Trans and Non-binary vs Third (or Fourth,etc) Gender
stonespring
Shipmate
in Epiphanies
Many cultures have or had three or more gender categories. People whose experience (based on my very limited understanding) seems very similar to that of trans people have been considered hijra in South Asia or two-spirit in some Native American societies. (I know hijra people, at least, still face a lot of discrimination, but at least there is a tradition of accepting that they are not men.) I don’t know if people who are considered third gender by their societies feel happy with that categorization, or whether they would rather be considered one of the two traditional binary genders, just one different from what they were assigned at birth, or as a separate non-binary category of their own choosing.
Thinking about this makes me wonder - if Western society had a long tradition of categorizing people in three or more genders, would trans people still feel the need to be treated identically to cisgender people of the gender they identify as? Would non-binary people for the most part be comfortable being categorized in one of these genders, or would many of them still feel that they are outside of any traditional gender category?
This is completely hypothetical and not an excuse to deny rights to trans and non-binary people in the real world, where the traditional gender binary from the Western-dominated modern culture excludes non-binary people and does not recognize trans people as anything other than the gender they were assigned at birth. But a question like the one I ask above does contribute to the discussion of what gender is, what aspects of it come from our brains and bodies and what aspects come from society and culture, and why it is important.
Thinking about this makes me wonder - if Western society had a long tradition of categorizing people in three or more genders, would trans people still feel the need to be treated identically to cisgender people of the gender they identify as? Would non-binary people for the most part be comfortable being categorized in one of these genders, or would many of them still feel that they are outside of any traditional gender category?
This is completely hypothetical and not an excuse to deny rights to trans and non-binary people in the real world, where the traditional gender binary from the Western-dominated modern culture excludes non-binary people and does not recognize trans people as anything other than the gender they were assigned at birth. But a question like the one I ask above does contribute to the discussion of what gender is, what aspects of it come from our brains and bodies and what aspects come from society and culture, and why it is important.
Comments
It's also making a big assumption that "trans people ... feel the need to be treated identically to cisgender people of the gender they identify as" because that's not necessarily the case. Aside from the fact that many trans people are also non-binary, even those who aren't non-binary often do want to be recognised specifically as trans. Like they might want to be treated as their cis equivalent in terms of legal rights, but not necessarily socially. Likewise not all cis people want to be treated as 'equally cis' to each other, eg a cis male drag queen is likely to want to acknowledge that they are a drag queen and maybe even use she/her pronouns while still being a cis man.
Do you know where a good place to look might be? I’ve been unsure whether I myself am non-binary for some time now, and my ambivalence about the topic is part of the reason why I am asking these questions. I know other’s experience might be very different from my own, of course.
That sounds to me like an excellent reason to experiment with variety of theatrical facial appliances! I tried the facial hair thing for a few years but couldn't really do it justice.
I totally respect this and agree that we need to work for acceptance and justice for trans and nb people in the world we have, not some hypothetical world.
I guess, as someone who doesn’t feel 100% comfortable as identifying as a man but doesn’t quite feel comfortable identifying as a woman or as non-binary, I hate the need to create an identity for myself, along with a language and a mode of self-expression to accompany it. Some people love doing this and find it to be very self-affirming. For me, it just draws more attention in my own mind to the fact that I feel different from everyone else, like some kind of alien (I’ve been diagnosed with ASD/Asperger’s, so that might have something else to do with it). So I wish that, from a relatively young age, society could have recognized that I wasn’t traditionally male or female but still given me a gender role to live out and gendered spaces and activities for me to inhabit, but not in a restrictive way, and with equal opportunity to do whatever job I want and advance in society as far as I could go regardless of gender.
I guess part of my question is whether or not science can ever tell us whether gender as a biological and neurological phenomenon is or is not a pure spectrum where anyone could be anywhere between male and female, or some kind of Venn diagram of two or more intersecting circles and maybe some circles on the outside that don’t intersect with any others, or whether gender is completely socially constructed and any attempt to connect it to physiology, human developmental biology, and/or neuroscience is pointless. The answer to this question has no bearing on whether trans and nb people should have rights, but it might help me get a better sense of where I fit and whether or not I really am unlike anyone else at least when it comes to gender.
This article appeared in my local paper explaining what happens in sex differentiation. Hope it helps to explain what is going on:
Based on a reading of what @Gramps49 linkrd to, it is a letter to the editor by a scientist in response to an anti- trans letter to the editor. The scientist defends the right of trans youth to gender affirming care, and very briefly goes into human development to explain that there such are a huge number of human sex-influenced characteristics that can be switched on or off by genetics or the environment that it is wrong to think of a gender binary as being scientific or of thinking transgender people as denying their own biology.
I’m not sure if any argument about human biology or human development has any bearing on the rights of trans and non-binary people.
But even if the science is separated from the debate about rights, is it wrong for biological, genetic, developmental, and neurological science to even attempt to explain what causes such phenomena as gender identity and sexual orientation (including explaining why people are cisgender or heterosexual and not just assuming that this is the default)?
Could you expand on the relevance of this to the subject in hand? Because it's not obvious.
My post was to say that if heterosexuality (and sexual intercourse between a man and a woman ) was not more or less the default,then it would have been difficult,at least until very recently ,for the human race,as we know it, to continue.
But just because someone produces sperm does not mean that person is a man, and just because a person produces eggs and has a womb does not mean that person is a woman. Knowing this, I am asking both how science can try to explain what makes a person a man, a woman, a third gender, or not in any gender category at all, and whether science should even try.
I have no wish to disagree with anyone who says that it was not thus.
We don't use those characteristics definitionally (for obvious reasons), and given the range of possible intersex conditions 'generally' is doing a lot of work.
Well, that rather depends on which culture and which period of history you look at.
(Also the cultural knowledge that sperm and eggs exist only dates back a few hundred years - sperm were discovered first in 1677, human ova much later during the 19th century.)
It would be interesting to know of periods when new human beings were produced without a meeting of sperm and eggs.
@Forthview many cultures have embraced the idea of more than two genders, even stretching back into antiquity. Aside from anything else not everyone has children and there have always been childless people, including those who have remained childless for ritual or specific cultural reasons such as eunuchs. And in many cultures that had eunuchs, they included those who would now be considered to be transgender as well as those who were born with intersex conditions. This isn't necessarily the case for all eunuch-having cultures - it wasn't the case in China for instance - but it was the case in the Ancient Middle East for instance. Gender across ancient civilisations was much more complex than you imagine.
It would be nice if posters on this thread could agree that "sex" and "gender" are not the same thing. There is presumably a lot more to the topic.
Thanks Harry. From a hosting point of view could I reinforce that? Sex and gender are not the same thing and are not to be treated as such here.
Please can we focus on gender on this thread and could people who are not non-binary or trans please centre and reflect the experiences of those who are or think they may be?
Could we be especially careful not to conflate sex and gender - especially not in ways which are binary and reductive? This thread is about non-binary gender - please don't come onto it to insist upon or to push binaries in ways which exclude non-binary shipmates or act as microaggressions against them.
The Human Rights campaign has a FAQ which might be helpful
https://www.hrc.org/resources/transgender-and-non-binary-faq
Thanks
Louise
Epiphanies Host
I will say as a trans person that while sex and gender aren't the same, they can intersect - just not necessarily in the ways transphobes would imagine. For instance a trans woman who has been on hormone therapy for many years is more or less biologically identical to a cis woman, including experiencing pre-menstrual symptoms. If she has had a vaginoplasty, it's recommended that she has regular gynaecological exams like a cis woman would - and actually many cis women who no longer have cervixes also still have to have cervical smears because it's recommended for those who have had their cervix removed due to cancer. I think a trans woman in that position is arguably biologically a woman regardless of her chromosones or what gender she was assigned at birth. Biology is far more than just chromosones or genitalia.
Have you come across the concept of autigender? It's discussed in this article - written by an autistic author
https://www.menshealth.com/health/a41994953/autigender/#
I've found it interesting to think about.
That people with autistic aspects to their personality are less likely to identify with dominant conceptions of their assigned birth gender is I think a noticeable thing. It certainly resonates with my personal experience. But I don't think it's helpful to construct new gender categories since that essentialises the problematic aspects of the old categories. It seems to me more helpful to deconstruct gender categories.
It resonates with my personal experience too - and there are so many areas of conventional and expected feminine behaviour where being autistic means I don't or can't do the thing expected and would greatly prefer that people stop expecting it or stigmatising whatever I'm doing. Which is one of the things which I like about the way genderqueer and non binary people I know approach things because I feel it also widens up a space for me as a non-conventional gender conforming/performing woman. Autism definitely affects my expression of gender but I'm not totally sure how to talk about that.
I am a cishet female. I haven't the slightest interest in shoes, clothes, makeovers or romcoms.
Hugal and I are both passionately into musical theatre. My two closest gay male friends are not interested in it.
There are aspects of myself that affect my expression of gender - such as being overweight, having an unconventional appearance (and not in an 'adorably quirky' way) as well as large, wide hobbit feet that only fit 'granny shoes'.
Most people could probably say the same. That's because people are individuals and can't easily be fitted in some randomly assigned box.
I certainly think there's a question to be asked about whether the current approach to transgender issues actually serves to reinforce outmoded expectations of what each gender should and shouldn't do.
At the risk of giving a facile example: if a man has a strong desire to wear dresses then does that mean (a) the expected gender norm that says wearing dresses = female is right and he's really a trans woman, or (b) the expected gender norm that says wearing dresses = female is wrong and it's perfectly fine for men to wear dresses if that's what they want to do?
I guess the question in my mind is whether being progressive means tearing down expected gender norms themselves, or just making it easier for people to transition to the gender which has the expected norm to which they wish to conform. I've always been a supporter of the former myself.
Well, I have had the same thoughts from time to time, but as an (in many respects) non-gender conforming cishet man myself - an autistic one to boot, I have also to ask if that be the case why I do, indeed, identify as cis. There's clearly something about my experience of being non-gender conforming that differs from that of someone who identifies as trans. Being non-gender conforming naturally has a massive overlap with the trans experience, but it clearly cannot be the whole of it.
As regards your dresses - it's been long understood that being a transvestite and being trans are not the same thing. They have in common that they reject biological essentialism and sex-derived gender norms, but that does not make them the same thing.
Also facial feminisation surgery is not available on the NHS, but has a massive impact on the wellbeing on trans women. So if a trans woman can go private that often still takes time to save up for. Not forgetting of course that workplace discrimination means that trans people make up a disproportionate number of sex workers, which often means using gender norms as part of that work. It's not because being trans is somehow regressive but because surviving as a trans person is hard and sometimes gender norms help with that survival.
Aside from anything else, no trans person thinks that wearing dresses is what makes trans women really women, and plenty of trans women don't wear dresses. It's just a cruel stereotype perpetuated by TERFs and other transphobes.
Well, in the light of other people's trans experience, mine is determined by a lack of any sense of incongruity between my inner identity and my external genitalia.
I would have to let trans people speak for themselves as to what determines theirs.
Here's various accounts by non binary people
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/9-things-people-get-wrong-about-being-non-binary
https://www.womenshealthmag.com/uk/health/mental-health/a32903891/non-binary/
https://www.glaad.org/amp/9-young-people-explain-what-being-non-binary-means-them
Two quotes which struck me were
(from the Kylin Camburn GLAAD article)
And
from Suzannah Weiss in the Teen Vogue article
Something else they said struck me as well
There's a range of views and experience, I don't want to pretend to have a handle on that, but I do want to listen and hear more.
@Marvin the Martian if you would like to start your promised definitions thread, please do so - but keep that discussion for that thread rather continuing a definitions discussion on this one.
Doublethink, Admin
There isn't just one answer, because everyone experiences their gender differently.
I'm not sure why the issue of trans people having to stay safe in public by sticking to gender norms didn't occur to you, rather than suggest that trans people are the regressive ones here. I dunno, just seems unnecessarily hostile when there's no criticism of the people who invented said gender norms, which isn't trans people.
I have always felt uncomfortable with the strong stereotypes in society. That to 'be a man' you must be this that and that. And you must not be this, that and this. It seems inherently oppressive.
I am not gay or trans, but I am certainly not a 'typical' cis male. I suspect many of us do not conform to the stereotypes society expects us to do. I want people to have the freedom to be what they really are, without fear. But that is easy to say, but hard to bring into practical effect.
I suspect I do have historical precursors - and I also suspect a lot of them got burned as witches.
Of course, a woman who (allegedly) used witchcraft to murder her husband was guilty of petty treason, and one who used it against the King was guilty of high treason, the penalty for either was indeed death by burning for a woman. (A man would be hanged, drawn and quartered, but this was not deemed seemly for a female.)
Sorry for the tangent, but I find this stuff fascinating.
Gwai,
Epiphanies Host
And she had. She is very open, and had clearly done her research. She had also travelled around the world, where she encountered different responses to the idea of gender not necessarily matching physical sex. Clearly it is not a new thing, the idea that gender isn't necessarily binary, that there are people who don't fit binary definitions - she talks about historical examples and also how different cultures deal with it and define it, and the more she looked into it, the more she found, and she discovered that what she was experiencing had also been described by scientists.
It's an interesting read. Limited a bit by attitudes of the time, her lack of expressed awareness of her own privilege, and some aspects of her experience that she didn't look more broadly at - the freedom and release she feels when she allows herself to start to transition, for instance, leads her to associate that feeling of openness and aliveness with gender, and conclude that men don't have this feeling while women do, whereas I would argue that it's a feeling anyone could have when they stop wearing a mask and allow themselves to start to be themselves. But it's worth reading, for the perspective of an intelligent, self-aware trans woman, who had the opportunity to transition at a time when this was largely unheard of, and was in a position where she didn't receive much ostracism for it.