I never had to wonder whether I was male or female. I was born with female parts, it was
obvious, right? Even when I was sure I actually thought like a guy, never wore dresses, climbed
trees, and went on adventures. I played the “guy” in my job as an architect running a business
and in my marriage by taking on the financial responsibilities, and dealing with a higher sex
drive. Being out of touch with my femininity concerned me, but never once thought, “I AM a
guy.”
Since practically forever, our society has looked at things in black and white, right and wrong
from a binary perspective. Yet that is NOT how life is. It’s nuanced and can have many “truths”
occurring at the same time. I believe we are at a turning point, as a society. We are grappling
with this binary view of life in the world of gender, politics, and social norms. Where we end up,
hopefully, will be in a world that celebrates the beauty of diversity and the magic and miracles
that arise from co-creation vs judgement.
We have accepted the binary view of male and female that in our society. Yet we don’t have all
the facts and may never. What makes a guy and guy and a woman a woman, chromosomes,
right? Wrong. Or at least they are not the whole story.
Let’s look at the “X” and “Y” sex chromosomes. XX and you’re a woman, XY and you’re a man.
But not everyone is born with just X and Y chromosomes. WHAT?!?!? Yes, there are people
born with more than two chromosomes (like XXY). I’m not an expert, by any means, so I can
only tell you as much as I know. You may want to do some further independent research.
The term “intersex” is used for people who have both male and female parts. It might not be
apparent at birth (like a clitoris being large enough to maybe be a penis). It could be that your
genitalia look female but instead of ovaries, you have internal balls/gonads. You may not ever
even know. It’s estimated that 1.7% of the population is intersex (this varies by aspects are
actually included). It is equivalent to the number of redheads in the world and I run into a lot of
redheads!
As a society, we are uncomfortable with ambiguity around sex. Doctors want to “fix” anything questionable at birth and as a result make mistakes. They and/or the parents choose the sex when ambiguous and make adjustments right away. Mistakes are made. I suggest we trust nature and let
whatever visual ambiguity exist as is and allow the child to grow into itself. Later if they want to
alter something, they have a much better handle on what direction to go. Research on the
human brain seems to indicate that maturity doesn’t occur until age 23-25.
There are much larger questions here for us to grapple with though.
What’s wrong with accepting what nature has given us, even if it is ambiguous?
Male and female genitalia vary significantly, why not allow for an even greater variation?
Should who we are and how we identify be based solely on the look of our genitalia?
What if we didn’t feel the need to label people by sex?
What if children were allowed to develop their own unique being in the world?
How do we include everyone without alienating outliers?
Things that make you say hummmmmmm.
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