Prof. Milton Diamond,
University of Hawai`i
[Abstract] Full Text [PDF]
Along the primrose path of
childhood children learn something fundamental. At a most basic level they
incorporate that Dads and Moms are designations with very different
implications. Up front, it is accepted that Dads are men and Moms are women;
that Dads and Moms do different things at home and elsewhere. Simultaneously
children learn that boys play rough and girls play nice and they usually
like to do different things. Then kids learn that boys grow up to be Dads
and girls grow up to be Moms.
Interestingly, this is the
standard pattern children incorporate even when they know these rules have
exceptions. They almost always know families where its Mom who is the
outside-the-home money earner and Dad who stays home, and where boys are
nice and quiet while girls are hellions. The basic stereotypes, however,
seem somehow branded on their psyche in the every day course of growing up.
The input is from family, friends, media, religion and even politics. And
most of middle-class society colludes, in turn, to transmit social and
cultural normative expectations with essentially the same rules. With a
certain degree of schooling and maturity children learn that the sexes to
which we are referring are male and female. It further comes to be
understood that male and female are terms used to incorporate a whole
catalog of physical and behavioral differences.
As a designation of male or
female, sex, with the child's increasing sophistication and learning becomes
understood as a descriptive set of terms and meanings that encompass the
most common biologically accepted attributes --physical differences-- of
males and females; the terms imply certain gonads, internal and external
genitalia, sex chromosomes and genes, sex hormones and so on. The student
learns that a male is an individual that has penis and scrotum, testes, and
accessory glands (prostate, seminal vesicles, bulbo-urethral glands); a
female is a person with ovaries, a uterus, ovarian tubes, a vagina and
clitoris. An intersexed individual is understood to have a mixture of these
attributes. And these basic understandings hold for the term sex as they did
for the terms Dad and Mom; wide variations and departures from the basic
generalities can be known without nullifying the common wisdom.
The term gender first became
familiar to most of us in language class when, for those of us with English
as a common tongue, we learned that nouns such as table and chair could be
either masculine, feminine or neuter. Of what use are such distinctions
still remains lost on linguists. Why languages as different as French and
German need these artifices while English and most Australoasian languages,
for instance, can get along quite well without them is subject for thought.
Many languages do not even have sex identifying pronouns. But understanding
of gender or sex-typical behaviors (the older expression for gender specific
traits) serves quite practical use. And no known language is without gender
identifying nouns.
General usage of the term
gender began in the late 1960s and 1970s, increasingly appearing in the
professional literature of the social sciences. The term came to serve a
useful purpose in distinguishing those aspects of life that were more easily
attributed or understood to be of social rather than biological origin (see
e.g., Unger & Crawford, 1992).
Males and females, as
biological entities, were accepted as essentially similar cross-culturally
but men and women, by virtue of the multitude of different roles they played
in diversified societies, were not so easily catalogued. These
anthropological life-style differences came to be accepted as social and
cultural constructs. Indeed, the terms sex and gender came, for most
investigators, to signify and reify these different areas of consideration;
sex would refer to biological traits while gender would refer to
social/cultural ones. At least this was generally so among those
investigators more sensitive to biological studies. Among those more aligned
with sociological and anthropological thinking these differences did not
appear so clear cut. For this latter group the terms sex and gender were
often used interchangeably.1
In 1978 Kessler and McKenna
(Kessler & McKenna, 1978), in their now classic work, challenged how the
relationship between sex and gender might be considered. They even
challenged if the two concepts were different or interchangeable. In
"just-so" story fashion the fact that males and female are
sexually --biologically -- different is what leads to the gender differences
seen and manifest by men and women in their behavior patterns and roles. It
is certainly understood that way by the majority of the lay public as well
as many scientists. But, questioned Kessler and McKenna, if this were so
clear cut, why do transsexuals in their pursuit of the life-style of the
"opposite" sex work so hard in trying to prove to the outside
world what they feel they are on the inside? In doing so, Kessler and
McKenna point out that transsexuals seek to reconstruct their sex to
coincide with their psychological gender. Doesn't this imply that it is
their gender which is primary and their sex secondary? Analysis of the
thinking of transsexuals is simultaneously used as a foil to bolster the
Kessler & McKenna argument that the study of gender benefits from
insightful and detailed analysis of the thinking of individuals as they make
significant gender related decisions. This is part of the
ethnomethodological approach they espouse.
In demonstrating their point,
Kessler and McKenna take the rhetorically clever position of accepting that
transsexuals are what they say they are (they interviewed fifteen
transsexual individuals). A male transsexual has the body of an anatomic
male but the conviction (mind-set) of actually being a woman and a female
transsexual has the body of an anatomical female but the conviction
(mind-set) of actually being a man (Benjamin, 1966). Then, to rectify the
dichotomy, the transsexual is seen as not wanting to change gender but
change genitals and body. It thus appears that sex is variable and gender
invariant; a reversal from the way the two had come to be considered. But
the transsexual, according to our authors, then sets about learning or
perfecting how to be the man or woman of mind's desire. In so doing, the
transsexual proves to Kessler and McKenna that gender is a construction that
doesn't necessarily follow from anatomy.2
For its time this was a novel
way of approaching the subject and it remains so today. To me the value of
the theory and the book is in its heuristic strength. It forces not only
investigators of sex and gender to consider a broader range of possibilities
in the study of human development or the forces involved in behavioral
execution, but so too scientists of other stripes as well. And the book
challenges all researchers to be more critical of how they approach their
analysis. These are legitimate questions and considerations that were
appropriate for their time. They remain worthy of contemporary deliberation.
The thrust of the Kessler and
McKenna thesis, that gender and sex were actually both variable and not
immutable became popular particularly among sociologists, women's studies
scholars and some psychologists. It also enhanced the widely held nurturist
belief that all or at least most of the gender differences were culturally
induced and widely malleable. For most biologically oriented scholars and
others that studied behavior, however, the questions or thesis posed had
little resonance. This can be gauged by recognizing that, for the years 1978
to 1995 only two references to the Kessler and McKenna book, both in
psychological journals, could be found in the Science Citation Index (Deaux,
1985; Deaux & Major, 1987). In the Social Science Citation Index,
however, references and reviews to the work abound. They were in wide
ranging publications associated with sociology, psychology, homosexuality,
philosophy and other disciplines (e.g., Bixler, 1979; Morris, 1979; Vaughter,
1979; Wylie, 1986). For these groups involved with interpreting and
reinterpreting society's structures, social scientists identified as
feminists in particular, the topic of gender has become particularly
relevant and new ways of approaching the topic are seen as valuable.3
This presentation, however,
also posed problems for them. Most sociologists, many psychologists and
others at the time had thought that gender was a function of upbringing and
social forces, e.g., Bandura & Walters, 1963 and Mischel, 1966, or
cultural conditions, e.g., D'Andrade, 1966. Others had thought an
individual's gender developed from and along with cognitive maturity e.g.,
Kohlberg, 1966, and some even attributed it to a sort of imprinting
phenomenon (Baill & Money, 1980) or socio-cultural expectations leading
to self-fulfilling prophecy (Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid, 1977) and of
course there was the classical Freudian model of gender development (Freud,
1925; 1953). Since transsexuals are brought up in accordance with their
genitals, chromosomes and other aspects of their biology, and socially
rewarded and encouraged appropriately to match their social milieu and
culture and presumably with "Freudian parents" like everyone else,
the questions naturally follow of: "Where does this atypical gender
desire come from? Why have transsexuals not succumbed to the same influences
of social and cultural attribution that have others?" They obviously
haven't. Kessler and McKenna didn't follow up that apparent question and
challenge to their thesis. Instead, they turned their attention to another
fascinating question : "Why was the gender stronger than the sex?"4
If the book were written
today, Kessler and McKenna probably would tackle the transgender phenomenon
to make their argument even stronger. Unlike the majority of transsexuals
that "feel they were born that way" many of those identifying
themselves as transgendered or gender-bending or gender-blending persons are
attracted to the concept of a constructed gender and see themselves and
their lives as evidence of it (see e.g., Bullough & Bullough, 1993;
Denny, 1998; Devor, 1989). Eschewing any strict male-female dichotomy,
transgendered persons instead reach for a wide range of admixtures of male
and female restructured anatomies and manifest masculine and feminine
life-styles.5 For those most unique in their display, to reflect
the socially bizarre nature of their expression, the term "gender
fucking" is used by outspoken transgenderists themselves and others as
well. The term is not seen as pejorative but apt. Whether this freedom of
expression comes from outside attribution and induction or outside release
(tolerance) of an internal self-perceived identity is open to debate. Most
non-transsexual transgenderists would probably say it is the latter. But
there are no data or research to support this and would again beg the
question for Kessler and McKenna: "Why do these individuals have such
feelings while the majority don't." Again they would have to deal with
the question of origin for these socially disdained behaviors and feelings.
Surely, there are many other
ways that sex and gender can be considered. And it remains to determine what
values accrue to understanding and science with each of the different
perspectives. Recently Kulick (1997), for instance, reports that in
Salvador, Brazil "Gender . . . is grounded not so much in sex . . . as
it is grounded in sexuality." Men are those individuals that insert and
women are those that are inserted into. The Brazilian travestis is a male
prostitute who, in many ways, appears similar to the American transsexual.
He assumes female behaviors and dress but, unlike his American counterpart,
does not necessarily self-identify as a women nor desire to be one. For
instance, he would not want to lose his penis while he does want to gain
breasts and rounded hips. He aspires to be his idea of a "perfect
homosexual" man. And recalling the discussion of language above, the
travestis will change the gender forms of language used to describe his
customers or himself depending upon the sexual actions performed.6
I see sex and gender
interacting in yet another way. One is born with a biological psychosexual
predisposition that is fixed by genetic-endocrine heritage and with it a
propensity for certain sexual and gender patterns to be expressed (Diamond,
1968; 1976, 1995). Which patterns will be expressed, however, I see
dependent upon the societal and cultural mores and the degrees of tolerance
they allow (Diamond, 1979). With this comes another concept. Every
individual lives with two simultaneous visions of self; an inner private
sexual identity and an outer social and public gender identity.7
One's sexual identity is prenatally organized as a function of the
genetic-endocrine forces and emerges (is activated) with development. One's
gender identity, recognition of how he or she is viewed in society, develops
with post-natal experiences. It comes from general observation of society's
norms and expectations and from comparing self with peers (Diamond, 1997;
1999; Harris, 1998) and asking: "Who am I like and who am I not
like?" "With which group, males/boys or females/girls am I similar
or different?" The transsexual or travestis or homosexual or indeed
everyone, male, female, or intersex, reconciles these two images and answer
those questions. For most individuals these identities are in concert so
reconciliation occurs more or less easily with the ups and downs that come
with puberty, a challenge to keep up with peers through adolescence, and
then an acceptance of life's vagaries in adulthood. For some, however,
attaining this reconciliation remains a constant struggle. Transsexuals, who
I believe are intersexed, have the body and genitals of one sex and the
brain of the other (see e.g., Diamond, Binstock, & Kohl, 1996; Goy,
Bercovitch, & McBrair, 1988) making reconciliation of their sexual and
gender identities problematic. They solve their problems of reconciling,
their disparate sexual identity and gender identity, by saying, in essence,
"Don't change my mind; change my body."
As scientists we are forced to
ask "Why does the mind take precedence?" I think it is because the
brain template for sexual identity is forged by more significant forces and
events (Diamond, 1965; 1979). These early engrams are more potent than the
later ones activated by rearing. This, for instance, was the force telling
John/Joan and other males who had been sex-reassigned they were not girls
although they had no penis and were reared, rewarded and reinforced as girls
(Diamond & Sigmundson, 1997).
John/Joan was an individual
widely written about in dozens of psychology, sociology and women's study
texts. According to the original reports (Money, 1975; Money & Ehrhardt,
1972) John was a male twin who, due to a surgical accident wherein his penis
was burned off, was subsequently sex reassigned as a female. The thinking
was it would be better for an individual without a penis to be raised as a
girl with a constructed vagina than to be a boy without a phallus. John was
thus castrated, had a vulva prepared and given estrogens and reared as a
girl, Joan. Contrary to the early reports of success, however, Joan never
did accept the transition (Colapinto, 1997; Diamond, 1982; Diamond &
Sigmundson, 1997).8
John, and other males
sex-reassigned as females, "knew" they were not girls despite
their castration, absence of male genitalia, female rearing, and the
administration of estrogens. The gender that was attributed to them was not
in accord with their sexual identity. In trying to understand the
discrepancies they saw in their lives, they attended to and recognized it
was the characteristics of males in general and females in general, and the
realities they saw of both sexes around them in every day life, that led
them to recognize, in their cases, the male in themselves (Diamond, 1997;
1999). This works similarly, on the other side of the coin, for those
individuals mal-assigned as males who discover the female in themselves
(Diamond, 1997a; 1997b).9
It is in this regard that I
see Kessler and McKenna's view of the sex and gender interaction and mine as
coming together. The transsexual or the intersexed individual and everyone
else has to integrate the gender attributions of society and its constructs
with feelings of self. I think all do so and match these feelings with some
brain template of "similar or different" which is more crucial
than penis or clitoris, more central to their sense of being than is a
scrotum or vagina, and more important than their familial rearing. The
individual comes to identify as a member of one of those groups (boys or
girls, men or women) with whom he or she feels more "similar" and
less "different. " Fortunately, for most of us, these factors of
brain template and the sex-typical biases and inclinations it imparts, are
usually in concert with anatomy and cultural construction of gender. When
they are not, the mind will usually rule even when in conflict with societal
expectations. It is my hope, and I think Kessler's and McKenna's as well,
that society will come to accept and incorporate these discrepancies.
As this is being written
Kessler has just published a new book (Kessler, 1998). It will probably
prove as stimulating to the thinking of social scientists as the book we are
discussing here. I trust, however, this time it will be read and appreciated
and discussed by others as well.
REFERENCES
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Bullough, B. (1993). Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender. Philadelphia:
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END NOTES
1 Supreme Court Justice
Antony Scalia, in an attempt to clarify usage of the terms has written (J.E.B.,
1994) "The word gender has acquired the new and useful connotation of
cultural or attitudinal characteristics (as opposed to physical
characteristics) distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex
as feminine is to female and masculine is to male," According to
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, however, the words are
interchangeable. She relates that she used them in composing her legal
briefs about sex/gender related matters so the word sex would not appear on
every page. Supposedly her secretary encouraged this saying: "Don't you
know those nine men [on the Supreme Court, when ] they hear that word and
their first association is not the way you want them to be thinking."
(Case, 1995)
2 This is certainly
true of the transsexual who comes late to his or her awareness or execution
of such awareness in making a transition. For many, however, these feelings
and manifestations of transsexuality occur early and apparently
spontaneously (Benjamin, 1966; Zucker & Bradley, 1995). Usually, for
these young appearing transsexuals, it is easy for them to just
"do" gender (behave in the role they prefer). For the late
transitioning individuals, however, it is often difficult to "just
be." If all that was involved is accepting and adapting the gender
attributes of the other sex it would be easy. The transsexual, however,
often has difficulty overcoming his/her own sex-limiting propensities and
physical conditions.
3 It is unfortunate,
but probably inevitable to a large degree, that students in one discipline
rarely read material they feel is far afield even when it would be most
relevant. Behaviorists, zoologists, physicians, many psychologists and
others were not aware of the Kessler and McKenna book until many years past
since its publication and the social scientists were not aware of, or
actively avoid, the research being reported in more biologically attuned
fields. The sociologist Lee Ellis (1996) has termed this "biophobia."
Sex-typical behaviors, however, had long been subject to analysis by
biologically focused researchers of different fields and Kessler and McKenna
rarely referred to their work. For instance a major challenge to a purely
socially constructed imposition of gender independent of biology, not
mentioned in the Kessler and McKenna book were in early works of my own on
how sex and gender (biologically, psychologically and sociology) interact
(Diamond, 1965; 1976).
4 Kessler and McKenna,
using the information available to them at the time, assumed that
transsexuals "were 'biologically normal' but underwent some type of
gender transformation." There is increasing evidence that they actually
are, however, biologically different (e.g., Zhou, Hofman, Gooren, &
Swaab, 1995).
5 The term transgender
is relatively new and amorphous. Presently it seems to include, but is not
limited to, male and female transsexuals, transvestites, cross-dressers,
she-males, drag artists, "butch dykes" and others that transgress
societal norms and expectations of sex and gender.
6 The word travesti is
grammatically masculine in Brazilian Portuguese.
7 Kessler and McKenna
use the term gender identity to represent the way individuals experience
themselves as male or female. I divide the concept into two components; one
for the inner experience of self the other for the outer social experience.
The transsexual works to bring his or her external gender identity in
concert with his/her internal sexual identity. Our use of the term gender
role is similar.
8 In the 30 years that
such sex-reversals have been practiced there has never been a single
confirmed report of a successful sex reassignment wherein an unambiguous
male has accepted imposed life as an androphilic female (Diamond, 1999).
9 It will be
interesting to see how future texts will report on the propensity of so many
people to readily believe the constructionalist interpretation of the
original John/Joan story when so much other evidence, e.g., Diamond, 1965,
1976, 1979; 1982 was against it. See Kitzinger, (in press).
Citation:
Feminism & Psychology, Volume 10 (1): 46-54, 2000 an article published
on the Internet by The Pacific Center for Sex and Society <http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/>
