BOY OR GIRL? It鈥檚 the first question we ask about a new baby. The world may
be changing fast but we seem as wedded to the labels 鈥渕ale鈥� and 鈥渇emale鈥� as
ever. While sexuality has become a fluid, multifaceted thing, the rigid gender
divide persists. Gay, straight or bisexual, we are all in the end either men or
women.
But for how much longer? A few decades ago homosexual men were still being
encouraged to seek 鈥渢reatment鈥�. Then came the gay rights movement and with it a
wholesale storming of our beliefs about sexuality. Now another band of
revolutionaries are at the gates. This time they want to liberate us from
thinking that being a man or a woman is the only gender option on the table.
There might not be the banners and marches of the last revolution but the
pressure for change is still there. It鈥檚 coming from those born with bodies and
genetic make-ups that are neither wholly male nor female. For decades, doctors
have used surgery to hide the problem. Now people are fighting for the right to
have their bodies left as they are and to be labelled intersexual.
For them, science and medicine are a double-edged sword. On the one hand,
research findings can be a powerful tool for demonstrating how our gender is far
from set in stone; how our bodies and minds are pushed and pulled around by our
genes, hormones and upbringing. On the other hand, scientists still tend to
treat as abnormal anything that doesn鈥檛 fit the male-female model. And that
sparks unease.
Advertisement
We explore these themes, starting with the question: what
exactly do we mean by gender? What鈥檚 clear is that the body you are born with is
just a start. It doesn鈥檛 make you male or female and it doesn鈥檛 constrain your
gender. Sexual development is multilevel and multidimensional. Just as the
womanising red-blooded male and domestic husband-hunting female stereotypes are
over-simplistic, so too are our entire notions of what makes a man or a woman.
Nature is more imaginative than that.