I have made what is for me a very rare posting on the Seahorse NSW Forums in response to what I thought was a good posting by Adina.<\/p>\n
I won't quote her entire post.. but here is what I wrote...<\/p>\n
Adina,<\/p>\n
I feel your intelligent post deserves one of my rare replies on this forum.<\/p>\n
\nI think the complexity of the classifications that you go on to describe stems from a confusion perhaps as to what gender actually is. If I could give you an alternative view point maybe things would become easier to \"sort out\". The root of the problem in understanding the gender diverse spectrum is that society uses sex and gender somewhat interchangeably. But when we talk of gender diversity we are clearly referring to something that isn't sexual diversity.<\/p>\n
Consider for the moment that what genital organs you have, and what hormones you have rushing round your body, is the recipe for your sex. Most people are born into being male or female sex though we are now starting to acknowledge those who start out with \"mixed messages\" as inter-sex. Taking pills, and having cosmetic surgery can confuse the view of what sex you are, but I believe can not actually completely change your sex. In this context SRS\/GRS is a cosmetic operation as it leaves the patient appearing as a female (or more female) but with the internal organs of a male.<\/p>\n
So if sex reflects your physical form, then what is gender?<\/p>\n
I suggest that things become a lot easier to understand if you consider gender is in your head. It is your personal experience of gender identity beyond biological and binary notions of male and female, man and woman.<\/p>\n
I will argue that if you only consider true gender identity then the end points can simply be \"feels totally as a female\" and \"feels totally as a male\". As we are talking about the way you feel these end points can be defined - if someone feels\/thinks\/reacts\/behaves in a way that is indistinguishable from those who associate in society as being female, then their gender is totally female.<\/p>\n
\nHaving removed sex from gender I think you can talk about a scale of gender identity, starting with the most female identities and finishing with the most male identities.<\/p>\n
\nI totally agree that attempts to devise questions to measure where people are on the gender scale I have described is pointless. Neither does it work if you start applying \"labels and boxes\" like CD, TG, TS or whatever to specific parts of the spectrum.<\/p>\n
But what I think does work is just asking people roughly where they see themselves on a gender spectrum. Deep down inside us, I believe we all know how much space in our life we give to \"thinking\/behaving\/acting\" like a male or female, and how much we inhabit the more confusing inter-gender spaces.<\/p>\n
I explored this concept recently with the Gender Diversity in Australia survey we conducted last year. This was a big survey of the gender diverse population with over 400 responses. Instead of asking people to nominate labels that they associated with, we gave respondents 5 choices of gender and asked them to nominate which head-space they thought they were in.<\/p>\n
The options were:
\n\u2022\tMale (MMMM)
\n\u2022\tMale - with some female aspects (FMMM)
\n\u2022\tNeither male nor female (FFMM)
\n\u2022\tFemale - with some male aspects (FFFFM)
\n\u2022\tFemale (FFFF)<\/p>\n
It appears that no-one had any real trouble choosing from such a simple list. And the interesting thing is, that because we understood roughly where on the gender spectrum each person was, we could then look to see how this matched with other aspects of their life.<\/p>\n
This I think is the value of having a gender scale. Not to provide on-line tests to suggest where your gender journey should go. But rather to bring a greater understanding that we are gender diverse, and that many of the differences in our attitudes stem from our inner gender identity. In this understanding, physical form, sexual preference, and sex are just distractions.<\/p>\n
It goes without saying that the survey results we are launching at Katoomba in 2 weeks time contain some fascinating insights into the way gender identity affects our life. And a few surprises that I won't spoil by pre-posting here!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","topic-tag":[],"class_list":["post-1535","topic","type-topic","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic\/1535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/topic"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic\/1535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"topic-tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tgr.net.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic-tag?post=1535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}