Tomorrow is the Transgender Day of Remembrance

[Kristen Beck, former navy seal, US military veteran, and Bronze Star recipient. Does she not deserve the gratitude and respect of her fellow citizens and the right to live as the person she is rather than who some insist she be? Photo by Kristen Beck.]

Trans* people are those whose sense of gender identity and related forms of gender expression don't match the rigid man/woman binary found in places like the United States.

They are not confused, they are not perverts, and they are not creeps.

But they are still treated with hatred, fear, derision, mockery, and so on to the point that many are beaten, killed, or commit suicide. Hence the Day of Remembrance.

I am not going to launch into a lecture here about the social construction of--

Oh heck, I have something I wrote not long ago about gender in a comment for Facebook, so I'll share that:

One of the main stumbling blocks in our understanding of gender is the reification of culturally conditioned social labels. We are already know that sex (biology shaped by gonadal steroids) exists along a spectrum, and the current consensus of social science identifies gender as a social construct and resulting social performance based on cultural expectations of sex.

What we don't know is how hormones, the brain, consciousness (including agency), and the social landscape interact in human development to produce the categories we associate with gender -- gender identity, gender performance (according to established gender roles), etc, let alone categories of related subjects like sexual orientation.

We can't even be sure that our gender categories are adequate and accurate because of the heavy weight of conventional wisdom and the heat of debate over the issue (kind of reminds me of the depths one can plunge for the history, philosophy, and science of terms like "gene" and "species").

While we wait for (or rush out to participate in) research to clarify the issue, we can reasonably assume that however many axes around which (what we generally think of as) gender pivots, there will be spectra of variation as with sex. We also know that gender dysphoria and gender discrimination can cause depression and self harm, with suicide resulting from cruel forms of social control (bullying, discrimination, feeling isolated, feeling like you are a mistake or that there is no place for you in the social landscape, etc) as a leading cause of death among trans* individuals.

In other words, while the subject is indeed fascinating and worthy of the kind of collaborative interdisciplinary work on the human condition at which anthropologists excel, we don't need to wait for the biocultural verdict on the taxonomy of gender and its influences/causes to advocate and adopt compassionate and humane attitudes and policies for trans* and potentially trans* individuals.

If a pre-teen does indeed "grow out of it", what is the harm of having a happy childhood identifying with what is culturally defined as the "wrong" toys and clothes? If a teen is suffering because of their bodily changes as seen through the lens of gender dysphoria, is it unthinkable to use hormone blockers to slow puberty until a clear decision can be reached on whether to pursue surgical options?

My observations of the trans* debate is that it is primarily rooted in the cultural norms and categories of a society that conflates sex and gender and traditionally limits both to a rigid binary. I think informed social policy and scientific debate on gender is a great and necessary thing, and we can all use a good shake-up of our assumptions about the subject, but I for one always need to remind myself that at the center of such anthropological debates are real, living, thinking, feeling people. Kindness is always the right answer for that subject.

I would add that, since this was aimed at students and scholars of anthropology, I didn't feel the need to explain or give examples of how gender is socially constructed, and how much of what we assume to be sex-based differences are really gender-based. Examples from history and cross-cultural comparisons demonstrate this repeatedly.

But humans assume that the worldview they grew up with is a mostly complete and highly accurate picture of reality and don't like things that don't fit inside the boxes into which they've learned to place things. That which exists outside or between these categories make people upset and may be viewed with suspicion, fear, disgust, or contempt.

Hence a non-macho, or small, or homosexual male is "queer"*. And if your gender (how you act, live, dress, etc) doesn't match the expectations of your sex (gonads, sex hormones, genitalia, etc) you are often viewed and treated with similar scorn. If you try to alter aspects of your sex to fit your gender identity, the disrespect and harassment can intensify. Hence the aforementioned violence.

If you are moved to compassion and charity, and agree that kindness is the right response in the face of such discrimination, be active in supporting equality through bills such as ENDA.

Be well.



*Check  out the last paragraph in this article for a more descriptive take as well as my response to such attitudes.