There is a typical case in the United States.
A 7-year-old child in the United States, whose name is both James and Luna, was diagnosed by a psychologist when he was two years old: Although the child was a boy, it was a trans.
Therefore, the child’s mother (a doctor) determined to cultivate and shape the child in the way of a girl, dressed the child in a skirt, painted nail polish, and named the child Luna.
This angered the father of the child, because the father still wanted to raise his son as a boy, and the couple chose to divorce.
Later, the two fought fiercely for the custody of the child, but the child was finally awarded to the mother, who also decided to use chemical castration to completely turn James into Luna.
The father of the child lost the lawsuit, which caused a lot of controversy, but also many netizens supported it. Apart from cultural disputes, what is the gender of human beings at the physiological level?
1、 Human gender has never been divided into two
In daily life, the way we judge men and women is our own eyes. However, with the continuous development of medical technology, human beings gradually understand that the issue of gender is actually far more complicated than what we see.
The Olympic Games are held every four years. Before participating in the games, the organizing committee will conduct a comprehensive physical examination of the athletes to prevent doping and other problems. In the past, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) judged the gender of athletes based on chromosome examination, but with the continuous discovery of the medical community, the IOC gave up the method of judging the gender only by chromosome in 1999.
So at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, Castel Semenya took part in the women’s 800 meter race with the male genotype but the female appearance. She is a typical bisexual.
Previously, in addition to the typical physical appearance, the medical community mainly used chromosomes to determine the gender of men and women, especially when the fetus was examined for gender, it also used chromosome testing methods.
Before the 1950s, there were only male and female genders in both physiological and cultural aspects. But since the 1950s, John Mooney, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University, has proposed a concept of “gender roles”.
In short, gender is not only a physiological feature, but also can be shaped by the external environment. In 1972, John Mooney also said that he had transformed a boy into a girl after being trained and transformed.
Of course, this is to measure gender from the perspective of psychological and social external shaping. In other words, from the moment when the physiological characteristics of men and women are different, society and their own psychological level have given them the concept of gender. For example, since childhood, adults will dress children differently according to their gender characteristics and teach them to distinguish between male and female partners. It is this little bit of shaping the day after tomorrow that strengthens people’s concept of gender at the psychological level.
However, no matter how the acquired guidance and reinforcement, the physiological gender characteristics cannot be changed, and in the medical and biological circles, human beings are constantly discovering new characteristics and factors that prove gender.
2、 The physiological basis of human sex
With the in-depth development of medical technology, human beings have found that chromosome and hormone levels also affect gender. There are 23 pairs of chromosomes in the egg and sperm, namely xy and XX. Under normal circumstances, after the egg and sperm combine, the chromosomes just return to 23 pairs of chromosomes equal to the somatic cells, just like pairing. This difference can be exactly divided into two.
However, in reality, because the spindle that controls the movement of chromosomes is out of order, the number of “paired” chromosomes will be wrong, which will eventually lead to chromosome abnormalities, and there will be errors in the expression of physiological sex.
For example, Klinefelter’s syndrome, the chromosome is expressed as XXY, looks like a man, but the reproductive system is incomplete, there are no testicles and sperm, but the breasts will develop, and there is no beard. The voice is like a girl, and the specific gender classification is a little more male.
If the expression of the chromosome is XXX, although the appearance characteristics are close to women, there is no menstruation and no fertility.
In addition, if other chromosomes are confused, gender characteristics may also be confused. For example, some people have beards and breasts together, which is the characteristic of typical bisexuals.
Studies over the past decades have shown that there is no clear demarcation point between gender in gene expression and chromosome “pairing”. Normal gender characteristics have clear demarcation points, but once the demarcation points are blurred or even mixed together, the physiological gender characteristics will also be confused. This kind of gender “confusion” caused by physiological factors should not be simply and rudely excluded by the “dual sex”.
3、 Up to 112 genders
It is precisely because of the existence of physiological basis that the expression of gender becomes more and more diversified at the social and cultural levels. For example, on the social networking site “facebook”, there were 71 gender options in the registration information in 2014, and by 2018, there were 112 gender options.
Strictly speaking, in addition to the physical and psychological aspects of absolute male and absolute female, the rest of the gender distinctions are actually in the fuzzy zone of gender.
Some people are men’s bodies, but their psychology is feminine; Some women’s bodies and psychology are masculine; Some are biologically bisexual; Some are psychologically androgynous; Some people’s gender identity is just opposite to their own physiological characteristics, and some people’s gender expression overlaps with that of men and women. Physiological gender characteristics are only the basis, while psychological influence and environmental shaping and influence are also crucial. Real gender judgment should start from many aspects.
In real life, there are too many such examples. Some families raise girls as boys, while others do the opposite. These acquired shapes affect people’s psychology. When the influence reaches a certain degree, their gender identity and gender expression will become vague. There are also boys who naturally think that they are women, and girls who naturally think that they are men. No matter how the outside world “corrects”, it can not change TA’s psychological identity.
Since the affirmative action movement in the 1960s, the discussion on gender has never been interrupted, because it involves not only physiological differences, but also many aspects of society and culture. Nowadays, diversified expression is forming a consensus in the whole society. In the future, research based on gender characteristics will certainly have a long way to go in medicine and biology.
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