ReNe: defining gender

There was an article in the NY Times today about gender testing in the Olympic Games, and it got me very riled up.

If transgender athletes are now allowed to compete officially, and if gender testing has been shown frequently to render false results, then what exactly are the Chinese authorities testing for?

The Olympic hosts seem to want to impose a binary order upon the messy continuum of gender. They are searching for concreteness and certainty in a world that contains neither.

Most efforts to rigidly quantify the sexes are bound to fail. For every supposedly unmovable gender marker, there is an exception. There are women with androgen insensitivity, who have Y chromosomes. There are women who have had hysterectomies, women who cannot become pregnant, women who hate makeup, women whose object of affection is other women.

So what makes someone female then? If it’s not chromosomes, or a uterus, or the ability to get pregnant, or femininity, or being attracted to men, then what is it, and how can you possibly test for it?

The only dependable test for gender is the truth of a person’s life, the lives we live each day. Surely the best judge of a person’s gender is not a degrading, questionable examination. The best judge of a person’s gender is what lies within her, or his, heart.

The XY Games, by Boylan JF (NYTimes, Aug 3 2008)

I particularly liked this statement:

But gender is malleable and elusive, and we need to become comfortable with this fact, rather than afraid of it.

All this gender testing does is to humiliate people, both women and men. So if a woman wins at a sport, which by the way would be her reason for entering the Games, she may not be a woman after all? Why? Somebody will have to win that competition; the competition IS set up that way. Sure, but what if her time was so fast (let's say it's a race) that it's suspicious? How small must the delta be between the winner and runner-up then, for the winner to escape suspicion of being a man? Wait, what if the competition between ALL of the athletes was very close, but they all put in brilliant times? So brilliant that they are all suspicious? Are they all suspected of being men then? Because women can't be that good?

Are women not angry at what gender testing implies?? At how incredibly patriarchal and condescending it all is?

I've always held the opinion that gender is more mental and culturally imposed than a physical state of being. Definitely there are differences between the male and female body, but I think society over-stresses these differences, and often, creates unnecessary and even untrue divisions and categories. There will be brutish males with exaggerated male characteristics and effeminate men with feminine characteristics... so what? There will be voluptuous females and slim females and amazons... what's the problem here? Are flat girls less female than those with big boobs? What about girls with chests flatter than those fat guys who look like they need mammary support?

I've received my share of such gender scrutiny before; as a teenager, I cut my hair short, did rugged sports, and refused to wear skirts (other than my school skirts) and heels. I've been told I look like a lesbian and I've been hit on by girls. I wasn't really bothered because -- and here's my admittedly odd turn of logic -- I like guys; I'm turned on by guys and I like the way they look. Hence, when I look in the mirror and I see boyish characteristics on a female face, I like the way it looks as well. Makeup and dresses don't turn me on; why the hell should I wear them? To attract guys who are turned on by makeup and dresses? I don't see the logic in wearing and doing something that's uncomfortable to attract the attention of someone who probably expects you to continue to wear and do the things that are uncomfortable should you succeed in attracting and holding his attention.

To borrow the words of Eddy Izzard, I'm probably a female gay.

So if I wasn't bothered that I was often mistaken as lesbian, then what was I irked by? It was the assumptions and expectations of others that irritated me. I'm a girl therefor I must wear 'girl clothes' and cross my legs? Whose life is it? I have no problems with other girls wearing dresses and make-up and heels; I may snigger privately as they totter down the street on overly high heels, but I'm not going to tell them they CAN'T do it. I have no right. And vice versa.