Gender identity is something that occurs along a continuum. Good for Facebook for recognizing that people simply are, in the words of John Colapinto, as God made them.
And by God, I mean God as you understand that term. No judgment.
The possible gender identities Facebook has given people to choose from transcend cultures, as with the inclusion of the Zuni term, “Two-spirit.” The Daily Beast has published an article explaining the entire list of 51 gender options.
Of course, your usual parade of ignoraumses, black-and-white thinkers, and other intellectually incurious and stunted types (Hello, Elizabeth Hasselbeck!) are making fun of this development.?The comments on Fox News are particularly heartless, as the?road to understanding gender identity?over the last century is paved with the broken hearts of the used, the abused, the misunderstood, the disregarded, the rejected, and the dead.
The story of David Reimer is the absolute worst in terms of what can happen when a gender identity not his own is forced on a human being. David was born in Canada, one of two twin boys. But his penis was destroyed at age seven months in a botched circumcision. His brother Brian, due to go next,?was spared that ordeal, but a psychologist at Johns Hopkins named John Money?put?both boys through a horrific?ordeal, testing out?Money’s?theory that gender identity was learned rather than innate. David was given a sex change at 22 months of age and was made to lead his life as a girl named Brenda, but he always acted like a boy. He learned the truth as a teenager and tried to resume his life as a boy and then a man. Money put both boys through hell, including showing them pornography, making the?boys look at each other’s genitalia, and making the boys assume?sexual positions for their assigned genders with each other,?in his determination to shore up his pet theories. Money fraudulently published his study on gender assignment, in which the boys remained anonymous, as a success. Brian died of a drug overdose in 2002 and David committed suicide in 2004.
This powerful story was told by writer John Colapinto in a book called: As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl. It is a powerful and important book,?which disproves the theory that all human beings are “psycho-sexually malleable at birth.”
Another powerful story is told in the 2010 documentary called: Orchids: My Intersex Adventure. This?film addresses the question of what happens to people who are born sexually ambiguous. ?Director Phoebe Hart, raised as a girl, was traumatized at age 17 when she was told she would never have children and had to have an operation to remove two undescended testicles. She spent eight years making a documentary by interviewing other intersexed people.
Many people are born sexually ambiguous. 1% of human beings are born with sexually ambiguous genitalia, to the point that they cannot be assigned a sex at birth. One well known condition, among many,?is Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome or AIS. It is possible for a human being with male chromosomes to develop as a girl, or something other than what is recognized as a perfectly “normal” baby boy.
Gender and gender identity are two different things. The simple explanation is that gender is what is between your legs, and gender identity is what is in your mind and your heart. In the bad old days, doctors took a guess and surgically ?assigned a gender to those with ambiguous genitalia. A more enlightened approach is to wait and see how the individual develops before doing anything that drastic, if ever.
Remember that old David Bowie song? “You’ve got your mother in a whirl. She’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl.” Technically, you can be both at the same time. It is possible for two completely different fertilized eggs in the womb to develop as a single person instead of two fraternal twins of the same or opposite sex.?The condition is called “chimerism.” In two recent famous cases, two different American women were told that they could not be the biological mothers of their own biological children. Upon further inquiry, it was discovered that each woman was a chimera, and the DNA in different parts of her body, including her ovaries, was that of one would-be twin or the other. The Zunis got it right. You can be two people, and yet one person.
There are also those who feel that they are not the same gender as the body they received at birth, and choose gender reassignment surgery on their own. An instant?classic book?in the gender identity genre is She’s Not There: A Life In Two Genders, by Jennifer Finney Boylan. Jennifer was born a male named James, and she lived?her life as a man until she could not longer live the lie. James married a woman and fathered two children before she got the courage to become the woman she always felt she was.? Jennifer is still married to her wife, Dierdre, as love transcends things like gender. And Jennifer’s children called her Maddy.
So gender is not binary, male or female. I have barely scratched the surface of the possible genetic variations of human gender. Gender exists along a continuum, just as God made the people on that continuum.?Who are we to question the will of the Almighty, whoever that may be in your life? Gender identity (in your head, not between your legs) is separate and distinct from gender, and exists on its own continuum. It is not too hard to understand if you just give it a try. The research and the personal stories are all there for those with open hearts and open minds.
So God bless Facebook for giving its users a way to express their God-given identities and celebrate who they really are, in terms they are comfortable with, without judgment, as God made them. As the B-52s so beautifully put it, “Give and let live. Love and be loved.”
