Female And Male And Female

Generations ago, the United States was a country of the male wardrobe. Today's movements for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community are leveraging the existence of more globalized and open systems. Besides, the promotion of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population have been acknowledged through smart partnerships within conventional, political and economic scene, while the males and heterosexuals are still pervasive.

Between the Sexes is a compelling narrative. Through several anecdotes, it illustrates the devastating psychological implications of early surgical intervention on intersexuals. According to the article, the surgery robs individuals of their sexual gratification, their gender identity, and their innocence. It's argument is noble, yet flawed. Authors Christine Gorman and Wendy Cole spin several sad yarns of intersexed people who are upset with handling of their gender assignment. They tell horror stories of people kept in the dark about their intersex, about a child forced to stop acting like a boy and become a girl, a teen who was raised to be a girl, but developed into a male. Gorman and Cole stumble into the fallacy of hasty

For example, announcing gender at birth is a practice that still remains. Currently across Canada and Europe, the process of filling the gaps on legal gender recognition is still ongoing (Egale Canada Human Rights Trust, 2013; Korkiamäki, 2014). These gaps affects quality of life as intersex and other members of the LBGTTTIQQ spectrum continue to face the difficulties of a continuous encounter of “coming out”. Constantly having to be confronted with male and female segregated facilities and legal documents that still subscribe to the binary classification on gender. Some provinces in Canada have already included gender identity in their respective human rights code including Ontario. Meaning, discrimination against gender identity can be claimed along with other grounds on race, age and sexual orientation. Currently, the requirement to categorize into the binary poses legal consequences (e.g. ability to marry, official documents) and psychosocial being (Greenberg, 2003).

Transgender and transsexual rights campaigns champion the rights of individuals to identify as a gender opposite to, or (sometimes, but not always) more broadly “other than,” that which they were assigned at birth. Some movements for intersex and trans rights even reject assignment at birth altogether as inadequate for classifying their sex or their future gender identity. Both camps raise questions challenging the interconnectedness of gender and biological sex, but some of the ways in which trans and intersex individuals pursue civil rights are markedly different. Leslie Feinberg, author of Trans Liberation, defends the right to express and identify as whatever gender one wishes, regardless of sex assigned at birth, without fear of persecution. Intersex people also argue for acceptance of a “body-gender disconnect” (relative to hegemonic ideals) but with the important detail that their bodies never could have fit on a binary to begin with. But, as discussed in Giving Sex by Davis et al., when trans people seek the right to immediate and unencumbered medical intervention with their sex, in order for ethics and insurance to allow for it, they and their physicians must make the argument that such a body-gender disconnect is a medical emergency, while intersex people instead seek the right to not have their sex surgically altered and for medical professionals to not view their intersexuality as a medical – or social – emergency.

There are many things in this day and age that could be defined as cultural landmarks - pivotal views and information around which our society revolves. While each of these can provide interesting and enlightening insights into our culture and social behavior, this article will be focusing on one I personally find exceedingly upsetting: gender identity. Since birth, we have been taught a certain kind of segregation - man and woman, mother and father, boys and girls - taught it as if it were fact, as if it were as concrete as a law of physics; more so, even. We are taught that gender and sex are synonyms, interchangeable, taught even less of gender divergence than we are of sexual orientation. However, recently in the media more and more prominent figures have come out as genderqueer, pushing the topic into general debate and the eyes of the public.

Intersexuality is not rare. In its traditional definition (impossibility of distinguishing whether the individual is male or female), the incidence is estimated at 1/4,500 births. If all minor variants of the shape of genitalia are included in the definition of intersex, the incidence rises close to 1%. These numbers show that, although not spoken about as openly as other conditions,

For years the “LGBTQ community” has, continuously working hard to establish their presence in society. Lately, states supporting marriage equality increased and rights such as filing taxes jointly, military benefits, and more were also put in place. Today the “LGBTQ community” only continues to grow and make progress. However, not all the people in this community are making the same progress as others. Those who classify as bisexual have sense of feelings oppressed, disliked, “stigmatized”, and isolation even from within the community. Beemyn (1996) mentioned that it is “a common experience for bisexual women to hide their sexuality from lesbian feminists

Problems arise as intersex individuals mature as they come to realize their unconventional bodies, at the same time, trying to establish their own person and identities. Medical management of intersex individuals are at the forefront of both problems and solutions as conditions can sometimes be kept in secrecy (Diamond and Beh, 2008). It is then the aim of this paper to define intersex and those impacted by these conditions. Intersex individuals are marginalized people who struggle for acceptance, want to establish their gender identity and strive for social equality.

Another issue with research pertaining to sexual identity is the assumption of there being binary categories, such as gay/straight, male/female, etc. Research in this area is generally dichotomized (e.g. male/female, gay/straight), which can foster rigid identity assumptions, foster homogeneous understanding of research particiapnts and results, foster a divide between ‘normal’ and ‘deviant’ behavior, as well as mask inherent variation in different groups and populations (Johnson & Repta, 2012). Bringing greater awareness to the complexity of sexual and gender identity could have transformative effects on how research is conducted. Some scholars in the social work field have begun to acknowledge and recognize the increasing evidence that sexual and gender identity are not binary categories, as well that categories might not even be an accurate way of understanding these phenomena (Burdge, 2007; Roche & Gringeri, 2010). While an understanding that the binary model is flawed has gained some traction in social work research, the majority of researchers continue to ignore and disregard this possibility, consequently reinforcing this erroneous dichotomous paradigm (Rassi, 2011). It has also been noted that critiques from postmodern, poststructural, and queer theory perspectives, as well as from individuals or groups (e.g. transgender, bisexual, intersex) who do not “fit neatly” into binary categories continue to remain essentially absent within social work

‘Queer’ is a new term to describe those who do not feel that their identities fit into the gender categories of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered. However, they can experiment with intermittent gender (from female to male, male to female) through their dress and actions. The queer space is perceived as a ‘third place’ that occurs on the margins of society.

This entry is in response to Anne Fausto-Sterling's article "The Five Sexes". The article was hugely informative. While I am certainly fermilulir t with he existence of intersex people, this was the first in-depth piece of literature that deals with the subject that I have been exposed to. Understood Sterling argument to that society would benefit from adopting more gender classifications as this would lead to more inclusiveness and less Taptic oppression for intersex people who do not fit neatly into the traditional role of male or female.

Though all of the identities that have been discussed in this seminar are of importance, the three identities I find important to discuss are transsexual, intersex and sex. Our first few readings covered these specific identities right away. Within The Gender Book, Transsexual was described as an individual whose gender identity exists primarily in contradiction to the sex that is assigned at birth (p. 36). Though according to the American Psychological Association (2014), Transgender is described as an umbrella term, which covers a person’s gender expression, identity and behavior that may not necessarily match with the sex that individual was assigned at birth. Though both are informative readings, I believe these authors were set out to

A common assumption in society is that gender is the same as sex, and that gender is limited to two concrete forms. At birth, children are already pressured into one gender by societal expectations placed on their parents and doctors. This happens even though gender and sex play such large roles in people’s lives, such as finding jobs or behavioral expectations. Recognition of non-binary gender would accommodate both those who feel that their sex does not match their gender, as well as the intersex population. Gender and sex are difficult topics in society right now due to the recent coming out of non-binary individuals who use pronouns outside of our standard

Gender Identity became a core aspect of feminism and LGBT politics in recent time and with it freedom for people to express themselves in the way they want. I want to argue that this freedom is a double-edged sword and its negatives could have the potential to outweigh its positives.

Men and women can be differentiated based upon their sexual reproductive organs. A phenomenon called intersex is when someone’s biological sex is unclear. The people that fall into the intersex category are not a consistent male or female (Hyde 99). In class we discussed the