COLUMN: What doesn't fit in the boxes

From Alex Gino's, "My Cleverly Titled Column," Fall '98 From Alex Gino's, "My Cleverly Titled Column," Fall '98Often, the words "sex" and "gender" are mistakenly used synonymously in our society. This usage, however, is erroneous. Sex refers to the biological characteristics of a person, whereas gender refers to what society imposes onto a person based on their sex. Another faulty belief common in our society is that there is a one-to-one correspondence between sex and gender. Most people categorize their fellow human beings by distinguishing, "Men have penises and women have vaginas." There are several problems with this dichotomy. As humans, it's natural to want to classify people to begin making sense of our surroundings. But when people do not easily fit within someone's "identification boxes," the identifier does not know what to make of the situation. Particularly in the cases of sex and gender, many demand that all people fit into one of two boxes: "Male" or "female." No in between, no bit of each. What about transgender people -- people who don't easily fit either of these categories. For instance, transsexual people are people who have either undergone or will undergo sex reassignment surgery to become a member of the opposite socially accepted sex from the one they were assigned at birth. There are also intersexual people, who were born with or later developed ambiguous genitalia. Usually, these people undergo involuntary surgery to "fix" themselves. Often they express a wish that they could have been raised as themselves, not as a "boy" or a "girl." Medical operations to force children to fit into one sex category often leave a person with little or no sensitivity in the genital area. Losing the ability to achieve an orgasm in oder to achieve social acceptance? It doesn't seem right to me. Another group of people who are difficult to fit into binary categories are androgynous people, who consider themselves to lie somewhere in the middle of the male-female spectrum -- or perhaps not in it at all. And still another group are cross-dressers, a majority of whom are heterosexual men and feel more comfortable in clothing reserved for the other socially approved gender. Drag queens and drag kings love the camp value of dressing as the extremes of the other gender in their culture. Imagine two points in space. Imagine a large number of dots on and near those points. As you move away from the points, the number of dots decreases. The end result is two overlapping circular sets of dots. This is gender. Some people fit the point of "male" closely. Others fit the point of "female" closely. However, many do not. Many are in between or off to the side. These people are in no way less important or less equal than anybody else. But there are only two genders, right? Or two sexes, or whatever? Not quite. While many people seem to fit one of two sexes, do not discount the many intersexual people, (approximately 20 such children are born daily in the United States). At the central point of our imagined figure is the beautiful, perfectly proportioned, healthy, fertile, heterosexual, athletic, white, Anglo-Saxon person. Losing a breast to cancer makes a woman feel like "less of a woman." East Asian women are often eroticized as objects, not people. An infertile man is "not a real man" and "wimpy" men "throw like a girl." Anything which causes society to see you as a less perfect version of your gender pulls you away from the central point. Some people choose to identify with that point in space. That is fine. Others do not. That should be fine as well. Unfortunately, society does not see it that way. Remember Pat from Saturday Night Live? A perfect example. Someone who cannot be classified by gender is considered as disgusting, untouchable. Often, seeing a person whose gender or sex is ambiguous, people will say, "I wish they'd just pick one." Why should people have to? You may choose to, but why must everyone fit into a little box? It may make your life easier to sort, but it won't reflect reality. Life is complex. People are complex. Let them be who they are. As someone who identifies as an androgynous, transgender, bisexual person, (or, as I prefer to say, a bi-trans-dyke sleeping with a man), I can say from personal experience that it hurts when people call me "miss." I don't want to be "sir." I just want to be a person. I hate that I am only given two choices on forms, "male" or "female." "Which?" I want to ask. By sex, I'm female. By gender? Well, that's more complex. If the form is important, I'll put what people think. If it's not though, I get to write what I want. "Sex: _______"? "Yes please." "M or F?"? "No."