Not Transgender, but not Don Juan or Hulk Hogan Either

Blog Post Inspired by: Julián Is a Mermaid

In hindsight, my first date with my wife had an inflection point - a moment that could have ruined the evening, but luckily didn't. Mallory mentioned that she was a "feminist", which prompted the response "does that mean you hate men?" from me. She laughed it off and explained that "feminism is the belief that the sexes are equal", and this appears to be the moment when I began to contemplate biological sex, gender, and gender roles for the first time. Eight and a half years later, after a long series of events including: 1. becoming involved in the Ordain Women movement; 2. reading "Women and Authority" which explores the concepts of feminism, diety, patriarchy, and the institution that is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; 3. becoming educated on fellow Latter-Day Saints who are experiencing general dysphoria over the patriarchy and asking for change; and, recently, 4. the rising awareness of transgender issues - I am starting to really understand who I am and where I belong. I'm not transgender, but I'm not Don Juan or Hulk Hogan either. Let me explain.

Growing up I rarely seemed to understand or relate to the perspectives and experiences of my peers, teachers, coaches, leaders, etc. that were male, but I would often easily understand or relate to the perspectives and experiences of women. This phenomenon remained perplexing to me up until this year as I have learnt more about the intricacies of biological sex, gender, and sexuality while trying to process my discomfort with "traditional marriage" campaigns, religious based patriarchies (especially within my own faith), and related reactions to the arising transgender issues. As I studied, it became increasingly clear to me that biological sex transcends our current two narrow categories, and that in turn has implications for sexual orientation, gender identity, and numerous other areas.

With respect to biological sex, it was difficult for me to pinpoint at first how to define it. For instance, chromosomes aren’t definitive [most men are 46XY and most women are 46XX, but some individuals are born with a single sex chromosomes (45X and 45Y), some with three or more sex chromosomes (sex polysomies - 47XXX, 47XYY or 47XXY, etc.), some males are born 46XX due to the translocation of a tiny section of the sex determining region of the Y chromosome. Similarly some females are also born 46XY (chromosomally male) due to mutations in the Y chromosome, and some individuals are unable to respond to certain male sex hormones, called androgens (e.g. Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome), which results in those individuals having external female genitalia and breast development despite being genetically "male" (e,g, having 46XY chromosomes), Gender and Genetics Page 2, World Health Organization] and, finally, reproductive organs can be ambiguous and/or misleading [see Gender and Genetics Page 2, World Health Organization – Hermaphroditism and see Sister Missionaries and Authority, by Maxine Hanks – a former missionary elder underwent medical tests and was discovered to possess the complete reproductive and sexual organs of a female beneath a superficial, non-functional male organ].  The truth is that there isn't one factor that determines sex, there are five factors that must perfectly align to be "male" or "female" (biological sex is determined at birth by: 1. the number and type of sex chromosomes 2. The type of gonads (ovaries or testicles) 3. the sex hormones 4. the internal reproductive anatomy (e.g. uterus for females) and 5. the external genitalia – people whose characteristics are all typically male are “ideal male”, people whose characteristics are all typically female are “ideal female”, and people whose characteristics are not either all typically male or female are intersex [see Knox et al., Choices in Relationships: An Introduction to Marriage and the Family, 2010, Pg. 39, Wadsworth, Cengage Learning; See “What is Intersex?”, Intersex Society of North America]).

I have been frustrated that discussions about the biological sex spectrum, the sexual orientation spectrum, and/or the gender spectrum, especially in the context of religion, often elicits the same typical responses: those people are statistical anomalies, merely birth defects, unfortunate rarities, etcetera. However a survey of the medical literature from 1955 to 2000 found that the frequency of live births that deviated from ideal “male” or “female” may be as high as 2% (see Blackless et al., "How sexually dimorphic are we?", 2000), in other words, the frequency of intersex individuals born may be as high as 2 in every 100 live births. Some have argued that society shouldn’t change the definition of sex or gender to make it more inclusive or alter traditional institutions, e.g. marriage, for the sake of a small minority of individuals. I find such arguments to be extremely upsetting as a Christian, especially in light of the percentages Jesus Christ was willing to be concerned about (See Matthew 18:12-14; Luke 15:3-7 – a good shepherd would rejoice more over finding the one lost sheep than the other ninety and nine).  After a lot of thought, research, and reflection, I decided that I needed some space from religion.

As time passes, our culture seems to become increasingly aware of the numerous perspectives and the multitude of experiences that are possible for people in this life. Biological sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation are a lot more varied than we have previously realized, perhaps as varied as the wide pallet of skin hues around the world. This realization has helped me process the fact that there may be a reason I have rarely identified or understood the perspectives and experiences of other men. I may be biologically male, but I'm not sure that I fit or perfectly align with the socially constructed concept of what it means to be of the "male" gender. Thus, I don't feel like a woman trapped in a male body, but I also don't feel like a Don Juan or a Hulk Hogan either. I may have identified better with women my whole life because I may be somewhere in the middle of the gender spectrum, and I may just be closer to the feminine side of that spectrum than the masculine side, and . . . I'm okay with it.