Sex and gender: biological and social confusion

Note: just so I don't have to field off these questions, yes, I'm 100% biologically female and socially 100% woman. I know people will be curious. So there you go.

Transcript:

Why do people find it so threatening? The idea that somebody does not conform to the expectations that we put on them. When somebody presents a masculine appearance, we expect them to have an array of biological qualities that we find synchronous with that appearance. We expect them to have a penis. We expect them to have a Y chromosome. If these qualities do not occur in sync, something is wrong with that person. They pose some sort of threat. So we have to insult them and ridicule them. Something is unnatural about someone who doesn't meet our expectations.

Let me explain a little something about gender and sex. Most people don't see them as separate entities, but the fact is that they are. Sex is our biological sex - in binary terms, male, or female. It refers to an array of biological qualities that WE think should determine...

gender. Gender is a socially constructed binary which, in the western world, means woman or man, girl or boy. We expect that biological sex determines gender. Someone who is male will be a boy or a man. Someone who is female will be a girl or a woman. However, it's not nearly so simple.

Let's start at the beginning. There is sex. You may think that sex is very cut and dry, right? You're male or you're female. 100%. No questions. Easy. Right? Wrong. Nature isn't quite so binary as we like to think. There are a variety of intersex conditions that result in an ambiguous sex! When we think of a male, he has XY chromosomes, a penis, and male internal organs. However, a person could actually have XY chromosomes, male internal organs.... and externally, present a vagina. How does this happen? It's a condition known as CAIS - Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. These women - and they ARE almost always women, not men - are biologically both female and male.

Things start off normally for a CAIS person, in the womb. The XY chromosomes signal the foetus to create testes, which produce testosterone, and would normally start the foetus on its way to fully becoming male. HOWEVER, something goes wrong when the foetus tries to USE the testosterone. It is missing enzymes in every cell of its body that take the testosterone and send the signal to the brain, WE'VE GOT TESTOSTERONE, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! That's missing. So what does the body do? It thinks it doesn't have enough testosterone, so it produces more. As a result, these foetuses are washed with testosterone, and in any other case, would become super masculine. However, due to missing enzyme factors, the foetus never responds to the testosterone in the body. It acts like it's not there. So externally, a vagina develops, instead of a penis.

And because the body can't respond to the testosterone, the girl grows up... like a girl. Testes do produce small amounts of estrogen, so there's no problem with feminity

Many girls with CAIS don't present any symptoms until they reach puberty and begin to wonder where their period is. Since they don't have ovaries, they can't ovulate. Since they don't have uteruses, they don't have a period. It's only then that they go to the doctor and find out that they have CAIS and are made from genetically male material.

This is just one of the prominent examples of the ways in which biological sex is not cut and dry. And as for sociological sex, otherwise known as gender! Gender is entirely socially constructed. Gender may take cues from biological sex, but they aren't the same thing. Gender is just something we... made up. Think of it as our society's way of trying to identify what's inside the pants of the regular people we see day-to-day in our lives. We want predictability. We want to know what's in their pants, so if we have sex with them, we aren't surprised by what we find.

But what's wrong with being surprised? What's wrong with falling in love with the face that a person presents to the world, and accepting that person's genitals, genetic material, and organs for what they are? Why do we get mad when somebody's internal code is different from what we expect from their social cues?

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• transgender
• transexual
• intersex
• CAIS
• androgen
• insensitivity
• syndrome
• sex
• gender

[affiliate30]

what you have explained is true and easy to understand. The only problem I have with "all this gender thing" is when "machos" categorize some males as natural born homosexuals even when some of these males don't feel attracted to males and have never have sex with them. In my opinion this is a mental disorder fascism in many "machos" and needs to stop. I once heard a bus driver tell a male "u r a natural born homosexual who doesn't F**k in the butt, that's why people don't like u" (injustice)

[Rediahs]

@affiliate30 I'm not sure I understand your comment, but I think I agree with the sentiment.

[DaFawky]

There's a reason why (heterosexual) men's brains respond to the sight of the female anatomy. The brain identifies itself as a male that is attracted to the female anatomy. It's a typical male brain. Not much of a social factor in that.

So for example with transgender people, how can we simply say it's "sociable" and "psychological"? Especially with recent brain studies. There's a lot more to study about gender before really saying it's strictly "sociable" and not biologically valid in any way.

[DaFawky]

Considering the brain has a lot to do with your sex, it's a pretty bold statement to say that gender is (and only is) sociable, and not anything to do with the actual brain itself. The brain isn't a completely sexless thing, or else men literally wouldn't be able to have boners.

[debjieun]

@miketonon yes they do, but regardless of hte size of brain, its the way it works that has turned out to be false that men are smarter than women. BUT it does show that in some aspects men are better than females systematically and that women are bettter in other uses of the brain which i dont remember.

[debjieun]

are you saying that some guys are just not as masculine as other men but because of that people mistreat them and think they are homosexual?

[salvolondon]

Do you have it? I mean androgen insensitivity syndrome?