The Troubles With Genders

How one can change genders and fit into society is today's hot topic  both in society and in the culture wars. How did it get this way?

We have a few problems with genders. For one thing, we live in a society that uses assigned biological sex to categorize us instead of in addition to gender. Meanwhile, we have more genders than our biological sex categories know what to do with. And so what we have is the pigeonhole principle. We end up with people from multiple genders being grouped  into the same biological sex category. And not everyone is happy with who has moved in theirs or other's biological sex neighborhood.

What is causing further tension is that  people are using their favorite ideology, which includes religion, alone to try to understand and solve the problems created by the expanded list of gender identities when science is telling us that biological factors can possibly contribute gender identification. This means that in order to resolve the conflict that arises when we have more gender identities than biological sex categories, people are demanding solutions while either deliberately ignoring or lacking awareness of what science is saying about gender dysphoria and identity. Thus the gender identity battlefield becomes hotly contested because, for many of us, the veracity of our favorite ideology is at stake. And so now many of us have personal investments in how others are categorized by biological sex.

In addition, gender identities don't always sit well in the biological sex categories in which they have been placed. Because we can't conflate the two, when the biological sex of a person makes a significant difference, the emphasis on gender identity is misplaced and those who strongly identify as being other than cisgendered have salt rubbed into their centuries-old wounds.

And speaking of those wounds, we have a long history, again counted in multiple centuries, of people who have a different sexual orientation than heterosexual or are not cisgendered being punished by our laws and marginalized in society. And these people are rightfully demanding equality. But they do not have enough allies in society who are willing and ready to cooperate in making their equality a reality.

From my perspective, those are all of the factors that makes gender identities other than being cisgendered such such a mess for society and a great hardship for those who are demanding their equality now. But again, that is from my perspective.

One common practice of those who are both relying on ideology alone to solve the gender identity problems is that they tend to conflate one's biological sex with one's gender identity. One might assume that only  religiously conservative Christians who are trying to resolve the gender identity problem of conflating biological sex and gender identity. After all, such people try to insist that the presence of the sex chromosomes and the physical appearance of the the genitalia are all the information one needs to know to determine with which gender a person should identify with.

However, there are those from the LGBT community who insist on conflating biological sex with gender identity as well. Their version of conflating the two consists of using only their gender identity to determine their biological sex. They do that despite the fact that gender identity deals with the psychological while biological sex deals with the physical. Because of the differences between one's biological sex and gender identity, one would think that resolving this problem would be a slam-dunk. However, since biological factors might affect gender identity, we have to admit that the distinction could be more complicated than we are willing to admit.

Also, those who insist that their ideology alone can solve the problems that come with gender dysphoria and identity also tend to be overly simplistic in identifying the causes for our gender identity problems. If we take my fellow religiously conservative American Christians for example, they believe that the prime cause for gender identities other than cisgendered is sin. And so the solution would be for the non-cisgendered is to repent and believe in Christ. They believe that because that is what they believe is the cause and solution for all of our social problems. That not everyone, or even enough people, who suffer from gender dysphoria will repent and believe does not alter that religious approach.

Or if we take Robert Jensen's approach where the root cause for gender dysphoria is patriarchy and the solution is provided by radical feminism, we see a leftist version of how many of my fellow religiously conservative American Christians see and want to solve the problems with gender dysphoria. BTW, I hate disagreeing with Jensen because I have learned much from him. But like my fellow religiously conservative American Christians, he does not factor in enough of the biological factors that scientists are telling us are possible causes for gender dysphoria.

However, Jensen makes a very valid point against letting transgendered females participate in women's sports. It is that  they have benefited from being male in that males TEND to make them stronger than cisgendered females--musicians like me, certainly not all musicians, didn't always follow that tendency throughout our lives. And thus regardless of how far a male has transitioned into a female, they tend to have a physical advantage over cisgendered females and thus should not participate in women's sports.

That, along with the bathroom issue is why some of our gender identities don't always sit well with their preferred biological sex category. And these two areas are two of the areas where we see where the problems with gender identity causes the biggest commotion in society.

So what are many of the scientists telling us? For one thing, they are telling us that genetic mutations can contribute to gender dysphoria. In addition, males and females have different brain structures. And it seems that at least some with gender dysphoria are identifying with the sex associated with their brain structure. And so at least some females with gender dysphoria are identifying as males because they have a male brain structure while at least some males identifying as females do so because they have a female brain structure.

Science is also telling us that those with gender dysphoria tend to suffer from depression more than the cisgendered do. Those with gender dysphoria are also more at risk for committing suicide than their cisgendered counterparts. There are several factors that drive this tendency. Those factors range from the discomfort one feels when suffering from gender dysphoria to the negative reactions of family members, friends, and others to both the state of a person's gender dysphoria to their attempted transitioning. 

But there is a very small minority of cases where people who transitioned from male to female or vice-versa regret their decisions.

So, what how should we respond to gender identity problems. One thing we can do is to admit our society's structural weaknesses in solving this problem. One such weakness is how we use a binary approach to categorize people by biological sex. In reality, we have 3 biological sexes: male, female, and intersex. And we need to acknowledge that to show that perhaps the differences between males and females, though significant, are less than what we continue to think they are.

Another societal structural weaknesses is that we don't include gender identity along with biological sex in categorizing people. Using both gender identity and biological sex to categorize people would eliminate how our current pigeonhole principle contributes to the problems with gender identity. That is we would no longer have to have people with more than two different gender identities placed in the same biological sex category. Such a remedy would be costly and require significant changes to our society. These changes would be more than just acknowledging the difference between biological sex and gender on one's birth certificates. It would require changes in how we run sports programs, share bathrooms and shower facilities, group people people schools and colleges for example. And those changes would not be without problems. But we have acknowledge that categorizing people solely by one's biological sex and then trying to force a binary approach to that categorization is a structural weakness that ensures that the mere addressing gender identity problems will forever a highly contentious venture. 

Also, we have to abandon solely relying on preferred ideologies to understand and try to solve the problems that go with acknowledging more than 2 genders. It's not that we abandon our preferred ideologies. It is that we let those ideologies be tempered by what science is telling us. Here we should note that if scientists do not fully understand the causes for gender dysphoria, then those who rely on their preferred ideologies alone who also ignore or are unaware of science is saying about the subject will know even less. But unfortunately, those who know less about gender dysphoria and identity seem to be speaking the loudest about the subject.

Finally, because we live in a democratic society, we must be promoting for and working for the equal rights of those with whom we agree and disagree. That is because in a democratic society, we must become invested in promoting the full equality of others in society. That is because democracy is more than just the majority rule, it is about equality.