Gender: is it between the ears and not between the legs, as Chaz Bono has been quoted as saying?

Ears.

ears.. there are studies that males and females are wired differently.. which is why you’ll sometimes end up with a female brain and male parts, etc.

Sadly, it doesn’t matter whats in your head, it’s whats between your legs that most people in society will use to judge if you should be in the little girls room or not.

Ears. It’s what makes you who you are, the outside is just a vehicle. People tend to think of it the other way, which is the problem.

This is difficult for me to answer.

I, like most Americans, was brought up in a very traditionalist home, and have only recently looked into non-traditional world views.

I have wanted so many times to ask on here “What exactly does it mean to not feel like the gender you were born?” ... but I don’t want to inadvertently offend anyone.

What I mean is, I understand that our societal gender roles are severely flawed – the June Cleaver ideal of the “female” is just no longer right, if it ever has been right. Apart from physical differences – that being a female has a uterus, and a male has testicles – what does it mean to “feel female”, or “feel male”, unless you’re directly referring to the stereotypical gender roles?

Forgive me if this comes off as offensive to anyone – I really, really don’t intend it to be so. I’m just a very confused individual trying to become more aware of life outside my flawed upbringing.

I agree with Chaz. Gender’s between the ears and sex is between the legs. They’re two different things.

@Seek_Kolinahr for me, being transsexual, the feeling of “being male” is much more than just gender roles, it’s an actual physical feeling. I have a feeling of disconnect with my breasts, like they’re not actually a part of my body. And there’s also a feeling of a phantom penis (am I allowed to use that word here?). I imagine that’s similar to an amputee’s phantom limb, though as I’ve never actually lost a limb I couldn’t say for sure. But it is more physical than just gender roles. While it’s important for me that other people can look at me and see me as the man I’ve always been inside, it’s much more important that I can look at myself, naked, in a full length mirror, and recognise the body I see there. I could be treated fully in a male gender role all day every day, but if my body doesn’t match, it’s not enough.

It is predetermined by God. Period.
What do you think I’ll say?

If X were one’s physical sex and Y were one’s mental functioning as per sex, Y does not cause X, nor does X cause Y. X and Y are both caused by Z which is the chromosonal determinant for sex. In other words, one’s gender is caused by chromosomes and that gender determines the features of the mind and the naughty bits. Gender is between the strands of DNA.

@Elumas actually no-one really knows what causes a particular gender identity as it’s not always linked to chromosomes – that’s why you get people like me, whose gender differs from the one our chromosomes say it should be. There are theories that it’s caused by the influence of exposure to hormones in the womb, which makes it a natural but non-genetic cause.

IMO Chaz Bono would not be a good example to debate this issue around. Being the child of Sonny and Cher and raised in that environment could have everything to do with why things are so scrambled between his/her ears.

@Elumas It is never chromosomes alone that determine brain and genital development and these are certainly not what determines gender which is not the same as biological sex.

@Cruiser I agree. A much better role-model would be someone like Stephen Whittle

@downtide I remember reading about him and not to take anything away from Chaz as what she has done to take her “journey” public took a lot of courage.

@Cruiser It definitely takes a LOT of courage, I know this from experience. It took me 13 years to find the courage to even tell anyone. It must be even more so for Chaz because he has famous parents and has grown up under public and media scrutiny.

ps: Please don’t call Chaz “she”. He’s a he, and so am I.

@downtide Sorry about the slip up there…I stand corrected!

I have no idea—it’s not something I’ve spent time researching or even thinking about. But I agree with @Cruiser. On such a complicated subject on which even experts don’t agree, CB would be the last person I’d want definitive information from.

@downtide & @Simone_De_Beauvoir Curious, I’ve never recognized the difference between sex and gender. I’m going to have to read up on this.

Any body part with out a brain attached is just a useless lump of flesh. My vote goes to ears.

@MrsDufresne: I wouldn’t go so far as to say “useless”. I’ve had quite a bit of fun with some of those lumps of flesh and they’ve proven to be VERY useful ;)

I think it doesn’t matter. The actual word has more than one valid definition. Scientifically the classification of gender refers to male or female. It is the social sciences that blurrs the line and assigns “roles” to gender based on tradition.
For me it is not an issue. I’m female. Period.
For those who feel other than whichever genitalia they were born with it certainly is an issue. I don’t know how to address that, other than that I would respect a persons wishes if they were to specifically say to me; “Please address me as X or Y.” Whichever the case happened to be.
I think arguing about the origins is pointless. Why not just accept that; “It is what it is” and leave it at that? I think that criticizing those who accept themselves the way they are is ridiculous. Everyone has their own priorities. To try to make yours that of someone else is an arrogant presumption. I believe that my acceptance of your preferences should be enough. I have neither the time nor the inclination to march and wave a flag for every cause out there.

Why is everyone agreeing with chaz? He hasn’t written anything here – or does he have another account, too? Or did he pull his post? I don’t get it

It’s shaping up to be a very nice and interesting thread, and shows the level of tolerance and empathy that is fluther.

@MeinTeil This is not a critical data issue. If you don’t know the pronoun, you use a gender neutral one such as @JeanPaulSartre suggested or you can say ‘their’.

@zen_ is so correct!!! We’re all responding to someone quoting something somebody has been quoted as having said. We’re not even sure he said exactly that of what the full context was if he said it. Imagine how substantive the thread might have been if the actual person who said it been part of it. You can quote me on that.

@Austinlad Because the question remains, regardless of who postulated it. @zen_ is curious about how we feel about the statement ”....”
The horse is already out of the barn.
I personally don’t think it matters how a person arrived at their state of thinking. It seems to me that if an answer were found, a new debate would begin about whether or not we should “fix” this while in the womb or during early childhood. Or when or how ever. The implication thus being that there were somthing “wrong” with a person.
As a corpsman and ex EMT, I can tell you that I would look for a cause of sickness or mechanism of injury if I were trying to stop bleeding, set a fracture, or remedy an earache. These are all accepted as undesirable states that need fixing. Do we really want to add gender differentiation to that list? Would those who have different gender identities really want to be “cured”?
I maintain that it matters not at all if it is between the ears or otherwise. Though obviously it cannot be only what is between the legs or there would be no issue. So I vote that we just accept that it “is”.
I can’t help but feel that two hundred years from now we will be looked at by our descendants the way we look at Neandertal man, gazing at the moon in wonder and incomprehenson.

To avoid being put on a sex offender list, make sure you get this sorted out before you enter any public Ladies room.

It’s in your damn dna, the problem is thinking it matters beyond our current reproductive system.

I have many transgender friends. A few of them are close friends. My exposure to them has led me to the easy assumption that it’s quite possible to be born in the body with the wrong gender. Watching them come to their realization and then watching them make the transition is a fascinating experience. They are courageous and focused. I wish I were half as brave in some areas of my life as they are in this area of theirs.

Sex is biological. It’s in chromosomes and manifests itself in the body. Sex is male or female (and occasional anomalies where someone is born with both sex organs, etc.)

So the question becomes: is “gender” just the same thing as sex? Or is it something else? If it’s something else, what is it? What is there beyond a male and female sex? The only thing that I can see is a social construct surrounding the male and female sex. Gender is a set of stereotypes, appearances, and other characteristics commonly associated with sex.

Here’s what I am confused about: Transgender people often get sex changes. So is their issue with their gender or their sex? Or are they the same thing? I’ve met people online who are dissatisfied with their sex. They want their body to be the other sex. That doesn’t seem like just a gender issue to me, if gender is “all in the mind”. It seems like they want to be the other sex because they feel like they should be the other sex. What those feelings are and what they entail are not exactly clear to me. I’d like to know more about it.

Interestingly enough, the dictionary says “gender” and “sex” are one and the same.

I am so confused right now…I didn’t really answer the question as much I created more questions…

@DominicX: Speaking from personal experience, I think a lot of transfolk (at least in early stages of figuring themselves out) feel that they should be whatever matches the bits they were born with, and the problem is that they simply aren’t, so the solution is to change the body to match, since the mind is settled. Transgender people get sex changes so that their sex matches their gender. So the issue is a physical one; their sex is incorrect.

@Elumas, you may find this link helpful: http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2000to2004/2002-sex-and-gender.html

Let’s clarify – he said it: Here’s the video of hir saying it

@zen_ Thank you for the link.

I remember watching this Nova special in the early 80s as a kid. There was a woman from Scottland who was in her 60s at the time of this documentary. So in the 1940s when she was nearly 20 or so, she went to the doctor to complain that she never had her period or any signs of puberty. The doctor chalked it up to some sort of endocrine disorder and that was that.

She eventually grew breasts (mostly because she became obese, not because of any actual hormones…) got married to a man widower with kids and was a mother to them.

At some point in the late 70’s, she ended up having surgery in her abdominal reason—can’t remember now why. But when she had the surgery, it was discovered that instead of ovaries, she had undescendend testicles. Her “vagina” was basically a malformed inverted penis. The doctors looked at her chromosomes and she was biologically male.

At the time in Scottland, there were some rigid gender laws. Her marriage was legally dissolved and she was required to change all of her ID and proclaim herself male. She was forbidden to use women’s restrooms. This was someone that up until she was in her 50s had never questioned her gender. Some scientists performed some brainwave activity tests. Apparently there are slightly different ways that men and women process language. She was well within the standard of a normal female response on all of the tests.

She and her husband ended up moving to England, where the laws of gender weren’t quite so strict. She was allowed to retain her female identity and remarried her husband. She said that she never felt male in her life at all—not even when her chromosomes were revealed to be male.

That documentary always stuck in my head and so even at a very young age, I could accept that gender was a whole lot more than simple XX, XY. From high school on, I have always been friends with transgendered folk and it’s never seemed that odd to me.

In fact, most of my transgendered friends have seemed much more natural to me once they had full reassignment. I remember one friend of mine from college who was this really awkward geeky boy who insisted that his life would be better as female. I though—poor guy. He’s going to end up this awkward geeky girl—it won’t do anything. But once she started dressing and finally had multiple surgeries, she got more and more outgoing, attractive and seemed more “real” than she ever was as a boy.