  We expect each sex to conform to the appropriate gender identity and we attribute the appropriate gender identity to each sex.  So far, so good.  But what happens when the child’s developing internal sense of identity fails to align with external assumptions?  How does a child cope with a growing realisation that what they feel inside is not being matched by what is expected from outside?

This poses the question to whom does the child’s identity belong?  Who has control over how the developing child is going to present their adult persona to the outside world?

We talk so much about self esteem, self confidence, self assurance, that is it easy to take for granted the assumption that we are in control of our own identity, that how we decide to present ourselves to others is our own choice.  It is only when we transgress into the foreign territory of a gender identity which does not align with the appropriate sexual identity as expected that we realise we actually have very little control of it at all.  It’s a bit like a game.  Play by the rules and society will put up with a certain degree of variation and individual interpretation.  Step outside the barriers and you may well find you are socially and culturally out of line.  The most powerful forms of social control are those discourses which permeate our lives to such an extent that we are unaware of their existence.  Until we move beyond their boundaries.  Then the powerful weight of social disapproval and stigma descends and our identity, something which should be private, personal and individual, becomes the property of others who waste no time or discretion in assuming control and informing us about how they think we should look, act and dress.

A mother wanted her son to develop as free from gender restraints as possible.  While he was small he wore dresses and make up and played with dolls as well as having access to traditional boys’ toys.  When he started school he found he was grouped with boys whose mothers had been less concerned about freedom of stereotypes and more concerned with their reinforcement.  So at the age of five he was confused.  What was okay at home was not okay in the outside world.  The other boys didn’t wear dresses and if that was the case he was no longer sure whether he should wear them to please his mother, wear them because he liked them or refuse to wear them because he wanted to be the same as everyone else.  Can one child’s isolated challenge to the gender system have any positive effect?

The male/female sex/gender binary is a social institution.  It controls everything about our lives.  It rewards appropriate behaviour and castigates that which it defines as deviant.  It has its own statute book, its own portfolio of rules and regulation and its own standards of achievement.  The only thing which is missing is an ombudsman to deal with complaints of dissatisfaction from individuals who feel uncomfortable with regard to their assigned sexual identities and associated gender roles.

Western democratic society tells us we have freedom of speech, thought and action but any one who has had anything to do with transgender issues knows that is far from being true.  There are other cultures which have recognised alternative sexualities.  There are researchers who have argued that five sexes are not enough and in fact there may be more.  Yet contemporary society will go to great lengths in order to retain the sex binary.  In the west, babies born with ambiguous genitals have been operated on in order to allow establishment of sex assignment to proceed.  School children are watched for signs of gender identity disorder and clinics exist to train them to respond to more ’gender appropriate’ behaviour.  It has to be asked why society is so addicted to sexual dichotomy and so afraid of anything associated with transgender?

My own interest is in personal identity, which is difficult to separate from sexual and gender identity but I’ve discovered that telling people I’m interested in sex can all too easily be misinterpreted.  I have set out to challenge the male/female sexual binary with its assumptions of heterosexuality and to argue for freer personal choice.  The theories of essentialism versus social constructionism have been hotly debated with no conclusive evidence for either approach.  The field of Gender Studies has absorbed much of Queer Theory and Poststructuralist Theory, which argues for less fixed binary categories and more fluid boundaries and a multiplicity of meanings.  This has revealed the reality of transgender experience.  Transgender experience in itself is an area subject to change; as befits its poststructuralist nature.  No longer is the emphasis on successful “passing”, although that will always be a major objective for many people and in no way do I want to deny the reality of that need.  However, there is a growing call for acceptance of another transgender identity.  One which does not necessarily fit into existing categories but which sits astride the existing gender boundaries to create new ones of its own.

Using transsexual narrative and autobiography I hope to be able to demonstrate that we are not solely products of social construction but that we have innate elements of what can be recognised as feminine and masculine attributes within us all.  I am starting to think of this innate essentialism as a form of humanism which contains all aspects of character, emotion and personality.  Maybe it is society and culture which have proceeded to divide these into feminine and masculine areas and imposed a marked reluctance to let them cross over or merge.  Maybe they are innately different depending on biological sex.  Maybe there is no essentialness at all.  This is the area I’d like to open up and invite people to share their opinions.

The continual repetition in transsexual narrative of the young person’s awareness of misalignment between internal and external identities demonstrates to me the existence of a form of essentialism.  I am interested in taking this further and compiling a set of as many individual transgendered experiences as possible which I hope to be able to blend together into a coherent whole.  Finally I hope I can use this information to argue for a greater flexibility of perception with regard to sex and gender.  In turn I hope this may lead to an improvement in current levels of acceptance of difference and an increase in levels of social and cultural tolerance of ambiguity.

Sue Watling
c/o Gender Studies, University of Hull, Hull, England
Suew@papillon.demon.co.uk

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