Sonja Dalton, writing for Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, once stated “‘Real women’ have two X chromosomes, and they do not have a male sex organ.” This is in line with the current Christian fundamentalist belief that there are only males and females. The scripture most often cited to validate this position is Genesis 1:27: “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” It’s almost taken as an article of faith.
Isaiah 56:3-5 and Matthew 19:12 are Biblical scriptures that contradict the concept of a rigid sex and gender dichotomy. In that Matthew scripture, Jesus Christ is quoted as saying, “For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He, who is able to accept this, let him accept it.” Those who were born eunuchs from their mothers’ wombs include those who today we’d identify as intersex.
What is intersex? Intersex is a variation in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads or genitals that doesn’t seem to fit into distinct categories of male or female. Such variations include genital ambiguity, as well as combinations of chromosomal genotype and sexual phenotype other than XY-male and XX-female. Which variations count as intersex is often in dispute because intersex isn’t a discrete or natural category. Depending on which conditions are considered intersex or not, the number of intersex people could be one in 2,000 or one in 150.
In Western culture, people are deeply invested in a sex and gender binary. It’s been embedded in religion, our identity and identification documents and our physically constructed spaces.
So when children are born with ambiguous genitalia, as some inevitably are, it’s treated as a medical crisis. Quite a number of people of trans experience think of genital surgery, as well as other gender affirming surgeries, as next to always being a positive thing, but when informed consent isn’t considered in performing genital surgeries on infants, there are lifetime consequences that are often negative in their outcomes.
In science, there are the prefixes “trans” and “cis.” Trans means “crossing”; cis means “on this side of.” When one says transgender or transsexual, entomologically these mean “crossing gender” and “crossing sex,” while cisgender means that one’s gender is on the same side of one’s sex.
But, intersex people who don’t quite fit into what Western society identify as male and female genitals and genetics don’t exactly cross gender to identify as a gender different than the one assigned to them at birth.
Cary Gabriel Costello, Ph.D., has suggested a third term for intersex people: ipso gender. In chemistry, which gives us the language of cis and trans isomers, there are chemicals based upon a ring structure, called arene rings. When a chemical substitution is made in the same place on the ring, this is referred to as “ipso” substitution.
Costello states this in his blog piece Cis Gender, Trans Gender, and Intersex: “An ipso gender intersex person would identify with the binary sex they were medically assigned (the social sex substituted for their intersex birth status being the same as their identified sex). And a trans gender intersex person would be one who identifies with the binary sex other than the one they were assigned by doctors.
“This terminology solution is not without its drawbacks. Usually people who are genderqueer in identity are considered to fall under the trans umbrella, but in the case of intersex people, they’d fall under the cis heading, which could prove confusing. But it’s also possible that confusion would itself prove productive.
“It’s certainly worth considering.”
To quote geneticist Eric Vilain, “Sex should be easily definable, but it’s not. Our gender identity – our profound sense of being male or female – is independent from our anatomy.” For all of us who don’t fit into Western society’s rigid sex and gender dichotomy, forcing us into those rigid categories would be flawed, and no doubt contrary to what we know about biology.
Well, first off, Sonja Dalton is half-right. Real women don’t have, or least don’t want to have, male sex organs. But she overlooks the existence of those with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. Sometimes referred to as XY females, they are born female, though usually sterile, require hormones to have puberty, and tend to be extremely feminine. As such they serve as strong evidence for the veracity of the transsexual experience, and equally strong as a refutation of the transgender paradigm.
And yes, God did make people male and female, but what many overlook is that this passage refers to something that was done before the Fall, which corrupted nature. However, it still would not apply to those who choose to rebel against their natural gender (i.e. those who are not transsexual).
That said, I have to point out that Sandeen’s hermeneutics are quite horrid. Neither Isaiah, or Matthew, have anything to do with binary gender or sex. Specifically, in the passage from Matthew, Jesus was speaking of those who are unable to enter into marriage because could not have sex as they had been castrated (which was done so they could guard and serve females), those who are unable to enter into marriage because they were born incapable of having sex, and those who, as a form of spiritual discipline, choose to forego marriage and no engage in sexual intercourse. To attempt to apply this passage to transgender-identified people is totally bogus.
And overwhelmingly, intersex persons have made it clear that they do not appreciate the attempts by transgender extremists to co-opt their condition.
And to think Sandeen spouts all this Christianity and has a tattoo of a Norse god on Sandeen’s back.
Anne
Yes, Sandeen does tend to “weaponize” Christianity. Which is really kind of sad…
This isn’t worth commenting on when the truth about the author is suppressed.
I would never say anything about the author that I cannot defend in court.
Anne