How do we measure transgender? Are we all transsexual?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Just to throw a wobbly What is grender if you dont have one, you know i cant answer that ? can i . for those who dont know Im not included in this,
funny that i wonder why, the other point is i really dont need to answer any way, even if i try i dought i can. dont have to prove ether way ,

…noeleena…

[Anonymous]

Hi Noeleena,

you’ve jumped the gun, I intend to base an idea around the idea of either intersex, no gender or neutrality.

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Just to throw a wobbly What is grender if you dont have one, you know i cant answer that ? can i . for those who dont know Im not included in this,
funny that i wonder why, the other point is i really dont need to answer any way, even if i try i dought i can. dont have to prove ether way ,

Every point you just made is included in where I intend to go with this.

[Anonymous]

Bit of a challenge Chloe…… As I can’t imagine anyone being Genderlless I will answer the questions as best I can.

1.the link between sex & gender.

I am not sure in which context you are referring to with this link, but I will assume its the identified sex. It is my belief and I think I have read some research somewhere that our sex is designated by our Chromosomes and our gender by our genes. So if we are born with a nice set of male Chromosomes we get a masculine body but if our genes are, (some or all) feminine then our brain tends to tell us that we are a women. I think of course that this is determined more by the, for want of a better word, density of our female genes.

For instance I can read maps, upside down or the right way up, and have rarely if ever been lost. On the other hand I despised all the male oriented sports and activities when I was young and avoided them like the plague, much preferring to stay at home and play with my mothers clothes and make-up.

In the other context, a persons sexuality could be anything from gay to bi to straight, as these feelings are independent of a persons gender.

2. The legitimacy of the continuum.

Not real sure what you mean by the legitimacy of the continuum, but I think any transition towards an opposite end could be defined as legitimate. The distance travelled along the continuum is irrelevant as long as the journey is sincere. If someone sincerely wants to become a woman, but finds a comfortable position along the way towards total transition, then naturally it still has to be a legitimate continuum no matter how far along you go.

3. At what point does transgender become an identification?)

Basically it becomes an identity as soon as a person becomes aware that they are not the gender their body currently identifies them as, and they have a need to be identified as a member of the opposite gender. This could be as young as 8 years old or as old as 60, it just depends on when the individual person becomes aware of their need to be a member of the opposite gender.

My words are a little clumsy at times but I welcomed the challenge to try and answer these questions. The answers are of course my opinion and the evidence could be interpreted in different ways by someone else.

[Anonymous]

The trouble with being an interstate truck driver, is that you get a lot of time alone with your thoughts.

So to the problem of not having a gender Binary, this is a very difficult concept to grasp. If this situation is confined to an individual, and the rest of the population has one gender or the other, and assuming that the individual wanted to have a gender then the Binary continuum would naturally have two possible directions. Non-binary gender transition to male or non-binary gender transition to female, which still gives us a direction for a continuum to progress through.

If however the population of the civilisation has no gender at all, then there can be no binary continuum as there is nowhere to transition to. Unfortunately a population like this would be extinct in no time, unless of course they were asexual. Which leads me this extract from Wikipedia regarding the asexual condition in people. It refers to people that have no sexual attraction to others but are romantically attracted to different types depending on the individual. This extract refers to asexual’s who are attracted to all types of people romantically but not sexually and possessing a non-binary gender identity.

andromantic, gyneromantic, and ambiromantic: romantic attraction towards person(s) expressing masculinity or femininity or intersex/third gender-mixing (respectively) without implying the gender of the individual experiencing the attraction; often used by asexuals with a non-binary gender identity. The romantic aspect of androphilia, gynephilia, and ambiphilia.

This definition would imply that a gender continuum could not exist for these people as their individual sexuality is of no consequense to them.

I still stand by my previous post as I believe it to be correct in it’s own context but this post I believe is closer to what Chloe was getting at in her question.

Its been fun and I have learned a couple of things especially that it is possible to exist without a gender-binary.

[Adrian]

I’m not too good at responding to multi-question posts. So I’ll tackle just one part for now.

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The concept of gender requires polar binary opposites. Without points of reference there is no gender to be defined, a minimum of two possibilities is required. Without the gender binary a continuum cannot exist, or can it?

The concept of gender also requires an agreed definition – or otherwise any discussion will be at cross purposes.

A very elaborate definition has previously been posted in this forum but I prefer the simpler (but not inconsistent) concept adopted by Monash University.
http://www.med.monash.edu.au/gendermed/sexandgender.html
To make my views clearer here is the definition:

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Sex = male and female

Gender = masculine and feminine

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So in essence:

Sex refers to biological differences; chromosomes, hormonal profiles, internal and external sex organs.

Gender describes the characteristics that a society or culture delineates as masculine or feminine.

So while your sex as male or female is a biological fact that is the same in any culture, what that sex means in terms of your gender role as a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ in society can be quite different cross culturally. These ‘gender roles’ have an impact on the health of the individual.

In sociological terms ‘gender role’ refers to the characteristics and behaviours that different cultures attribute to the sexes. What it means to be a ‘real man’ in any culture requires male sex plus what our various cultures define as masculine characteristics and behaviours, likewise a ‘real woman’ needs female sex and feminine characteristics. To summarise:

‘man’ = male sex+ masculine social role

(a ‘real man’, ‘masculine’ or ‘manly’)

‘woman’ = female sex + feminine social role

(a ‘real woman’, ‘feminine’ or ‘womanly’)

When I use this frame of reference to discuss gender I have no need for polar binary opposites. All is required is that society or culture has a concept of masculine and feminine. If we lived in a society where the words masciline and feminine had no meaning – then I think we would live in a society which had no concept of gender.

Masculine and feminine as I understand it in our culture are not end points, and so therefore I disagree with the assertion that Without points of reference there is no gender to be defined. The very fact that we can talk about something being more feminine or masculine implies we are comfortable with a continuum – and that continuum does not need or have any endpoint. I don’t think there is any meaning or value in talking about the “most feminine possible” person.

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Like so many others, I have tried to disentangle sex from gender but without satisfaction (theoretically).

I think the definition I have proposed does that quite elegantly….well it does for me!

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It cannot be claimed that sex & gender should be separated as long as a person wants to appear like the binary opposite sex to their birth (for reasons of clarity I am not including intersex).

That is an assertion with no evidence presented to support it.
The definition of gender allows for those who wish to change their sex (albeit restricted to hormonal differences and external sex organs).

(I also prefer not to complicate the issue by discussing if this is infact not a move from male to female but rather a move from male to intersex).

The definition also allows for femininity or masculinity to be exhibited without there having to be a corresponding change in sex.

Given that I don’t accept the premise of gender on which the original post appears to have been made – I now need to look at the other questions and decide which I can address from my gender viewpoint.

[Adrian]

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Given that I don’t accept the premise of gender on which the original post appears to have been made – I now need to look at the other questions and decide which I can address from my gender viewpoint.

The second question was…

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If the gender continuum is a reality then at what point do we identify a person as (trans)gendered? Surely by definition, to be Tg requires an acceptance that there are two polar opposites but it is frequently suggested otherwise.

In my previous post I identified that a continuum of gender expressing femininity and masculinity exists – so this question can be answered.

Long time members of this site will know how much I hate the labels that we so like giving each other. The best time to use a label is, in my opinion, when it doesn’t actually matter exactly what the label means!!

There have been long discussions in this forum debating if we actually need a label to embrace everyone who feels they are part of the gender diverse community.
viewforum.php?f=319
In the 2011 TgR survey we split down the middle – those who feel we need a label to describe ourselves to others. And those who don’t.

Now, if you are the 50% who have a use for a label. Then it matters what the label means.

Transgender is one such “umbrella” label.
The rumors of the death of the transgender label ( http://forum.tgr.net.au/cms/forum/F319/4147-147 ) were somewhat exaggerated – it is still with us. But we have to accept that transgender like (my pet hate) trans and cisgender are labels that have been created to be inclusive. They are probably so inclusive as to be overlapping!! Their advantage is that, hopefully, they avoid people focusing on specific (and just as poorly defined) sub-groups.

So does using the term transgender imply that there have to be polar opposites for the transgender to lie in between?
I think not.

My view is that Transgender is a label you opt in to.

You define yourself directly as transgender only because you consider the role you are comfortable with in society (your gender) is not exactly what others might expect from your physical sex. It doesn’t matter if you are right, or how much your preferred role is different.
You also indirectly define yourself as transgender if you assign some other label to your gender diversity, like crossdresser, transexual, gender queer…. none of these terms have watertight or agreed definitions – but transgender/trans is safer because it is less specific and therefore less prone to misinterpretation.

Now I know this answer could be viewed as better placed in the labels forum. So let me say, it isn’t my purpose here to open up a discussion as to whether we need a term like Transgender, but rather to answer Chloes’s question about the definition of the term.

My answer to Chloe is that the point we identify a person as transgendered is when they directly or indirectly choose to associate themselves with that label.