97 gender options
In November 2021, the city of San Francisco launched a pilot subsidy program for transgender groups. This pilot program is called the “Transgender Income Guarantee Program” (GIFT). There are 55 eligible transgender applicants, but there are 97 options in the “gender” column in the application form of the pilot program. In addition to “male” and “female”, there are 95 types of transgender. Even personal pronouns, there are as many as 17 kinds. To choose your gender or not to choose it is really a question!
97 options, where did they come from?
Where did the 95 gender options other than men and women come from? Human reproduction is sexual reproduction, through the union of dioecious males and females to give birth to a new generation. Biologists believe that the advantage of sexual reproduction lies in the greater possibility of creating new genetic combinations that better adapt to changing environmental conditions. In daily life, people usually divide sex into male and female according to the characteristics of sexual organs. With the advancement of science and technology, human beings began to determine gender through more precise methods such as chromosomes, genes, and gonads. Human cells have 23 pairs of chromosomes, of which a pair of “X and Y” are sex chromosomes. Normal males have XY chromosomes, females have XX chromosomes, and the sex of offspring is determined by the genetic chromosomes of males. In rare chromosome conditions such as XX, XXY, XYY, etc. in cells, there may also be structural abnormalities of sex chromosomes and gene mutations. XXY is what is commonly referred to as hermaphrodite or “intersex”. In view of the new discoveries in medicine, the International Olympic Committee in 1999 no longer only use chromosomes to determine sex.
Gender is not only the division of biological sex (sex), but also the combination of psychological gender and social gender (gender). New Zealand psychologist John Money believes that the concept of gender goes far beyond biological differences, and that social and environmental influences have a crucial impact on the shaping of gender. American anthropologist Gail Lubin put forward the concept of social gender, emphasizing the identification of gender in one’s own environment. For example, women’s identities are expressed through long hair, makeup, and skirts. Kate Millett, author of “Sexual Politics”, believes that “in important aspects such as role and temperament and social status, the differences between the sexes are actually cultural differences rather than biological differences.
” How many genders can be composed of gender and social gender? According to their differences in biological characteristics, psychological identity, social roles, and medical interventions, these genders can be divided into ten categories, including cisgender, intergender, transgender, transgender, and transgender.
Cisgender refers to the gender that you identify as the same as your biological sex at birth, and most people fall into this category. Intersex includes hermaphrodites, intersex people, two-spirited people, and intersex people. Transgender is the opposite of cisgender, and self-identification is different from the biological sex at birth. Gender fluidity refers to a fluid change in cognition of gender experienced at different times. Transgender refers to self-identity that is different from the sex at birth, including changing one’s physical characteristics through medical means, such as Thai ladyboys.
Choose what you choose to open your mind
Can grown-up children still choose their gender? Is it the father who has the final say, or the mother who has the final say? The life of James, an American teenager, is full of bizarre twists and turns. For his gender, his parents are willing to go to court. In 2012, test-tube baby James and twin brothers were born in Texas, and a psychological consultation two years later completely changed his life. At the time, mother Anne told a gender therapist that James showed signs of being transgender. This doctor suggested giving the baby a new name and trying to dress in women’s clothing. As a result, James had a feminine name-Luna, which opened the girl’s life. But father Jeff firmly opposed this kind of manipulation by mother, and their long-term quarrel eventually broke up the marriage. For “the sex of his son”, Jeff also angrily sued his ex-wife to court. After a lengthy 15-month trial, the court ruled that any matter involving the sex selection of a child must be discussed and decided by both husband and wife.
Transgender identity politics has permeated the upper echelons of the U.S. military. The 2021 U.S. Army Public Health Service Corps has a new leader who is transgender. She is Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levin, who was nominated by US President Biden eight months ago. Levin thus became the first transgender four-star general of the U.S. military and the highest-ranking transgender official in the United States. Rachel Levine, formerly known as Richard Levine, underwent sex reassignment surgery in 2011 after years of “psychological struggle” and divorced his wife two years later. Levin is not alone in the Biden administration. In 2022, Sam Brinton was nominated by Biden to serve as the assistant deputy secretary of the Department of Energy in charge of nuclear waste work, becoming one of the first batch of high-ranking officials of the federal government to “transgender”. Surprisingly, Sam has been declared “no longer an official of the Biden administration” by the spokesperson of the US Department of Energy because he was suspected of stealing luggage at the airport twice recently.
The trans onslaught in sports fashion came earlier. In 2009, in the women’s 800-meter race at the Berlin World Championships, South African athlete Castel Semenya won the championship with a time of 1:66.45. Compared with her excellent grades, the audience is more interested in her appearance and physique: her face is powerful and her bones and muscles are particularly strong. After an investigation by the IAAF, it was found that Semenya was not an ordinary woman, but a rare “intersex person”. The first transgender athlete in the Olympics appeared at the Tokyo Olympics last year. It was male-to-female New Zealand athlete Laurel Hubbard. She participated in the women’s 87kg weightlifting competition. As early as the 2017 World Championships, she won the silver medal in the women’s 90 kg class.
Do not choose and do not choose to follow the rules
Gender is not just a “rolling the dice” of congenital genes, it is increasingly becoming a subjective choice of the day after tomorrow. Levin and Hubbard underwent surgery to change their sexes. Sam only considered himself a transgender person psychologically, while Semenya suffered from an uncommon genetic disease. intersex people”. Even so, Semenya still sees herself as a woman psychologically, behaviorally and socially. What makes people helpless is James/Luna, because his gender has caused his parents to turn against each other, court debates, Internet heated discussions and even political intervention, but they all ignore or even “deprive” him of his right to choose. Moreover, it is questionable whether children as young as ten years old have the maturity or legitimate right to determine their gender, given the alarming increase in the number of teens among “de-genderers” who regret changing their gender.
It cannot be denied that adhering to the traditional gender of male and female is also a right of choice. Breaking through the traditional binary gender concept and expanding the free space for sexual minorities is naturally a kind of social progress. But is sticking to tradition necessarily wrong? The British historian Hobsbawm believes that the goal and characteristic of tradition is invariance, which reflects continuity with the past. It can be seen from this that as long as there is an unchanging and continuous content between the present and the past of human society, it is of great significance to inherit and carry forward the tradition.
Adhering to the gender tradition of binary gender, denying or rejecting transgender has its own practical significance. Why do only two sexes usually happen to exist in the world? “Father of sociobiology”, American biologist Edward Wilson’s answer: two sexes are sufficient to generate the greatest potential genetic recombination. In other words, virtually every healthy individual is guaranteed to mate with an individual of the opposite sex.
The great controversy and even polarized evaluation of transgender reflects the tension, conflict and peace between tradition and modernity. There are some traditions in the Western world that are difficult to shake, such as the old custom of women changing their husband’s surname after marriage, but the transgender trend is increasingly challenging its gender traditions. French feminist Simone Beauvoir said: “Women are not born, but formed.” She believes that women should try their best to get rid of the range that has been set for them so far, and does not pay special attention to intersex people, because “this is very unique case”. The rise of feminist thoughts has given birth to more destructive and subversive avant-garde thoughts, constantly eroding and eroding the solid line of defense of gender tradition. The more radical queer theory advocates a new fashion that breaks down the boundaries of the sexes, and has formed a big impact on the traditional dichotomy of men and women.
For a long time, those who adhere to the traditional distinction between men and women have fiercely opposed the transgender trend. Just as Judith Lober, a professor at the City University of New York, criticized, “For most people, gender is the absolute basis of our daily life.” Questioning this is “like thinking about whether the sun will rise again.” as superfluous”. Netizens viciously attacked Luna’s mum after conservatives argued that supporting the gender identity of transgender children amounted to “child abuse.” Regarding the appointment of Levin’s four-star general, someone left a message on the Internet: “The ‘Biden gang’ is playing identity politics in public health services.” The IAAF also has special regulations on Semenya’s participation, and she can only participate 200m sprint event. There are also American right-wingers who bluntly said: “Gender ideology is swallowing our culture.”
Is sex just sex?
Times have changed, and people’s understanding, tolerance and acceptance of sexual minorities are constantly “breaking the ice”. In the 1980s, the term “Mx” (corresponding to personal pronouns such as Mr, Mrs, and Miss in English) began to appear in English to refer to transgender groups. The laws of Australia, India and other countries also recognize the third gender. In May 1990, the World Health Organization removed “homosexuality” from its list of mental illnesses. In 2005, Canadian professor Louis Ting initiated the initiative to establish the “International Day Against Homophobia” to fight for the legal rights of the sexual minority community. In March 2012, the UN Human Rights Council held a historic panel discussion on sexual orientation and gender identity for the first time. In 2016, the world’s most authoritative English dictionary “Oxford English Dictionary” officially included the entry “Mx”, and then the largest “Webster’s Dictionary” in the United States also added this pronoun. In 2021, the British “Cambridge Dictionary” added a new definition of the term “woman”: “an adult who lives as a woman and self-identifies as a woman”.
There is a voice on the Internet that says gender is just gender, and hopes that more people will not be overwhelmed by traditional gender concepts and realize gender equality as soon as possible. This voice hopes to eliminate gender gaps and gaps, and its original intention of pursuing equality is worthy of praise. Gender is undoubtedly above all gender itself. Marx pointed out that “the relationship between men and women is the most natural relationship between people.” Beauvoir also emphasized that “the distinction between genders is actually a biological given.” Throughout history, the pursuit of social equality, including gender equality, has been one of the most beautiful ideals of mankind. But the gap between ideal and reality is not always narrowing. What replaces gender inequality may not be gender equality, but a new gender inequality.
Sex is not just sex. The “GIFT” pilot program was announced by San Francisco Mayor Breed. She also hoisted a rainbow flag marking the LGBT movement at City Hall the next day. Mayor Breed’s support for the plan, and President Biden’s nomination of Admiral Levin and Assistant Deputy Secretary Sam are hard to convince: gender is just gender, and has nothing to do with politics or society. Theoretical studies in multiple disciplines have shown that, as one of the most basic signs of human beings, gender obviously has more connotations than itself. The French thinker Michel Foucault hypothesized that “sexual experience” is a complex political technique and a series of effects unfolding in the body, behavior, and social relations.
How to fundamentally eliminate gender inequality and achieve real gender equality? If the rise of gender diversity is a manifestation of human rights progress, then gender is undoubtedly one of the intrinsic factors in human politics. Kate Millett asserts that sexual dominance is perhaps the “most fundamental concept of power” in our culture. Engels pointed out that Fourier was the first to express the idea that “in any society, the degree of women’s emancipation is the natural measure of general emancipation.
” In the West, gender diversity is undoubtedly a kind of “political correctness”, but “political correctness” can go too far. Will the trend of gender diversity become the “cannon fodder” of “political correctness” and be backlashed by this double-edged sword? Will gender diversity’s advocacy of equal rights be “manipulated” by capital forces and traditional power, and thus become a tool and victim for them to exploit and abuse power for profit? A great man once said, “It takes only one small step, even if it seems to be a small step in the same direction, and the truth will become false.” When gender diversity forces “charge” on traditional turf On the road of life, it is important to walk and cherish, and it may be more important to walk and think.
