{"id":382,"date":"2013-08-27T12:17:57","date_gmt":"2013-08-27T19:17:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nancymthurston.wordpress.com\/?p=382"},"modified":"2013-08-27T12:17:57","modified_gmt":"2013-08-27T19:17:57","slug":"transgender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/27\/transgender\/","title":{"rendered":"Transgender"},"content":{"rendered":"

For most of my life \u201ctransgender\u201d wasn\u2019t part of my vocabulary. I never knew there were any options other than male and female, congruency in body and spirit.<\/p>\n

This week Chelsea Manning brought transgender to the front-page news. It is clear from the reactions that many others also assumed that gender identity was cut and dry\u2014the genitalia you were born with determined whether you were male or female.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that simple. Being asleep to this reality, however, doesn\u2019t make the reality \u201cstrange\u201d or \u201cwrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Transgender is a relatively new term (though not a new experience). Trans Basics<\/a> gives three definitions: \u201csomeone who doesn’t fit within society’s standards of how a woman or a man is supposed to look or act,\u201d someone who was assigned a gender at birth \u201cbut later realizes that label doesn’t accurately reflect who they feel they are inside,\u201d or someone who feels like \u201cthey’re in between those two options; both male and female; or outside the two-gender system, entirely, neither male nor female, outside of the strict division of male and female.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even believing that all babies are physically born either male or female is untrue; it is estimated that 1 in 2000 babies have ambiguous genitalia. The societal stigma of parents not being able to answer the critical question, \u201cIs it a boy or a girl?\u201d is so powerful that typically the doctor will decide the baby\u2019s gender and perform \u201ccorrective\u201d surgery. As the child (most often \u201creassigned\u201d a female) grows up, she\/he may, or may not, agree with the doctor\u2019s choice.<\/p>\n

Dr. Milton Diamond, professor of neurology and intersex, said, “Nature loves variety. Unfortunately, society hates it.”<\/p>\n

Yet even if genitalia are not ambiguous, they don\u2019t always align with an individual\u2019s inner experience of being male, female or gender non-conforming. Those who experience a disconnect between their physical gender and their inner-knowing gender have a challenging choice before them.<\/p>\n

Live a lie about an important aspect of life.<\/p>\n

Or live what is true, and face opposition, stigma and daily challenges. Simple things become complicated.\u00a0 Public bathrooms. Forms with binary gender boxes. Personal pronouns. Name change. Greater possibility of ridicule and violence.<\/p>\n

Chelsea Manning. She.<\/p>\n

As a nation, we can react from our (often) non-existent personal experience and societal-affirmed assumptions about being trans and speak from ignorance, fear or prejudice. Or we can stop. Listen. Seek out information. Read about the experience of people who know what it is like to live outside our culture\u2019s rigid belief that people are born either male or female. Allow the boundaries of \u201cnormal\u201d to expand to include all of nature\u2019s variety.<\/p>\n

I believe that a society thrives when we can each bring forth the truth about ourselves. Chelsea Manning just spoke clearly, publicly. It won\u2019t make her life any easier (despite what too many newspapers speculate), yet it will make her future more honest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For most of my life \u201ctransgender\u201d wasn\u2019t part of my vocabulary. I never knew there were any options other than male and female, congruency in body and spirit. This week Chelsea Manning brought transgender to the front-page news. It is clear from the reactions that many others also assumed that gender identity was cut and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Transgender”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[51,62,118,251],"class_list":["post-382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gender","tag-bradley-manning","tag-chelsea-manning","tag-gender-identity","tag-transgender"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancymthurston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}