again_with_this wrote:
Curiosity question: Does there ever come a point of simply accepting what you are?
I mean, with Asperger's for instance, we can biitch and moan about it and wish we were "normal," but at some point we have to accept we are what we are.
Isn't there any sense of this in regards to your own body? Maybe you didn't want to be born male, but you are. In other words, why not just accept it for what it is?
You seem to start from the proposition that it is what's between our legs that defines our gender. But I take the view that it is what's between your ears that defines your gender.
By my reckoing there are at least four ways that we can classify human beings by sex:
1) Karyotype. If you have an XX karyotype, you are genetically female. If you have an XY karyotype, you are genetically male. If you have any other karyotype, you are intersexed.
2) Physiology. If you have male genitalia, you are physiologically male. If you have female genitalia, you are physiologically female. If you have both you are a hermaphrodite, if you have ambiguous genitalia, you are physiologically interesex. Karyotypical sex and physiological sex are usually, but not invariably consistent.
3) Gender identity. I use the term, "sex," to refer to genetic and morphological characteristics and, "gender," to refer to matters of sexual self-identification. That does not mean, however, that one is more important than the other. There is certainly journal literature that suggests anatomical differences between transgender people born male and cisgendered males.
4) Social gender role. One may be unambiguously male and still seek to fill a female social gender role, and vice versa.
If we begin from the proposition that a person has inconsistent physiological sex and gender identity, then when we talk of "accepting it for what it is," why can it not be the gender identity that is accepted, rather than the physiological sex?
_________________
--James