The Riddle of Gender - Deborah Rudacille [12]
Law is based on custom. Deeply rooted assumptions about our bodies keep us locked into the belief that there are only two sexes—male and female—and that the sex of the body is always consistent with the sex of the brain. The equations work like this: Born with a vagina, female. Born with a penis, male. It seems incomprehensible that a child born with a penis could grow up with the certain knowledge that she is a girl, or that a child born with a vagina could be equally convinced that he is a boy. Many people are unwilling to accept that “the hands of God” or Nature could have fashioned human beings whose sense of self is at war with their flesh, or whose gender identity falls somewhere in between the poles of male and female.
Because we live in a culture that expects science to settle questions based in the body, we look to science to tell us what it means to be male and female, how gender identity is formed, and why it is that the sex of the body sometimes seems to be at odds with the sex of the mind. But despite our sophisticated tests, science can still offer no definitive answer to this question, only tantalizing clues. When the governments of England and France attempted to solve the riddle of the Chevalier d’Eon’s sex, they called in two doctors to examine the chevalier’s body. From the evidence of their eyes (the chevalier appeared to have breasts), the doctors concluded that a woman stood before them. Only at death were the chevalier’s genitals examined, and they told a different story. Today our tools are vastly more powerful, yet they are no more accurate in predicting gender identity in certain cases than the eyeball test that established the Chevalier d’Eon’s or Herculine Barbin’s anatomical sex.
“Ordinarily, the purpose of scientific investigation is to bring more clarity, more light into fields of obscurity. Modern researchers, however, delving into ‘the riddle of sex,’ have actually produced—so far—more obscurity, more complexity. Instead of the two conventional sexes with their anatomical differences, there may be up to ten or more separate concepts and manifestations of sex and each could be of vital importance to the individual,” the pioneering sexologist Harry Benjamin wrote in 1966. “Here are some of the kinds of sex I have in mind: chromosomal, genetic, anatomical, legal, gonadal, germinal, endocrine (hormonal), psychological and also the social sex, usually based on the sex of rearing.”
Benjamin’s understanding of the multiplicity of factors that contribute to a person’s gender identity, and his ability to see that a lack of agreement among these components is a source of considerable anguish for some people, remains rare. Most people do not consider gender a riddle. Most do not make a distinction between anatomical sex and gender identity. Nor do they realize that it is possible for a person to have XY chromosomes yet female-body morphology and genitals as a result of androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS), or XX chromosomes yet male-body morphology and genitals as a result of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). Those are only two of a number of genetic and endocrine conditions that can create anatomically inter-sexual people. Once these persons were called hermaphrodites, after the intersexual offspring of the gods Hermes and Aphrodite. As that myth indicates, in some cultures, intersexual and transgendered persons have been viewed with reverence and respect.
Our own culture has not been so kind. Intersexual people have been forced to undergo physically and psychologically traumatic surgeries to “normalize” their genitalia. The medicalization of intersex conditions has caused tremendous suffering. However, it has also granted intersexual people legitimacy in the eyes of the medical profession, lawmakers, and the public. No one accuses intersexual persons of being mentally ill. Their gender variance is inscribed on their bodies,