On Gender Identity

I was born in 1950 at a time when spouses were specifically excluded from rape laws and homosexuality was illegal. Homosexuality was only whispered about in “polite company” and people with a gender identity or gender expression that differed from their assigned sex did not exist, and by that I mean their existence was not acknowledged by “mainstream society”. In the early 1950s only 25% of women were in the work force and most of those were doing women's work, in female dominated occupations.

Things have changed a lot since then as far as women's work roles and the acceptance of gay people as fully accepted members of society, even the terminology has changed with “homosexual” going the way of “negro”.

Society as a whole seems to have a harder time understanding and accepting transgender individuals. I can understand how it can be hard, especially for members of a certain generation (mine), to wrap your head around what is essentially a very complex concept that is foreign to a generation born when males mere males and females were females and the roles were very strictly defined.

That in a way was the most difficult thing for me to get my head around. I spent most of my life belonging to movements that opposed the concept of sex role stereotyping, such as the idea that there was men's work and women's work, that women belonged in the caring occupations like nursing and teaching while only men were suited for heavy industry or the police or military. We essentially argued that the way you acted, or who you were, was separate from your sex. We did not consider the concept or gender identity as we would describe it today.

However when one thinks about it more deeply one realizes that people are individuals and the idea of separating sex and gender from identity as a way of defining sexual equality may be the wrong way of looking at it.

For some women being able to work in a non-traditional job may be what they need to be fulfilled. For some men it may simply be not being required to act in society as a stereotypical macho male.

But for other people there is a much bigger disconnect between their assigned sex at birth and who they are as human beings. For them being their authentic self requires them to live life as a different gender than the sex assigned to them at birth, in some cases requiring surgery to align their outer bodies with their inner selves.

What the rest of us need to understand and accept is that people live more fulfilling lives when they can be their authentic selves, while miserable lives, possibly leading to suicide, is a real possibility if people are not allowed to be their authentic selves.

The rest of us have a choice. We can play word and definition games telling people they are wrong about themselves and that we know them better than they do, or we can be decent human beings and affirm their existence as who they are.

Definitions

Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender.[1] Gender identity can correlate with assigned sex at birth, or can differ from it.[2] All societies have a set of gender categories that can serve as the basis of the formation of a person's social identity in relation to other members of society.[3] In most societies, there is a basic division between gender attributes assigned to males and females,[4] a gender binary to which most people adhere and which includes expectations of masculinity and femininity in all aspects of sex and gender: biological sex, gender identity, and gender expression.[5] Some people do not identify with some, or all, of the aspects of gender assigned to their biological sex;[6] some of those people are transgender, genderqueer or non-binary. There are some societies that have third gender categories. Source: Wikipedia

Transgender people have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from their assigned sex.[1][2][3] Transgender people are sometimes called transsexual if they desire medical assistance to transition from one sex to another. Transgender is also an umbrella term: in addition to including people whose gender identity is the opposite of their assigned sex (trans men and trans women), it may include people who are not exclusively masculine or feminine (people who are genderqueer or non-binary, including bigender, pangender, genderfluid, or agender).[2][4][5] Other definitions of transgender also include people who belong to a third gender, or else conceptualize transgender people as a third gender.[6][7] Infrequently, the term transgender is defined very broadly to include cross-dressers,[8] regardless of their gender identity. Source: Wikipedia

Cisgender (often abbreviated to simply cis) is a term for people whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth. Cisgender may also be defined as those who have "a gender identity or perform a gender role society considers appropriate for one's sex".[1] It is the opposite of the term transgender.[2][3] Source: Wikipedia

God Created Adam and Eve Not Adam and Steve

I'm really not sure why religious right wingers always seem to use this phrase in reference to the Adam and Eve story (as well as other Old Testament references) to justify their claims that homosexuality is an abomination (and as the Catholic school system would call it "intrinsically disordered"). The lesson from the Adam and Eve story doesn't exactly fit in with their moral code.

After all if you accept the story of "the rib", Eve was essentially Adam's cloned sister. So according to the Biblical version of the origin of the species the first two humans were siblings, who had sex to produce the second generation, also siblings who had sex to produce the third generation (well there was another possibility but it still would be incestuous). And then it was the cousins and so on and so on. So mankind is based on incest according to their literal interpretation of the Bible.

Of course if we accept Old Testament stories as fact people seemed to live a long time back then so maybe incest was not such a bad thing. But I prefer to base my opinion of the desirability of incest on scientific studies into the impact of "in-breeding".

I also prefer to base my understanding of the origin of the species on the scientific explanation of The Origin of Species.

According to the theory of evolution and natural selection non-useful traits of a species will disappear over time with evolution. Thus if homosexuality was not naturally useful to mankind it would have disappeared, The fact that it has not simply proves that it is natural and good.

For The Bible Tells Me So

Why The Religious Right Should Embrace Homosexuality

The religious right claims to believe that homosexuality is a form of sexual deviation.

The religious right claims to believes that god created sex only for the purpose of procreation and nothing, not abortion, not birth control, should prevent procreation.

So, if god created sex solely for the purpose of procreation, acts that cannot lead to procreation cannot be considered sexual. So while what homosexuals do in the privacy of their own homes may bring mutual pleasure, intimacy and bonding they cannot be considered sexual and thus not sexually deviant.

The religious right also claims that a homosexual society would be doomed because there would be no procreation. They know better. They know that homosexuals know how procreation works. They know that homosexuals want families and want the species to continue.

In a homosexual society gays and lesbians would ensure that by having sex together for the purpose of procreation and only for the purpose of procreation, There would be no birth control and no abortion because whenever people had sex it would only be for procreation.

Sex for procreation and only for procreation. It would be the religious right's nirvana.

And Then God Created The Tar Sands

And then god created the tar sands and placed them beneath the ground, while the dinosaurs roamed above, and instructed his followers to destroy the environment in order to dig them up for fuel.

This may be what some Alberta parents will be teaching their children while they are kept home from school when everyone else is being taught science.

Love for All (November 14, 1972)

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