Brandon was a pre-op transgender man, assigned female at birth. Let's see if I can break it down:
SEX = biological. Brandon was born with a vagina, so the Brandon's biological sex was female. Most people are born with one vagina or one penis, but a fraction of people are born with both parts, or with ambiguous genitalia. And even 1 in 25,000,000 men are born with two penises.
GENDER = social. Western culture assigns two genders: man and woman. They have made the assumption that all men should be biologically male and all women should be biologically female. Not all societies have been like this. Some Native American tribes have the Two-Spirit people, which recognize two additional genders (one being assigned to masculine females and one being assigned to feminine males); others recognize 5 or 7 genders. In some part of Asia, there is the hijra that identify themselves as a third gender. Gender is a society's attempt to make sense of our biological genitalia, and it doesn't always work.
PRE-OP vs. POST-OP: Many transgender individuals decide to have sex reassignment surgery so that their genitalia can match the gender they identify with. I am not trans myself, so I do not want to assume reasons why some go through with the surgery whereas others decide it is unnecessary. But, for example, a tran man might decide that, even though he identifies as a man, he wants to hold off on hormones or a phalloplasty because he would like to bear his own biological child before he does. There are, naturally, many other reasons.
Again, I am not trans myself, so I don't know what it's like to feel like you were born into the wrong body. But I imagine it's sort of like how I grew up male, yet I was attracted to other males, even though I'd heard almost nothing about gay people in the Christian schools in which I grew up (and if I did hear anything, it was only in reference to how unnatural it was). So basically, a general sense of wrongness with the way things have been assumed to be. If you're lucky, you're taught about gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation from a young age, and you'll have the knowledge and the words to express what exactly is wrong and how you can change it. But, due to a general lack of education on the issue, many transgender people grow up feeling very confused or unable to explain themselves to others. And when they do find the words for themselves, they have to go through far, far more effort to explain it than, say, I would have to as a gay man. Everyone knows what gay is, and it's not too difficult to understand. But (as is evidenced by the posts on this board), clearly not nearly as many people know what being transgender entails.
It's not actually too hard to understand. And if you were exposed to it from a young age, it'd actually be super-easy to understand, just as reading and writing is easy to understand if you start young.
Proud member of SHREWS (Society for the Honor Required of Eyes Wide Shut)
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shallwj
12 years ago
"Gender" and long explanations asside: a human with ovaries is, from a medical/scientific standpoint, a female human--like others have simply stated before.
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