As much as I would love to say that there are more than two sexes and be inclusive, I can't really neglect the fact that there are two major combinations of sex chromosomes: XX and XY. Although there are also XO (Turner syndrome) and XXY (Klinefelter syndrome), those two are consistently classified as (infertile) females and males, respectively. I had to do a report on Klinefelter syndrome in high school biology, but only studied it as it pertains to childhood, not puberty. I'm not sure of sex/gender issues in XO and XXY adults.
Anyway, while the XX/XY sex is pretty well cemented at birth, the effectiveness of the enzymes and RNA that process and read the DNA is in question. Despite political correctness telling me not to, I would say that when sex chromosomes or hormones are misread or ignored completely, that is a disorder as opposed to "just" a difference.
However, I would argue that there are several more than two genders. The distinction I make here is that "sex" only pertains to the chromosomes you own, and "gender" pertains to the functionality of the chromosomes, hormones, culture, feelings, sexual preference, and so on. (Note: This is just my own opinion. Functionality may well be classified under sex for some people, but it seems more like a gender thing to me.)
Which brings me to the number of genders. While two seems like way too few, six also seems like too few to acknowledge all the distinctions. Even among people with the same hormone condition (take AIS for example), the degree of severity is different, the features that develop are different. If one AIS individual has a vagina and another has undescended testicles instead, are they the same gender? Anne Fausto-Sterling introduces so many nuances to seemingly different genders, it's hard to keep up with it all. Trying to count the number of genders here is like calculus to me. It's like trying to take the integral under a "bell curve for femaleness" or "bell curve for maleness." There seem to be infinite genders, depending on how small your "dx" slice is. In which case, isn't that the opposite of the point of feminism? I always thought that the point of feminism was solidarity among women (including ferms, I'd suppose) but all this calculus-esque divisions and bell curves and classification, classification, classification just seems to be dividing people in a negative way. What's the use of a gender if there is only 1 person included in it?
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Hm. Maybe we just scrap the idea altogether!!
ReplyDeleteI really liked your post, especially your conclusion. While reading the first half of your article the same thought actually passed through my head. If we insist of defining all the different genders we are going to end up with about 6 billion different names. And this is coming from someone who tends to agree that labels (although I feel like even the word "label" itself has a negative connotation) are usually necessary or at least unavoidable. In this case though it seems like the only point being made is that people are different which to most minds isn't all that revolutionary.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the definitions of sex and gender that you gave but I especially agree with your idea of classification as a type of calculus. We try to portray the idea that everyone is an individual, but I think naming every "shade" of gender possible just enforces individuality to an utmost level that does not make sense anymore. Although we need to classify everything I think naming every shade of gender possible is not necessary. Pretty soon, like Jared said, there would be about 6 billion different names!
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