For those of you who followed my old wordpress blog you might already know some of this post. First off, thank you for following me to this blog, and second, there will be new things in this post.
Last night, after Mom went to bed, and I settled down for my "alone time", I watched random youtube videos. Google is interesting in the way it set up youtube, because it recommends new videos based on the videos I already watched. A buzzfeed video about intersex people was recommended. The video starts with, somebody asking "who has testicles", and a woman raises her hand. "Ok this is interesting", I thought, and one intersex video led me to another, until an Oprah episode came up. Soon it was almost 3:00 am, and my interest had been completely peeked, but I knew I had to go to bed. Even in bed, I was thinking about the issue, and wanting to watch more videos.
I was introduced the the idea of intersex when I was a child. At the time it was called hermaphrodite, and the adults and children in the group were extremely surprised to find out a bear was both male and female.
My friend, brother, and myself lived in a small town surrounded by forest, and bears were a common sight. We decided to go "bear hunting". Of course it was pretend, but we encountered a real bear. I clearly remember my friend, pointing out a bear track in the dirt, and saying "look there's a bear track", and my brother saying "no that's not a bear track", and as we discussed the validity of this bear track looking up and seeing an actual bear.
We did exactly what we were taught not to do. We screamed and ran. We didn't back up slowly, we didn't fall to the ground and play dead, we didn't remain quite, no we screamed and ran. My friends Dad came out of their house, and shot the bear. And that was that.
Well not really.
My friends brother was extremely smart, and he asked if he could watch the necropsy. He and all of us were given permission. To the surprise of the forest warden doing the necropsy, the bear had both male and female parts, and the garbage from our back yards and my friends back yards in it's stomach. Both identifying garbage (my friend's brother discovered a balloon with his name on it), and the idea that a bear could be both male and female were fascinating to me. My friends brother asked for and received the bears sex organs in a jar. He took them to his science teacher, to learn more about the condition of the bear.
I didn't get the bear's sex organs (I didn't want them and I didn't have a teacher who let me do my own science project on them), but I had plenty of questions, that nobody could answer for me: Could the bear get itself pregnant was a huge one.
Later on when I was an adult, I stayed up late on another night, and researched the term "intersex" having read it on a website, and found out that it was the new term for "hermaphrodite". And my fascination was peeked again. I stayed up late that night, reading website after website about the condition. My question was answered: no an intersex bear could not get pregnant on her/his own.
And then last night... Well I still find it interesting.
I find many things that are outside my own experience interesting. The reason why is that small town I once lived in where we found the bear. That town had a different culture that was unique to itself. I'm not going to get into all or any of the differences, but they were emence and it was a huge culture shock to move back to where my extended family lived. I spoke differently, I dressed differently, and I was different. I was so different, that the teacher in my new school often called me a liar and told me things couldn't have possibly been how I described them back in my old town.
Having lived in two different cultures, and understanding that culture even within the same country can be very different, I'm always fascinated by other peoples storeys and how they are different than mine. Throughout the years I researched several different conditions, cultures, and places that are not my own. From living in 16th century Russia to intersex experience, a another person's storey that is different than my own, is extremely fascinating.
It's with this mindset I stayed up way to late watching youtube videos about intersex people. When I made my first foray into learning about this subject, youtube wasn't invented yet, and we had the internet in out home for only a few short years. Now the invention of youtube gave me more to learn. I actually got to see and hear the people that were intersex as they told their stories.
In sociology class I was taught that we are male or female because we are socialized into being male or female. I liked barbies, wore pink, and had long hair because that's what my society expected of me. If I had been told I was a boy, and had been socialized into a girl, than I wouldn't like barbies or pink or long hair. We were assigned a long assignment on our own family histories, and how we were socialized. And like any fresh college student, I believed I was being told the truth.
But that's not the truth. When I started being nanny for my nephew that became glaringly obvious. My nephew was a spiderman magnet. He loved spiderman. If in any store there was a spiderman anything, he could find it, show it to me, and ask for it. He dressed in his spiderman costume, slung web, read spiderman comic books, watched spiderman TV shows, and could list off all of spiderman's enemies in the marvel comics. And I didn't teach him this. I don't think he parents did either. He was all 100% boy, with boy likes and boy dislikes, and he displayed that as soon as he could talk. He had very definite masculine traits, and it had nothing to do with socialization. My nephew had dolls, and teddy bears and "girlish" clothes, because we went to university, and we were all taught that children could be given a variety of toys and not pushed into any one gender. Well that's a bold faced lie. It's simply not true that children can be pushed into a gender. He may have had "girlish" toys, but preferred spiderman, and all of his boy clothes and toys. He was a boy. And he knew it.
If children could be socialized into gender, than transgender children like Jazz Jennings simply wouldn't be. She started out as all boy, with boy clothes, and boy toys and a boy name, but as soon as she could talk, she empathically announced she was all girl.
The most famous socialization tragedy was David Reimer, whose penis was amputated when he was a baby because of a botched circumcision. David's parents were told to take him home, and raise him as a girl, and that everything would be fine. They never told David or his identical twin Brian, why David has surgery or why both David and Brian were sent to a psychologist called John Money. Both boys were interviewed by Money at length, and Money wrote papers on his "study" that gender expression is decided by socialization. Money claimed that the "experiment" was a success, and that David had been successfully transformed into a girl and that Brian who was raised a boy was successful raised as a boy.
But it didn't work. Even as David Reimer became more depressed and suicidal Money claimed that it did work.
Eventually David and Brian were told the truth, but only years after pain and suffering. David and Brian both committed suicide as adults.
It's a sad and tragic storey, and it proves that gender is far more complicated than socialization, and that you simply can't socialize or will a person to be "boy" or "girl". The Reimer's couldn't socialize David, Jazz Jennings's parents wouldn't have been able to socialize Jazz (although they never tried), and the parents of intersex children can't decide if their children are "boys" or "girls" for them. Those children shouldn't be surgically changed to be any one gender, and should be left to decide for themselves.
Gender is complicated. For most people (me included), gender is straight forward. It is decided at birth, and never questioned. But for some: those who are transgender, and those who are intersex, it is not straightforward. It's difficult and complicated. It is decided by Mullerian glands, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone and all sorts of other things in utero, and any number of those things can be atypical in the developing fetus. And if any of those things are atypical in the developing fetus, that fetus will have a gender that atypical. (Please note I use the word atypical, because it's the most sensitive and least offensive word I can think of. In no way do I think that these people are abnormal or weird or mistakes or anything).
I'm not done learning about gender. I love to learn and I love to learn about people who have different stories than me. But as I learn, I'm learning that gender is complicated and sometimes painful. It's not as simple as socialization. It's fascinating.
But I'm tired, and I'm going to bed.
I hope you enjoyed reading about what I am currently learning about.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
