I can no longer avoid the issue of gender diversity among children – much as I have tried to. Not only have some of my friends been affected by the issue, but also books, distributed in some schools, such as Can I Tell You About Gender Diversity? by CJ Atkinson, are becoming increasingly visible – and controversial.
One reads about this regularly enough in the Guardian, but it is still quite a muddle. So this column is my attempt to understand – and explain – gender diversity. It will almost certainly be wrong and I look forward to the comment thread that will explain to me in what precise fashion I have been a transphobic halfwit.
It starts off simple enough. Sex and gender are separate. Sex is biological – the possession of certain sexual organs. Gender is assigned, ie it is a set of behaviours traditionally associated with a certain sex. Someone who used to be called a tomboy might have a female sex, but might identify with more typically male behaviours, and feel themselves to be more masculine than feminine. Such a person would nowadays be known as a trans boy (there are also of course trans girls, not to mention “non-binary transgender” such as Jack Monroe).
Gender – according to the theory – is assigned by society, which insists, at a mass level, on certain kinds of gender behaviour and taste: pink dolls for girls and blue trucks for boys. But this assignation is not final, and an individual can reject this if they grow up feeling a different gender identity. This sense of being trapped in the wrong kind of body is known as gender dysphoria.
So, unlike sex, which is a biological fact (although there are some people with ambiguous genitalia), gender identity is assigned (by society) and felt by an individual. Therefore, gender identity can be cultural and biological, either imposed by society or conjured by some kind of innate – and conflicting – tendency within the individual brain.
I do not doubt that such feelings are real and powerful. They can reach such an intensity that someone may opt to change their biological sex so that it fits better with their gender self-identification. This is transitioning. In this case, after bodily alteration, they will become transsexual or transgender.
What are we to make of all this confusion? How would I feel if one of my daughters turned out to feel she were a male, and wanted surgery to reassign her identity?
I would, admittedly, be worried that this might cause her physical and mental distress. Being so different in a world that makes a number of assumptions about gender identity would be just another problem to solve. (Of course, many of those problems might mainly arise from the unfair stigma put on to those with gender dysphoria.)
All the same, I am perfectly happy, in the liberal tradition, that people should have any gender identity they want, or any sex that they want – though the question of which toilets they use, or who should pay for gender reassignment, and at what age they should be able to make a such a decision remains a conundrum which as yet I have formed no opinion on.
It is clear that from the hysterical reaction to Can I Tell You About Gender Diversity? by elements of the rightwing press, that transphobia is a real enough phenomena. So to be clear I am not in favour of simply tolerating it – the idea of gender fluidity should be thoroughly welcomed, for all its complications, as an extension of the range of human possibility.
If any or all of my daughters wants to be a boy, it’s fine with me. So long as they let me borrow their clothes. And don’t try to explain it to me that often, or in too much detail.
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