The Silly Idea of Your "Real" Binary Sex

 

Today, a lot of people insist that they can tell you what your "real (binary) sex" is. Let's talk about how strange that is.

Intersex is a fact of nature, found throughout the animal kingdom and across all of human history. Today, in Western societies, being assigned a binary sex at birth is a legal requirement--you need an M or F selected on birth certificates in most countries. This is so taken-for-granted that people are often astonished to learn that this is historically and culturally strange--that most world societies have traditionally recognized more than two sexes, allowing them to recognize and provide cultural places for intersex babies, and social roles for gender-variant people. This includes, by the way, Judeo-Christian societies, up until the Middle Ages. Jewish tradition recognizes four birth sexes: female, male, both (androgyne), and neither (tumtum), and early Christians followed this tradition.

But in the Medieval period, Christian authorities decided to abandon the Jewish halachic approach. They decided that the Biblical phrase "male and female created He them" was not a poetic phrase, but a prescriptive one: God demanded binary sex. 

The problem, of course, is that intersex people continued to be born. So you find court cases and church records in which judges and priests tried to decide what to do when there was a conflict over whether an intersex person (or even animal) was living in the "correct" binary sex, or "violating the law of nature" by being a man who menstruated or a rooster who laid eggs. Parties often fought vigorously, because the fact of the matter is that an intersex person or animal cannot be fit into the category "male" or "female" by definition, and what to do about that was a perpetual issue.

Then, in the 19th century, medical doctors seized on this issue and the social fascination with nature belying human ideologies of binary sex. The field of medicine was professionalizing and gaining status. And medical practitioners realized that they could gain social respect by claiming to be able to answer questions that laypeople could not. They said laypeople were confused when they saw a person with mixed sex characteristics, and could not categorize them as male or female. But medical doctors framed themselves as having impressive skills and arcane knowledge that laypeople lacked. They could dissect a person's body after death, examine their gonads, and usually, decide that those appeared to be ovaries or testes, only in rare cases finding those organs impossible to assign a binary sex status as indeterminate ovotestes.

Nineteenth century medical doctors seized on this process, as it proved successful in generating fascination and deference from the public. They proclaimed themselves teratologists (a term that literally means "having knowledge of monsters"), and declared that where unschooled laypeople saw intersexuality in a body before their eyes, doctors could determine a person's "true sex." And to do this, they announced that it was scientific law that one's "true sex" was defined by one's gonads. A person with a penis who had ovaries they named a "female pseudohermaphrodite," and a person with vulva and internal testes, a "male pseudohermaphrodite." Only people with ovotestes so intermediate doctors could not assign them as ovaries or testes, or those with one ovary and one testis, were "true hermaphrodites"--and this was rarely the case. 

And thus, long before they developed the ability to perform sex reassignment surgeries on intersex infants, medical doctors erased intersex people through classificatory sleight of hand. And in so doing, they both increased their professional prestige, and propped up dedication to binary sex ideology in the face of its obvious factual refutation.

Then, in the 1930s, scientists discovered the "sex hormones"--testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, etc.. Gonads as anatomical organs lost their luster, as it was the hormones they produced that were the new subject of fascination. And for the next several decades, the idea that testosterone was the "essence of maleness" and estrogen the "feminine essence" was all the rage. Doctors made all sorts of strange assertions: they could "cure" an abrasive, nagging, shrewish wife with estrogen therapy! Homosexuality was caused by a hormone imbalance, as men with too little testosterone mimicked female behavior and desired a husband to dominate and penetrate them! Testosterone "causes" leadership, and high testosterone would make one a politician or CEO or general! Meanwhile, low testosterone would impede mathematical ability or the capacity to read maps!

Only it turns out that people of all sexes produce and require all of the sex steroid hormones. And that women who are housewives tending young children produce more testosterone than women who are employed outside the home in business careers. And that there are no hormonal differences between people of differing sexual orientations. Yes, testosterone causes the growth of facial and body hair, and estrogen the growth of breasts and hips. But there are endosex cis men with very low testosterone who are elite competitive athletes. As a way to determine supposed "true (binary) sex," hormones didn't cut it.

So, scientists and medical doctors dropped sex hormone levels as the way to determine the "true sex" of an intersex person. And they switched their focus instead to chromosomes--particularly, the presumption that all females have the XX genotype, and all males XY.

Now, we should note that by this point, there were doctors and scientists arguing that no single factor could determine a person's "true sex." This camp would go on to develop the language of "best sex" rather than "true sex" in choosing a binary sex assignment for intersex infants (which sounds nice enough, though the outcome was the same--by this time, forced surgical sex reassignment was presumed "necessary" by doctors across the spectrum).

But there was great appeal to framing a person's "true sex" as based on their chromosomes for medical professionals desiring to hold onto the claim that their scientific abilities made them into oracles, able to perceive and proclaim a "true binary sex" where laypeople saw a spectrum. Chromosomes cannot be seen with the naked eye, so they make an impressive divination prop. Take a cheek swab, subject it to esoteric technical tests, and mysteriously out would pop the answer: XX or XY, female or male.

In fact, the claim of a neat binary sex division in chromosomes also proved quite false. There are so many variations, including people with the genotypes XXY, XYY, XXYY, XYYY, Xo, and more. There are people who are XX/XY, having some body cells with XX chromosomes and some with XY. This "macrochimerism" is accompanied by totally normative "microchimerism" in people who have gestated. It turns out that fetuses and their gestating parents exchange genetic material, so a typical XX woman who has gestated an XY baby will have XY cells found scattered throughout her body. Then there are people who have typical-appearing male bodies who are XX, and vice versa. 

In short, whatever tool medical science devises to divide the sex spectrum into two will always fail, because sex is not a binary.

However, there are those who are intensely devoted to the ideology of binary sex. These people have made a religion of it, and indeed, in the U.S. today they are often white evangelical Christians. But it can also be a secular faith--as we can see exhibited by TERFs. These are the trans-exclusionary radical feminists who screech that sex is an inborn binary that creates predator males and victim females, and frame trans women as males in dresses who pose a sexual threat to cis women. TERF ideology holds that sex cannot be changed, and that no matter what hormone therapies or surgeries a trans woman accesses, she will always remain "truly male" due to having an XY genotype that cannot be changed. This is a position of transmisogynistic bigotry, framed as "scientific fact." (That's hardly novel--the tactic of claiming one's bias is just a statement of scientific fact proved very potent in eugenics, culminating in the Holocaust. It's morally repugnant--but it's also effective.)

TERFs like to say that they have great sympathy for intersex people. They claim that most of us are disturbed by our status, and desire nothing but to have it corrected and to keep this medical past quiet, so we can lead normal lives. This position is the exact same one taken by doctors whose imposition of unconsented-to surgeries on intersex infants intersex advocates deplore. It also allows TERFs to frame intersex people who oppose their assertion that chromosomes determine "true sex" as at best unrepresentative, and as more likely charlatans--trans people pretending to be intersex to try to excuse their "delusional mindset."

But an intersex person need not be at all unhappy with their binary birth sex assignment to be appalled by Christian fundamentalists and TERFs championing the idea that one's "true sex" is determined by chromosomes. Consider a person with CAIS (complete androgen insensitivity syndrome). She has been assigned female at birth, having been born with typical vulva. Inside, she has no uterus, and what lie in the typical position of ovaries are testes. But because her body cannot respond to testosterone, and because some of the testosterone that those testes begin releasing at puberty is naturally converted to estrogen, she has developed breasts and broad hips in the course of a typical feminizing puberty, though she does not get a menstrual period. Her birth certificate says F, she was raised as a girl, her body looks like that of an endosex female, and she identifies as a woman. But according to the TERFs, because her chromosomes are XY, she is "really" a male.

This is just like how a 19th century teratologist would approach our intersex individual. Dissecting her body after death, they'd find that her gonads were actually testes, and declare her a "male pseudohermaphrodite." 

And this is violence. Sex policing and misgendering are always violence.

The fact remains that no matter what scheme devotees of binary sex ideology dream up to try to force the nature of sex into two boxes, it will always be silly, and it will always fail. By nature, sex is a spectrum of great diversity. Our intersex bodies are real, and they are not evidence of disorder or failure, but rather of the beauty and complexity of all of the natural world. Any claims that science can determine our "true (binary) sex" deserve no more than eyerolling.

Intersex Experience and Fears about "Gay Genetics"

Recently, results of a major genetic research study were published to substantial media attention. "Many Genes Influence Same-Sex Sexuality, Not a Single 'Gay Gene,'" wrote the New York Times.

The study, by Andrea Ganna and his large team, found that five genes were statistically significant in their correlation with whether a person reported ever having a same-gender sexual experience. But none accounted for more than 1% of the genetic association with same-gender sexual behavior. The study authors estimated that the total genetic contribution to same-gender sexual behavior was 8-25%.

The study was hugely controversial, and this is no surprise. In our society today, discrimination against people who are queer and/or trans and/or nonbinary is justified by bigots with claims that only cis heterosexuality is natural, and all else is disorder or sin. Opposing this, LGBT+ people employ "born this way" rhetoric, summarized in the Lady Gaga anthem: "No matter if you are gay, straight or bi/ Lesbian, or transgender life/ You are on the right track, baby/ 'Cause God makes no mistakes/ You was born this way, baby."

So, many LGBT-supportive groups fear that if scientific studies find that sexual orientation or behavior is not biologically set at birth, this will be used to justify homophobia. And that fear is rational; as soon as the Ganna study results came out, homophobic conservatives were claiming that they justified embracing conversion therapies, since people are "not born that way after all."

At the same time, other scientist-advocates fear that finding genetic markers associated with same-gender sexual activity would be terrible. They dread a eugenic outcome. That is, they fear that tests will be developed to screen for the marker genes, and parents will use selective abortion or selective embryo implantation to avoid having "gay babies."

Some reporters seem befuddled by the apparent contradiction here: LGBT-supportive commentators both fear that a genetic "cause" for same-gender attraction will be found, and that it it will not be found? So. . . is there something for everyone in this study, which found a genetic component to sexual behavior, but also found that it is pretty small in size? Actually, said some scientific critics, what the controversy shows is that this study should never have taken place. The findings were sure to have results that explained little, with the actual result would be that "a historically marginalized group has been left more vulnerable."

Well, the study took place and was published, and you can't undo that. For what it is worth, the study authors worked with LGBT+ groups to try to ensure the results would be presented in a respectful way. The authors stated that it was important that they do this study, if for no other reason than to preempt people with less sensitivity or active malicious intent from doing it instead.

So, how was the study finding of a small genetic effect "spun" in the media? Most of the major mainstream media and popular science reports on the study headlined the idea that there is no "gay gene." "No' Gay Gene' Can Predict Sexual Orientation, Study Says," wrote CNN."Search for 'Gay Genes' Comes Up Short in Large New Study," said NPR, and "The 'Gay Gene' is a Total Myth, Massive Study Concludes," announced LiveScience. As predicted by Forbes, the media chose to focus on the fact that there is no single gene determining sexual orientation, while all the complexities of why people might have the identities they do appeared, to use the newspaper metaphor, "below the fold;" that is, further down in the articles where only the careful or invested reader will bother to read or scroll.

So we know how the results were spun. But the debate remains: which finding would "really" hurt people who love people of the same gender? Would finding a "gay gene" protect people from discrimination? Or would it justify eugenic attempts to eliminate querity?

And here is where intersex experience can step in and advise LGBT groups about whether finding a biological "cause" for sexual orientation or gender identity would be a good thing or a bad thing. What our experience shows is that neither finding would be protective.

Intersex experience shows that the idea that finding a "gay gene" would protect people from discrimination is very naive. Our sex variance has nothing to do with identity or "choice," and there is zero doubt that we are "born this way." Has that made society embrace us? No, our birth status is flatly termed a disorder. Has knowing we didn't choose to be born intersex stopped the imposition of cruel conversion therapies? Absolutely not--the opposite is true. We are subjected to the cruelest of all conversion therapies: surgical sex changes imposed on us as children without our consent.

I wish more of the people who embrace the "born this way" LGBT advocacy position would learn about intersex experience, because we could show them that they are wasting their time. To be sure, it's not just intersex experience that can demonstrate that. Consider the Holocaust, during which millions of Jewish people were murdered because they were "born that way" (and so, for example, practicing Christians who were born to Jewish parents or grandparents were sent to the gas chambers, as "biological degeneracy" rather than religious belief was what counted in the eyes of Nazi eugenicists).

So, the "born this way" crowd is wrong, and the LGBT-affirming group with eugenic fears is right. Look what happens with respect to intersex traits. Some intersex statuses are genetic, and can be detected via amniocentesis. Selective abortion of these fetuses has caused the number of children born with genetic intersex statuses to fall substantially. Again, it's not just us; consider Down syndrome. Selective abortion of fetuses with Down syndrome has led the birth of affected babies to decline by a third in the U.S., and to be virtually nonexistent in some countries like Denmark.

I have no doubt that if there were a prenatally-detectable marker identified for same-gender attraction, and especially for trans identity, it would be employed eugenically by some parents to avoid producing children with such a marker.

My question for the Ganna et al. would be: what would have happened if you had actual made a dramatic discovery of the thing you sought?

To be sure, I think that is impossible, because looking for a "gay gene" is like looking for a "democratic socialist" gene or a "libertarian gene." The reasons people have the desires and interests and worldviews they do are immensely complex. There may be some biological contribution to those, but it will be small and indirect. For example, one of the Ganna et al. findings was that a gene linked with a tendency toward risk-taking was one of the five they found linked with subjects' reporting having had a same-gender sexual experience. The explanatory power of the gene was tiny--it explained less than 1% of why people reported having a same-gender experience. And I will bet you that the reason there is a linkage has nothing to do with whether people experience same-gender attraction, but with how likely they are to be willing to risk reporting it to a researcher, given that the British study subjects were all older people who grew up when homosexuality was criminalized in Great Britain.

That said, hypothetically, what would have happened if Ganna's group had found that five genes explained, not 1% or less of the variance each, but could collectively predict if a person had a same-sex encounter, say,  70% of the time? I know that Ganna's team worked with advocates to try to present the results in a manner that would be supportive of people with same-gender attractions. I'm sure they would have said, "Look! People are pretty much born this way! Therefore they deserve social respect and legal protection."

But I would ask Ganna's team: is having good intentions enough, given the evidence provided by intersex experience? Being known to be born this way means that the large majority of intersex people identified at birth are subjected to mutilating physical conversion therapies. Intersex people, indubitably born this way, are much more likely to be in the closet than endosex LGBT people. We live with crushing shame and secrecy, imposed by doctors and parents.

What would you have done, how would you have felt, if the result of your research was that same-gender-loving individuals experienced the same high levels of medical intervention that intersex suffer? If eugenic selective abortions became commonplace based on "gay genes," as they are today for genetic intersex statuses?

It's probable that the Ganna team would say this would never happen, because they were careful, and gay rights have progressed so far, and we will never go back. This is a hopeful but seriously naive position. LGBT rights are being eroded every day today, by state and federal actions.

Still, I expect Ganna's group would say, in the end, science requires us to understand the world, and we simply must know more about human identities and behaviors. But if a general desire for genetic knowledge is so strong, why are teams like Ganna's not looking for genetic causes of homophobia, or of a desire to police others' sex and gender variance? How about the genetic markers for people who seek simplistic explanations for complex human behavior? Those are phenomena that cause a great deal of social harm, and deserve at least as much scrutiny as why people experience same-gender attraction.

Perhaps I sound very cynical. But one of the fundamental lessons of intersex experience is that doctors and scientists will tell people they are acting in your best interests, while cutting up your genitals and lying to your face about what they did and why. That's why I may be a social scientist, but I am distrustful of scientists when they act in the realms of sex, gender identity, and sexuality.

Some LGBT people, particularly white, upper-middle-class ones, may not yet have had the bubble of privilege popped--the one that lets people believe that social institutions will always act to protect them. And they are still rooting for scientists to find a set of biological causes--genes, prenatal hormone exposures, physical anomalies--that will prove they were "born that way."

But intersex people know better.

The Problematic Ideology of Natural Sex

What is human nature?

In the Western world today, science and religion are often understood to be enemies. It’s believed they offer two competing explanations of how the world works. What I want to show you is how when it comes to understanding human nature, Christianity and Science are in fact complete bedfellows. They both are deeply invested in a belief system, which I will call the Ideology of Natural Sex. And both have been shoring up that ideology, enforcing it brutally, and imposing it by force on others around the globe, for centuries.

What is this Ideology of Natural Sex? What do authorities from the Pope to our medical and scientific textbooks jointly believe, and insist we believe, about sex? It’s their unified theory of sex, gender and sexuality, and it goes like this:

“As ordered by God/evolutionary biology, humans come in two and only two physical sexes. This is the nature of things because a male and a female make a reproductive unit. The purpose of sexual interaction is reproduction. Thus, the determinative factor in dividing men from women is genitalia. Genitalia determine gender—the way society organizes people through gender roles, and the way people should properly identify and understand their place in the world. And this world is one in which men are (by God’s design or by biological imperative) the dominant sex, the sexual “aggressor,” while women’s interests center on nurturing families and offspring.”

Four things that are central to my own life pose challenges to this ideology. The first is that the empirical reality of physical sex is that it is a spectrum, and people, like myself, have always been born intersex. The second is that people around the world and throughout history have identified with genders other than male or female, and/or have been assigned to one sex at birth, and felt called to move to live in another. The third is that people engage in sex all the time that is not procreative. This is true of people who are infertile, people in same-sex pairings, and fertile men and women who do not wish to conceive with one another at the time of their sexual interaction. And the last is the reality that gender inequality is not inevitable. Patriarchy, the privileging of men over women, is a form of inequity that is successfully being reduced.

How have religious and scientific authorities dealt with these challenges over the past several centuries? They have periodically declared them to be “unnatural.”

Now, if ever you want to know when to suspect an ideology is at work, you can be sure it is the case when someone tells you something is unnatural and should not occur. Because here’s the thing about true natural laws: they function whether you want them to or not. Nobody needs to urge or force anyone else to obey them. Consider gravity. It’s a natural law, so nobody needs to enforce it. No religious tracts or psychological textbooks have been written urging people to obey the principle of gravity and refrain from floating about bumping into ceilings. Or consider this example: people may argue over vegetarianism, and whether it is healthy. But you have never seen a letter to the editor or an internet comment war complaining about how kids these days are engaging in the unnatural practice of giving up both meat and vegetables and choosing to engage in photosynthesis instead.

There is no #PhotosynthesisIsUnnatural hashtag because it truly is unnatural for people to turn green and live off sunlight directly instead of eating things for energy. Truly unnatural things do not occur, so they generate no outrage squads decrying their transgression.

As for the “laws of natural sex”—well, it’s another story.

Around the world, over the past four or five hundred years, people have been cajoled, threatened, forcibly re-educated, beaten, imprisoned, locked in mental hospitals, put in the stocks, publicly humiliated, mutilated, and burnt at the stake for violating one or more of the precepts of “Natural Sex.” That’s the sure sign of enforced ideology, not a true natural law.

And it’s not just a story of superstitious, ignorant days gone by. There is a war being waged over the ideology of “Natural Sex” today. And in that war, religion and science stand hand in hand on the same side. Who stands on the other?

Intersex people whose genitals are surgically mutilated without their consent to force their bodies to resemble binary sex expectations.

Trans people who are treated as having a mental illness, as delusional, as perverted, as pariahs.

People in same-gender relationships, who have made great strides in the West recently in terms of a right to secular marriages, but who are still not permitted to marry in many religious denominations, and who are not protected from perfectly legal discrimination of many sorts in many places.

Oh, and women pursuing sexual pleasure. Religious authorities frame women in particular as ruining themselves through seeking sex outside the context of marriage. Meanwhile, scientists continue to frame female orgasm as a puzzle as they state it is “unnecessary,” since women can conceive without it. Women, according to both religion and science, should want babies, and only engage in sex to make them, not for fun.

The extraordinary thing is, with so many groups fighting and suffering for recognition denied them under the ideology of “natural sex,” how incredibly powerful that ideology is, how amazingly resilient. We are taught the Ideology of Natural Sex so early, by parents and media and schools and churches, that we believe in it at the same fundamental level that we believe in things like gravity.

And even when individuals are persecuted in some way under the Ideology of Natural Sex, very often it never occurs to them to challenge the whole, as that seems unthinkable, but only one small part of the ideology impacting them particularly. Thus we have women who decry female genital mutilation as cruelly enforcing the belief that women should not have sex for pleasure, yet who see similar surgeries being performed on intersex babies as appropriate, as heroically “correcting malformation.” We have gay men and lesbians who frame themselves as natural and normal, wanting only to marry and reproduce like anyone else, while disdaining trans people as "crazies" who are making gay people look bad by association under the LGBT umbrella. We have people born with sex-variant bodies who reject the label intersex, and wish only to be referred to as “people affected by disorders of sex development.” Why? Because they are worried that the term “intersex” will make others associate them with trans people or think they have nonbinary identities or otherwise find them disturbingly transgressive of the Ideology of Natural Sex, and God forbid, they don’t want any of those things to be thought of them.

And everywhere, everywhere, we have ignorance of the long and violent history of the imposition of the Ideology of Natural Sex under European colonialism.

The genius behind framing an ideology as “natural” is that its history erases itself. Why would anyone study the history of something natural and eternal? We don’t study the history of covalent bonds in chemistry or cumulus clouds in meteorology.  And so we don’t study the spread of European binary sex ideology under colonialism. If you do, you’ll find that all over the world before European colonialism there were societies recognizing three, four, or more sexes and allowing people to move between them—but that’s a subject for another post. Suffice it to say that societies were violently restructured under European colonialism in many ways, and one of those was the stamping out of nonbinary gender categories and stigmatization of those occupying them as perverts.

Meanwhile, missionaries and European scientists spread the word that nonprocreative sexual practices—same-gender relationships, oral sex, masturbation—violated God’s will or the scientifically known purpose of sex, and were thus both sinful and sick. Christian missionaries even taught that the only acceptable intercourse involved a married man atop his wife, other positions being “unnatural.” Scientists concurred, saying that only in the missionary position would gravity lead semen to the uterus. Nature, colonized peoples were taught, requires men to be on top--of society, and in sexual activity, literally.

Most people today are ignorant of this history of the ongoing struggles to impose the Ideology of Natural Sex on reluctant nations and social groups. This ignorance allows each generation to believe that those who do not fit under the ideology, such as intersex and trans people, are rare freaks—or, if there are many challenging the ideology at that time, such as feminists demanding access to birth control and abortion, or the gay pride movement, as a brand new threat to an until-then-eternal system.

And for a system that is presented as eternal and inevitable, the Ideology of Natural Sex is also strangely framed as fragile and endangered, requiring vigorous defense. One example: the 20^th century claim that “homosexuality is unnatural, and if it is tolerated, the human species will go extinct as procreation will stop.” This claim was made by opponents of the so-called gay liberation movement, many of them religious conservatives, but using the language of science. And after all, for many years, scientists had been claiming that homosexuality was a medical disorder that must be cured.

The really weird thing about the end-of-the-species claim, if you think about it, is that it presumed that if same-gender sexual activity were tolerated, then nobody would ever have mixed-gender sex again. Why would people who presumably happily identified as heterosexual think something like that? Well, it’s because each of the precepts of the Ideology of Natural Sex are seen as inextricably linked. The purpose of sex is reproduction; this requires men and women; people must accept their assigned gender roles. Allow two men or two women to have sex, and the other precepts will fall as well. Society as we know it will collapse, and in fact, we’ll die out as a species as we won’t reproduce anymore. Our nature will be destroyed and humans will suffer an apocalypse.

Today, in the early 21^st century, intersex and trans issues are coming to the fore. And the same patterns emerge, as they have in the past of which we are unaware.

From science and medicine, what we see is the framing of bodies, identities and behaviors that fall outside the Ideology of Natural Sex as disorders to be classified and treated. The goal is to restore the “natural order” through techniques developed by science: eugenic programs, surgical “normalization,” and psychotherapies. Consider intersex status right now. There is a growing social movement of intersex people to put an end to the nonconsensual genital surgeries that have been imposed on intersex children since the 20^th century. But doctors are extremely resistant to this movement. Living with a sex-variant body is presented by doctors as a fatal condition. It will lead to social death, which may lead in turn to suicide. Without a body that conforms to binary sex expectations, it will be impossible to find a mate, so even if one lives, it will be an empty life, a painful one full of strange nonconforming behavior and self-loathing. Surgeons claim they are compelled to continue intersex genital mutilation to preserve life and quality of life, dismissing the cry of intersex advocates that these “treatments” in fact degrade their quality of life.

From the religious side, what we see is an assertion that Natural Law created by God must be affirmed by all human laws. To do otherwise is not only an offense to God, but will destroy humanity. Speaking recently of the supposed danger of the trans rights movement, Pope Francis said, "We are experiencing a moment of the annihilation of man as the image of God." Natural law, understood as decreed by God, requires binary sex, and that gender conform to that binary sex. Worldly laws must not be enacted to acknowledge and support people's gender identities. In fact, say religious conservatives, to speak of gender at all is to offend God. There is only sex, and never before have humans suggested that one also has a gender identity and should express its inner truth! (The fact that gender identity recognition and gender transition are as old as humanity is a history that we’ve already seen has been erased by the “natural law” framing.) And fascinatingly, the Catholic church evokes science to “prove” its position. Sex, the Church states, is determined by DNA. DNA, unlike clothing or hormones or genitals, cannot be changed. Thus, one can never change one’s “true” sex. Gender transition is a wicked lie, a deception, and according to Pope Francis, as dangerous to humanity as nuclear weapons. It must be stopped and “nature” defended.

So science and religion walk arm in arm, trumpeting the ideology of the Natural Law of Sex. This gives everyone in the general population something to latch onto in framing the oppression of some group as necessary and good. Are you a socially conservative religious person who finds trans people disgusting? Claim that the statement “male and female created He them” in Genesis is not a generalizing poetic phrase but a morally prescriptive statement that must be socially enforced. Are you a radical cis feminist who disdains the Pope, but shares with him disgust for trans people?  Claim that DNA determines sex, that gender identity is a delusion, and that trans women are thus sick male threats to the safety of “biological women.”

There’s something for everyone.

What makes the Ideology of Natural Sex so powerful is that, like all deeply effective belief systems, it is so taken-for-granted that it is like water to a fish. Most people are unaware of the very concept of a sex/gender ideology. And therefore, merely to ask the question “How many genders are there in your society?” strikes them both infantile and very offensive. Show them a drawing of intermediate genitalia and they gasp in profound shock. Present them with a visibly trans body and they laugh or gag or feel incited to commit violence.  These strong negative reactions occur because having your ideology challenged is bad enough, but when you didn’t even know it was an ideology in the first place, it makes you question everything. And sadly, most people don’t want to do that at all.

But we have to do it.

If we truly believe in science, in a rational world where we look objectively at what is, rather than impose our beliefs onto reality, then we need to reject the Ideology of Natural Sex. We need to see the reality of the sex spectrum and stop framing intersexuality as a rare disorder that somehow violates natural law. We need to understand that different societies have divided the sex spectrum up into different numbers of social sexes, and that binary sex is no more or less arbitrary than trinary or quartic sex systems. We need to give up the silly idea that sexual interactions only serve reproductive purposes, when it is massively evident in nature that nonprocreative sex is everywhere in social species. We need to become aware of the omnipresent world history of gender transitioning, and let go of the myth that not until the 20^th century introduced modern surgical transition procedures did “real” gender transitions occur.

And if we truly believe in religion, then we must adhere to the precepts of compassion that all religions teach, and stop using religion to oppress minorities or spread hate.

Intersex people, trans people, queer people, lusty women. . . we don’t violate natural law. In fact, we’ve always been a part of human nature. And accepting and respecting us as we are will not cause the end of the world. At all.

It could, however, spell the start of a kinder and fairer world. So please, just let go of the Western Ideology of Natural Sex.

We've Always Been Here

I exist.

When is the last time somebody told you that there is not such thing. . . as you?

OK, perhaps that's not an experience you've had, but I encounter it periodically. This morning I had a frustrating experience with a person who insisted that intersexuality is a myth. He was certain that sex dyadism was an unassailable natural fact--that people and animals come in two flavors, male and female. In his mind, hermaphrodites and centaurs and dragons were equally mythic creatures, and equally likely to be waiting in line at the store with him.

Really, what this guy objected to was my appearance, which is androgynously masculine. He wanted me to "make up my mind." Basically, he objected to genderqueering on the grounds that gender identities must be dyadic because bodies are sexually dyadic. When I pointed out that I am actually intersex, he dismissed me as making a deluded, faddish assertion. He compared me to a furry, and dissed me and furries together as crazy folk possessed by a trendy madness. He told me to "grow up."

How would you respond to that? Am I expected to walk around with an MRI in my pocket? I've already posted how people don't get to do a pants check on me.

I choose to respond less personally, with empirical data, scientific and historical. Though in truth, when people are religiously attached to a belief in sex dyadism, all the empirical evidence in the world may fail to convince them to let go of their dogma. That was the case in my conversation this morning. Still, others may listen, so I share some data you can use should you find yourself in a position like the one I was in today.

The Divine Androgyne

Many--perhaps most--world religions incorporate divine androgyny. This reflects the presence of intersexuality in the collective unconsciousness. Angels in Judeo-Christian tradition are neither male nor female. In Greek mythology, the child of Hermes (the jock god) and Aphrodite (prom queen goddess of love) was Hermaphrodite, as seen in the image attached to this post. The ancient Egyptian god/dess of the Nile was Hapi, whose breasts and phallus were depicted as constantly flowing with fertility, like the Nile itself.

Some intersex advocates are uncomfortable discussing intersex deities in the world pantheon, because they feel it links us with fantasy. But mythos is based in fact--sometimes psychological, and sometimes material. It can be very useful. Psychologically, it can give us validation, and materially, it gives us clues to the historical past. After all, Homer's city of Troy was considered mythic until archeologist Heinrich Schliemann took the Illiad seriously and located and excavated Troy's ruins.

What the myths of the world show us is that intersexuality did not signify barren disorder, as it does to Western doctors today. It signified perfection (for the Judeo-Christian), beauty (for the Greeks), creation (for the Egyptians).

Cultural Traditions

More important from the empirical position of "proof" of our eternal presence are the cultural traditions that societies have all over the world for giving social roles to the intersex. For example, I'm Jewish. Jewish religious practice is traditionally highly sexed and gendered--males are circumcised on the 8th day of life, females must immerse in a mikvah after completing a menstrual cycle. What then of intersex children? The gemara instructs that intersex children (and animals) are given two additional gender titles, androgyne and tumtum. A Jewish child whose genitalia include both a clitorophallus and an invagination is an androgyne, and must follow all of the rules applying to males and females. A child without significant external genitalia is tumtum and is exempted from all gendered rules.

Intersex people have been born into all cultures throughout history, so there are many traditions for giving them a place in society. As intersexuality has been erased by modern medicine, the meaning of these traditions has often shifted or been forgotten. For example, Native American traditions for giving a socially valuable place to the two-spirited are now typically understood as relating to lesbian, gay, or transgendered individuals, while the home they gave to intersex children is largely forgotton. The Hawai'ian role of mahu is another example. Today, the word "mahu" is often assumed to mean crossdresser, and has taken on a derogatory edge, like "fag." But in Hawai'ian tradition, intersex children were deemed mahu, and it was an important social role. Individuals who were mahu memorized oral traditions, were instructors of the revered hula, and were consulted when infants were named.

Scientific Evidence

It seems ridiculous to present scientific evidence that intersex conditions exist--rather like gathering scientific evidence that some people are born with red hair, or that animals of all sorts have albino offspring at times. But for convincing those who demand such evidence, some facts.

Intersexuality is common in pigs. The people of Vanuatu revered intersex pigs, and carved their likeness, genitalia and all, onto statuary and bowls. British farming tradition was less appreciative. Intersex livestock were called freemartins, and in some localities killed at birth. In the U.S., where the most revered animals are our domestic pets, intersex is studied by veterinarians in cats and dogs. Intersex conditions have been studied by scientsts in goats, in primates, in mice, in horses, in smallmouth bass . . . in fact, just about any animal you can name.

The Moral of the Story

Intersex happens. It always has happened; it's hardly some new discovery or "fad." In fact, the fad in the historical story is the recent medical erasure of intersex people, our surgical alteration, and the attachment of shame to our bodies. We've been made so invisible that most people in Western nations aren't even aware we exist, and can voice the myth that we are mythic right to our faces. Let's hope that this fad passes soon.