Genders, Why Do Some People Identify Oppositely, and What Genders Are There?

Gender. There are more than two of those, as well. Sometimes people don’t believe this is true, but read through the coming onslaught of gender definitions and decide what you think. First, we have the most obvious, male and female. These are the gender binaries. Binary is the division of something into two very clear and concise subjects. The others on the spectrum are intersex, also known as hermaphrodite, or someone who is biologically both male and female, transgender, identifying as a gender other than you were born as. There are a few that are similar to one another: Bigender is when one swaps from male to female depending on the situation and how they feel comfortable, though it is an unconscious switch. This is often confused with androgyny, when one is a sort of combination of both genders, but an androgynous person stays on the same general gender base, while a bigender person does not. Pangender is when one is between male and female, they are neither a man nor a woman because one is all genders. There is also the identification of a third gender, that is not in the binary- that is neither male nor female. Similarly, someone who identifies as trigender flows, much like bigendered people, from one gender to another to a third unconsciously.

            When someone identifies as something other than their biological gender, it is not a ‘phase’ or ‘a cry for attention’, it is something very difficult to deal with.. Trans* people will have a lot of body dysphoria, which is extreme discomfort with ones body because of it being the gender that one feels is wrong. It is also believed that the brains of trans* people developed differently than non-trans* while in womb. This is much like the reasoning for homosexuality and all the other aforementioned sexualities in blog post 1. (x)

            Thinking back to heteronormativity (post 1), the pushing of those behaviours can be detrimental to trans* youth, because they are, much like the idea of homosexuality or femininity, led to believe that being who they are is degrading, that identifying as the opposite of who you are is foreign and disgusting. This may lead to one being afraid to come out (although they wouldn't have to come out if it wasn't automatically assumed that everyone is straight) and make the transition (well as far as they can transition at the point they’re at) and forcing one to live with excessive, painful, unnecessary body dysphoria. I don’t want this for any adolescent or child, and others say that they don’t want anyone feeling this way, yet they continuously, unconsciously or not, push the heteronormitive morals on these people. This should come to an end, and soon. So stick around for the continuation of this topic in blog post 3.

Why Aren't People More Educated on Sexualities?

            In our modern society, people may more freely identify as many different genders and sexualities other than the “standard” gender binaries. Some people though do not recognize this, either because they refuse to for moral reasons, or because they’ve never learned about these identifications. The question, though, is why are some people uneducated on these topics? It may be because heteronormitivity, the installation of gender binaries in everyday life, is pushed onto us from a very young age, as Joshua Gamson and Dawne Moon write in their book, The Sociology of Sexualities: Queer and Beyond. A few examples of heteronormitive behaviour are: Women’s bathrooms and Men’s bathrooms/locker rooms, and dress codes or school uniforms where it is mandatory for girls to wear skirts, and boys, slacks and a tie, and boys and girls toys. This behaviour leads young people to believe that acting like/doing some things they’re “not supposed to”, that’s “too masculine” or “too feminine”; a girl playing football, a boy getting a manicure or wearing a dress, is disgraceful and/or degrading, when it’s not, because being a girl is not degrading, and neither is being a boy, or anything in between. 

          Some people associate these behaviours with homosexuality (being attracted to someone of the same sex) – as being something taboo, some thing to shy away from. Gay is used as a derogatory slur, and being gay is looked at as the breeding of an entirely different people, who are only their behaviours by some people, which is, again, completely untrue. Gay people are not their actions or ‘not people’; they are exactly the same as “other people”, they just love people of the same gender. There are even more sexualities than this, though. There is asexuality, where one feels no sexual or romantic attraction to anyone at all, but can love someone platonically (non-romantic close relationship). Pansexuality is the attraction to anyone, whether they be biologically male, or female, or trans*gendered, because one is attracted to their personality etc. and not their gender.  This is commonly confused with bisexuality because of the attraction to more than one gender, but bisexuality only refers to the attraction to two genders on the spectrum, not all of them. Lastly, monosexuality is the attraction to one specific gender, and no other. This can refer to heterosexuals or homosexuals.

Trans*- is an umbrella term for every identification on the gender spectrum when there is an asterisk. With out it (trans) it refers to the transgender identifying group exclusively.

Aside from so many different, mostly unrecognized, sexualities, there are many more genders that will be covered in the next blog post!