Friday Philosophy: Changes

So I was trying to spend the first part of the week continuing with a a fictional story I have been working on.  Wall.  There was this realization that to really do the story justice, I needed to write a whole historical background for a people who had none.

Big wall.  Immense wall.

Then I had a rather severe allergy attack.  Putting the two of those together left me in a panic because Friday was fast approaching and I had nothing for the column.

But I was saved, sort of.  Chaz Bono came out.  That may seem a bit weird, being as how not long ago Bono was Director of Entertainment Media for GLAAD.  But there are different kinds of coming out:    

“Chaz, after many years of consideration, has made the courageous decision to honor his true identity,” confirmed Bono’s publicist, Howard Bragman.

“He is proud of his decision and grateful for the support and respect that has already been shown by his loved ones. It is Chaz’s hope that his choice to transition will open the hearts and minds of the public regarding this issue, just as his ‘coming out’ did nearly 20 years ago.

“We ask that the media respect Chaz’s privacy during this long process as he will not be doing any interviews at this time.”

This has already raised a lot of questions in various venues.  The purpose of this piece will be to attempt to answer some of them.

Once upon a time I wrote a series of Gender Workshops for those who wanted to learn more about us.  Actually I wrote them for everyone, but I can’t force people to read them.

GW #2 was subtitled Ain’t I a Human? and concerns, to some extent, how we got here.  “We” in this usage means you as well as transfolk.

Times do change and the views of social scientist researchers do as well, but there was a time when what was believed was the following:

Kohlberg argued that the major developmental task facing children is coming to understand that gender is constant and cannot be changed regardless of surface features.  Based on extensive interviews with young children, he posited that children develop through three stages in coming to understand gender.  At the very beginning, children do not use gender to categorize themselves or others at all…essentially, they do not have any understanding that gender is an unchanging characteristic of an individual.

At about 2 years of age, children enter stage 1, called gender identity.  Children are now able to label themselves and others consistently as female or male, but they base this categorization on physical [???-Ed] characteristics [length of hair, attire, etc-Ed].  If these superficial physical characteristics change, then gender changes as well.  At about 3 to 4 years, children move into stage 2, called gender stability.  They now understand that if one is a female or male at the present time, then one was a female or male earlier in life and will remain a female or male later in life.  Little girls will grow up to be mommys and not daddys and little boys will grow up to be daddys and not mommys.  Thus stage 2 children understand that gender is stable across time.  However, they do not yet understand that gender is stable across situations.  If a male engages in female-typed activities, such as doll play, stage 2 children believe the male might change into a female.  It is only at about age 5 when children progress to stage 3, called gender constancy, that they understand that gender is constant across time and situations.  Now children claim that gender will not change regardless of the clothes worn or the activities engaged in. They have come to understand that gender is an underlying, unchanging aspect of an identity.

Research has confirmed that children do indeed progress through Kohlberg’s three stages of understanding the concept of gender…

—Gender Development, by Susan Golombok and Robyn Fyvush (1994)

An important word was omitted in that last sentence.  It should have read,

Research has confirmed that MOST children do indeed progress through Kohlberg’s three stages of understanding the concept of gender…

“Most” is not “all.”

As I wrote back in the mid-90s when I first assembled this piece, prior to presenting it to a college psychology class at the University of Central Arkansas:

A funny thing happened as I was growing up. I didn’t achieve gender constancy.  I don’t believe in gender stability.  And I have a different definition of gender identity.

I exist. I have grown up.  There are ten’s of thousands of people like me.  Am I a failure at life if I don’t believe that gender is constant over time and situation?  Have I failed to grow up?  To hear that I have failed at what is “the major developmental task facing children” is quite disheartening.  Maybe I need to go back and give it another try.

Or could it be that someone has something wrong here.  Kohlberg and his fellow researchers mostly believed that “gender = sex.”  In other words, they had learned that “gender is constant” and hence were utterly incapable of seeing that not ever child accepted that.

What transkids did learn is that it is wise not to tell anyone.  Speaking up was likely to end in punishment from a multitude of sources.  As adults, it still does.  Way too often, people who believe that gender is constant and determined chromosomally see no recourse than to verbally punish those of us who challenge that belief.  And sometimes it goes beyond that to the physical…and includes the belief that whatever physical punishment we receive was something we deserved…something that we brought upon ourselves.

All because we believe that gender identification made at birth by medical personnel should not determine who we are as adults.

I can’t answer all the questions people have before they are asked.  Try as I might, I cannot anticipate what it is that really may be bothering you.  So I’ll just hang out in the comments and try to provide whatever knowledge or perspective or belief that I may have.

I’ll finish with the conclusion of Ain’t I a Human?, followed by a new poem:

My understanding of gender has changed over time.  The more I have studied it, trying to pin down a precise definition, the more amorphous it has become.  Gender is…fuzzy…or maybe it’s fluid…or maybe it’s not really there at all.

I’m not naive.  Gender is.  Gender is limiting.  Gender is a force of social control.  Gender can be a prison.  I don’t like to divide people into groups at all, but where most people divide humans into males and females, I more often find myself dividing humans into those who enslave themselves to strict rules of gender and the trans/bi/third/un/differently-gendered, wondering just who is sane here.  Gender is a slice through the mass of humanity.  I live on the edge of the blade.

Well, those are the kind of things I think about.  When people ask me what gender I am, I answer, “I am Robyn.”  I am other.  I am gender-deficient.  I am gender-variant.  I am a gender nomad.  I am gender-resistant.  I am whatever anyone wants to call me.  But ain’t I a human?

Frontiers Changelings We twist and turn in the winds of a reality not of our choosing lepidopterans mounted on twin boards of sex rather than free to explore the multiplicity of gender In denying our freedom you put limits on your own –Robyn Elaine Serven –June 12, 2009