Gender and Sexuality, Part 2

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

THOUGHTS ON BEING TRANSGENDER

GENDER AND SEXUALITY MISNOMERS AND THEIR
PATRIARCHAL ROOTS


PART TWO

Part one of this series addressed the confusion that exists regarding gender expression and sexual preference and the general predilection to use these as interchangeable terms. Part two will consider some of the possible roots of this confusion.

The prevailing mindset for most of “modernity” has been what might be called patriarchal or paternal. Men have dominated the major areas of life…medicine, politics, religion, administration of education, business…virtually every academic and mercantile pursuit has been directed and executed by those of the male gender. This is essentially an historic truism. With few exceptions…those societies that embraced a matriarchal perspective and those in which matrilineal descent prevailed…societies governed and dominated by men have been the rule.

Because of this, civilizations and societies have commonly viewed their culture through the prism of rationality, the most common way males perceive their surroundings. Men and women have different modalities of being in the world and of interpreting what they see and feel. The former tend towards what might be called a binary view, the latter towards a continuum or multiplicity model. Generally speaking, the male of the human species holds certainty to be a coveted truth…no ambiguity, no ambivalence. Within this binary structure, things are black and white, right or wrong, up or down, yes or no. The ability to see shades of difference, to accept and embrace the mystery of life, uncertainty, ambivalence and ambiguity is given to the female of the human species. She not only has the ability to perceive these fine gradations of difference, she revels in them.

None of the preceding is to say that these two ways of being in the world are mutually exclusive. No man thinks entirely rationally and no woman thinks entirely intuitively. But, these are singular modalities of cognitive ability and have a dominant mode of expression. Nor am I asserting that one modality of thinking is superior to the other. What I am asserting is that one modality of thinking that prevails to the detriment of the other is potentially fallacious, counter-productive and opens up many possibilities for inequities to develop.

When we turn the rational light of the binary model on the issues of gender and sexuality, we can better understand how they have become delimited and coextensive. For the sake of clarity, the binary approach would clearly seek a simple and unambiguous understanding of gender…male and female. And, because the rational mind is aiming for clarity, it immediately makes the assumption that sexuality and gender are essentially part and parcel, one and the same phenomenon. Male genitalia implies a sexual attraction to women, Female genitalia implies a sexual attraction to men. This formula is clear, simple and concise. No ambiguity, no ambivalence, no mistake.

Unfortunately, this model has never been correct and men have had to “fudge” to make facts fit reality. Obstetricians make carte blanche decisions regarding the gender of an intersex baby. Psychologists have historically diagnosed homosexuality and transgenderism as deviant behavior. Religious institutions immediately declaim against the sinful behavior of these deviants and perverts. Even in the modern world, there are those who assert that gay men are more likely to be sexual predators than straight men. The diatribes directed against the LBGTI community are no rarity in today’s world and much of the inability to comprehend can be laid on the doorstep of binary thinking. A mind, which embraces diversity, is not so readily persuaded to pass quick and arbitrary judgment upon something it does not understand.

Those who are able to abandon the binary model are able to perceive that both sexuality and gender are better understood through the prism of multiplicity and that the convenience of identifying gender presentation with sexual preference is not only misplaced, but also wholly inaccurate. A more encompassing model is better able to avoid the traps of myopic and monolithic thinking which completely misses the point in any discussion of gender and sexuality and their relationship, one to the other.

The last part of this series will look toward the future and what the possibilities hold if we do not restrict ourselves to one modality of perception, specifically as it relates to gender and sexuality issues.


trickster108