What is gender? (was re: xxytalk)

[Priestess]

Instance, for instance:

What is intersex ? How does one relate to another gender by being intersex ? Does this mean that both genders are compatible with one that is neutral ?

I hope this was okay.

I bet other people can come up with better descriptions of intersex, but ...
I think that intersex is (or was) a medicalese term. A state of being physically different from the idealized norms of female and male that medicine has come up with, hormonally and/or reproductively and/or (genital) anatomically. Often caused by genetics, yet not always. But in practical terms, if you don't fall into one of a finite number of predefined conditions, doctors will run away from you and you're likely to have a harder than usual time finding acceptance or support for your unique individual status. Like support organizations that wouldn't call a hermaphrodite or someone with chimerism, intersexed. I suppose it's progress. 10 years ago, there was no support for anyone except ais'ers and those who could prove that they'd been surgically gender-reassigned as infants.

I'm not sure if we'd be able to find too many people who are a neutral sex, if that's what you meant. I'm pretty close to having dual reproductive systems, though I'm not really gender neutral.

I always thought I was, and that my absolute gender was less important than my quality of life in that gender. But I was wrong, that was just an illusion I had due to being clueless and lacking the instinctive gender-conciousness which most people have.

I can relate to both genders a little bit. One intellectually and on the surface, from a forcibly mis-assigned upbringing after the surgeons flipped a coin and made an unfortunate choice from the two available options they wanted to pick from. I got a pretty good idea of what the world expected me to be, from being punished on various levels for my continual string of inabilities to be that way.

And the other I can feel, in my senses and instincts, while cycles turn over and the biological clock ticks. No upbringing or socialization to make this easier to understand for the concious mind. And the only blessing I have is that when I do learn new things, they "feel" right in my mind.

I don't suppose many other people see gender like this, because how many of them started at a zero-point of hormonal starvation and no common sense? :redface: But by collecting different answers to the question, you'll get a better view.

[boz47xxy]

I can relate to both genders a little bit.

And the other I can feel, in my senses and instincts, while cycles turn over and the biological clock ticks. No upbringing or socialization to make this easier to understand for the concious mind. And the only blessing I have is that when I do learn new things, they "feel" right in my mind.

I don't suppose many other people see gender like this, because how many of them started at a zero-point of hormonal starvation and no common sense? :redface: But by collecting different answers to the question, you'll get a better view.

I can relate. I feel for just about everyone. Unless they are nutz!

Boz

[Onnineko]

Interesting idea.. :)

I also follow the idea that as things click "right" I adopt them and keep going. But at this point I'm still getting some gender confusion, mostly my reality not aligning with my presence. And some anxiety because of that.

The best thing that I love comments boards for though is a source of information that is not commonly published. :) Good to see those continue.

[Andre]

I have been reading the various posts and I have seen a commonality which brings me to my question : Have all of you had a bad childhood with your parents ? Were any of you accepted for whom you were ?

[Andre]

Maybe that wasn't a fair question. Let's see how I could disconnect my foot from my mouth here.

Do you find that you have progressed beyond that of what was originally expected of you ?

[Kailana]

Andre i would like to say that a great many of us were treated like crap by our parents. I actually prefer your question just as you typed it. have read so many posts, with almost the exact same thing being mentioned, our parents either: Ignored us, beat us, both verbally or physically, had disdain for us, or hid us away, as we were the oddballs. The very few posts i have been fortunate to read where one of us had a fairly normal upbringing is well kinda rare. It does help when you read one, just seems to me that the overwhelming majority of us did not have it easy. The slightest variation from expected normal behavior resulted in quite harsh or beligerant treatment. Most often from family members. The few times i was teased or harrassed by other kids is almost nothing when in comparison to how my parents treated me at times.

Now then there were times when i could talk with my parents, but unfortunately it was always about other things, Anything that even came close to questioning what i was or why doctors kept doing this, or whats this test about. I was pretty much ignored. I do not know which is worse, getting hit and beat to a pulp or being ignored. I tend to think that being ignored hurts worse, but then that is my perception, I really didn't feel loved, growing up. Perhaps its just that i was overly sensitive to this subject, i really dont know. Either way it hurts.

[Priestess]

I have been reading the various posts and I have seen a commonality which brings me to my question : Have all of you had a bad childhood with your parents ? Were any of you accepted for whom you were ?

Personally, I think that maybe there aren't many parents who can handle the power and responsibility of being allowed to choose their child's sex or gender. If they don't screw up the choice itself, there's a pretty fair chance they'll let the situation go to their heads.


Maybe that wasn't a fair question. Let's see how I could disconnect my foot from my mouth here.

Do you find that you have progressed beyond that of what was originally expected of you ?


It seems like there were a lot of times when I never understood what was expected of me. Sometimes I think they didn't understand their own expectations either. Sadly to say, past the age of 7 they mostly gave up on me and bonded with my siblings instead. I was too often treated like an unwelcomed guest. They were my parents as much as the law and social respectability required. I've gotten the sense that maybe the standards they enforced on me were for the sake of maintaining their appearances. From lack of love, they made me more of an "it" than nature had.

[Andre]

Thank you for both your replies.

What have you learned from these harsh experiences and what would you advise future parents of children such as you yourselves were ?

[Priestess]

Thank you for both your replies.

What have you learned from these harsh experiences and what would you advise future parents of children such as you yourselves were ?

That doesn't have to be from just me or Kailana. Most of the people here could come up with advice, and then it would carry some weight from being more universal.

But a good starting point would be the secrecy, which many IS perspectives talk about.

[Andre]

Of course, the topics or questions are far from closed. Anyone that has something to say can say it just by quoting what they are answering. I am a little impetuous about that. When I ask a question and an answer comes, they bring up other questions which I feel if I don't ask, I will forget.

See, the physical is a fact, it's finite. Where as the thoughts and experiences are infinite, it is that what I enjoy reading most because it gives me a perspective of which I am unfamiliar with and therefore want to learn about. You all have already opened my mind about many a topic and situation. I deal with many different people, I enjoy that immensely. It's one of the reasons I quit being a programmer so many years ago because I was losing the human factor.

[Priestess]

Hi Andre,

If you really want advice to parents, I can start with a blurb, and maybe you can get other people to add to it. Ah, the divine wisdom of madame priestess :confused6

If it looks like you have a choice of which sex/gender to raise your child as, that's an illusion, you really don't. The truth, whatever it is, may be obscured by the circumstances. But the choice belongs to your child, and you are stealing it. You have no more control over who/what they really are than the parents of any "normal" child. BF Skinner and the behavioralist psychologists lied. You can't make your kids into something that wasn't already in their nature. All you can do is bring pain. And if you try anyways, the lies and the domination that you use will poison you from the inside.

[Dana Gold]

If you really want advice to parents, I can start with a blurb,

When it comes to "blurbs", I've always liked this one...one that's universal for IS/DSD:...and....add parents to the first sentence with clinicians and researchers.

In the end it is only the children themselves who can and must identify who and what they are. It is for us as clinicians and researchers to listen and to learn.

Clinical decisions must ultimately be based not on anatomical predictions, nor on the "correctness" of sexual function, for this is neither a question of morality nor of social consequence, but on that path most appropriate to the likeliest psychosexual developmental pattern of the child.

In other words, the organ that appears to be critical to psychosexual development and adaptation is not the external genitalia, but the brain.

Reiner: Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med, Volume 151(3).March 1997.224-225

[Kailana]

hi Andre.

Well as to advice for parents, the best i can do is simply listen to your children. When they ask a question do your best to answer them. Don't be afraid of causing them pain. What many doctors have advised in the past is to keep everything secret. From my ecperience this is where most of my pain has come from. Where all my trust and respect I once held for my parents vanished. No matter how different i am, or how different your child may be, They need to know, they need all the information that they can get ahold of. This is how they will find there way in life, Withholding information only slows down there own acceptance of themselves. As for being normal, well i would like to say i am normal, just that my normal is different from most other people's normal. So for me "Normal" is just a perception that we are taught. So for parents let your children know, as soon as they start asking. In my opinion your children wouldn't be asking in the first place if things werent allready in doubt as to what they were. Whether it's constant medical visit's, there own perceptions that they are different, there own desires, what ever the cause. When they start asking, is when parents need to start telling.
i tend to think that the younger the better. Young children tend to have a great deal more trust in there parents, if parents wait untill there children are teenagers, well i tend to think, by then, Children are allready starting to not rely on them at that age. Along with the normal teenage blues finding out that your a whole lot different then everyone else can really mess you up. I truely wish my parents and even my doctors had been open and honest with me at the least by age 12, earlier would of been even better. 10-12 was when i started questioning things, and because i had no answers the rest of my teen years were really pretty messed up. As an young adult at 22 when i finally did have answers, well, I have lived with a great deal of hate, or more correctly love/hate relationship with my parents and a great deal of mistrust with doctors. I hope this helps. As these are really just my thoughts, take them for what they are. One persons perspective only of wondering what i am and not knowing for a very long time.