“Dr Claire Ainsworth, a developmental biologist, has argued advances in research mean the traditional two-sex ‘male’ and 'female’ notion is outdated, and that chromosomes, anatomy, cells and hormones often don’t all conform. […]
While it was once thought that one in 2000 babies are born intersex, this could be a vast underestimation. […]
John Achermann, who studies sex development at UCL, told Nature: 'I think there’s much greater diversity within male or female, and there is certainly an area of overlap where some people can’t easily define themselves within the binary structure.’
Ainsworth’s research has concluded the idea that men are made of XY and women are made of XX is an outdated concept.”
In spite of what most people believe there is no straight line between chromosomes, genitalia, sex and gender identity.
Did you know that one in 20000 people assigned male at birth have two XX chromosomes, or that as many as one in 1000 male bodied persons have an XXY configuration? There are many women with an XY combination, as well.
You probably know quite a few men and women already who do not live up to the simplistic ideas of sex and chromosomes, but you do not know it. They may not even be aware of this themselves.
On Wednesday, the 8th of October the European Intersex Meeting took place in Riga.
The message from this meeting is important for both intersex and transgender people. Here are the four objectives listed:
1. To challenge the definition of sex as consisting of only male and female and promote the knowledge that sex is a continuum, as is gender.
2. To ensure that intersex people are fully protected against discrimination. To achieve this we recommend the adoption of anti-discrimination legislation on the ground of sex characteristics – regardless of the specific appearance or configuration of these characteristics.[…]
3. To ensure that all stakeholders that have a specific role to play in intersex people’s wellbeing such as, but not limited to, health care providers, parents and professionals working in the area of education, as well as society in general, are instructed on intersex issues from a human rights perspective.
4. To work towards making non-consensual medical and psychological treatment unlawful. Medical practitioners or other professionals should not conduct any treatment to the purpose of modifying sex characteristics which can be deferred until the person to be treated can provide informed consent.
“Hey, thanks for the follow, but I wanted to ask something you seem to have extensive knowledge of. So there is girlfag and guydyke. We’ll, what would you call a straight man who’s infatuated with male homosexual couples? A guyfag?”
My answer:
To my knowledge there is no word for this, in the same way there is no word for lesbian women who watch gay male porn (which is actually quite common).
The fact that straight men who like gay relationships or who watch gay porn are so rarely heard of is, I believe, that they break the ultimate taboo. A man who gets turn on watching two men having sex is per definition gay. But we know that it is not as simple as that.
I asked my friends over at the Facebook girlfag/guydyke forum about this, and some of them brought up the general fascination for boobs, found among both men and women, gay or straight.
I suspect men and women share some inborn triggers to specific visual clues, but that we as kids and adolescents are conditioned not to react to the triggers defined as belonging to the other sex.
I would also guess that many straight men react positively to the idea of being penetrated. Again our culture tell us that men are not supposed to feel this urge, as all manly men are presumed programmed to be the pro-active penetrator.
Notice how in the Hangover movies, anal penetration and feminization is considered the most humiliating experience a man can have. Still, the male film makers are so fascinated by the concept that they just have to include the scenes!
In a misogynistic culture opening your body up to another human being is considered feminine and submissive, and therefore inferior. In the real world the embracer may perfectly well be the one leading.
The fact is that biologically speaking men are equipped with an insane number of nerve endings in the anal area. Moreover, the stimulation of the prostate alone can be enough to bring a man to orgasm. To my knowledge no evolutionary oriented sexologist has ever tried to explain why evolution has given men this ability, most likely because the idea scares the shit out of them.
I would also add that some straight men’s fascination for gay couples may be caused by other factors. Some gay men are allowed more leeway when it comes to expressing emotions – feelings that are often considered “feminine”. Some may also be fascinated by the liberal attitudes to promiscuous sex found in some parts of the gay community.
In others this fascination may reflect a suppressed bisexual or transgender nature.
One of my friends over at the girlfag/guydyke forum summarized all of this quite nicely:
“I will never get why people assume that categories are a faithful picture of human nature. Many straight women love lesbian porn, many gay men love straight porn, etc. Straight guys just don’t talk about liking gay porn because of the stigma. There are studies that show that all men love to look at penises, gay or straight. It’s similar with women who often love to look at boobs, or at naked women.”
Really recommend “Evolution’s Rainbow” for the science inclined folks. Goes into gender and sexual variation across species, including humans. I’d advise to have basic knowledge of evolutionary theory, as it gets pretty dense, though it’s intended for a lay audience.
In case you did not know: Joan Roughgarden is a trans woman. And yes, that is relevant to what the book is about.
She is basically proving that animals are much more queer and trans than the more sexist researchers would like you to believe. In other words: Our traditional gender roles are not “natural”, in the sense of being defined by our genes.
Instead she paints a picture of a nature full of diversity and variation.
All the way up to the early 1980s scientists considered male and female sexuality, dreams and desires to be completely different. Men wanted sex. Women wanted babies. End of story.
In the early 1980s enough women had entered the workforce, including the universities, for another narrative to appear: The story about women wanting sex. Hey! They even had orgasms. Wooow!
Keep this in mind when you read science about sex and gender. Scientists are human beings with prejudices like the rest of us. Those prejudices often determine what they are looking for and what they find.
Professor Rebecca Jordan-Young has written a very fascinating book on the gender understanding of brain scientists looking for an explanation for sex differences in prenatal hormones. The book is called Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences. I recommend strongly it to anyone who is interested in the question of sex research. These tables are based on her reseach.
As soon as you start thinking about them, terms like “masculine” and “feminine” become very difficult to handle.
Dictionaries are of little help, as they have a tendency of defining a term like “feminine” as “associated with women and not with men”, or – if they are very advanced – giving it a culturally relativistic definition: “Femininity (also called womanliness) refers to qualities and behaviors judged by a particular culture to be ideally associated with or especially appropriate to women and girls.”
Even in my lifetime what Norwegians consider “feminine” and “masculine” has changed considerably. The current government is run by two strong women. Apparently political power has become – in some ways, at least – “feminine”.At the same time men are not only allowed to push the baby stroller; they are encouraged to do so. Child care has become a “masculine” trait.
On the other hand men and women continue to explore symbols that can be used to strengthen their femininity and masculinity. If your role as a house wife cannot be used to affirm your status as a woman, you make use of cosmetics, fashion, body training.
In other words: It is not that the terms are meaningless. Quite the opposite: These are meaningful words that can be filled with different meanings at different times and in different cultural contexts.
Some kind of binary remains, though. It is as if the psyche of most people demands some kind of polarity.
Maybe we need it to create the kind of charge that makes our lives exciting. Maybe we need it in order to explore the other side of our own nature, those traits and desires that have been repressed or underdeveloped as we grown up. Now we are attracted to those traits in others.
But it is equally clear that the gender stereoypes cannot capture this kind of diversity and fluidity.
A common message from radfems as well as “experts” like Ray Blanchard, is that it is the desire to appear sexy that makes male to female crossdressers and trans women perverts.
These people are “autoerotic” they say, unable to establish normal relationships with other persons.
I wonder, do women born women never get excited by the idea of being sexy? Does not the affirmation they get from men (or women) make them feel good? Do they really spend all the money on make-up and clothing to please men only?
And do the feeling of being attractive stop them from experiencing true love?
. I recommend strongly it to anyone who is interested in the question of sex research. These tables are based on her reseach.
