I remember watching a video on Facebook about “a man who gets his period”. The association of menstruation with women is so intense that the concept of menstruating men is very surprising to some people. Such people were in the comment section of the aforementioned video. But for me, the most appalling aspect of the video was that it declared the menstruating man transgender, even though it was likely that the person was intersex because he had ovaries according to an ultrasound shown in the video. The reason why I am referring to this anecdote is to underscore the lack of education about gender and sex in general. People do not know the difference between a transgender person (an individual who does not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth), and an intersex person (an individual whose reproductive and/or sexual anatomy does not align with “male” or “female” anatomy). Despite the fact that I was appalled, reflecting back on my own prior convoluted knowledge and understanding of gender and sex made me realize how much misinformation there is regarding sex, gender, and their distinction in South Asia, much like the rest of the world. I also grew up confused and uninformed about these topics.
Before I decided that it is unnecessary to label people’s genders and sexuality, my internalized cis-heteronormativity would make me want to put every individual around me into boxes. Dembroff talks about how critics like to accuse people like them of being obsessed with gender, but I think it is cisnormative people who are obsessed with putting people in boxes. I am so grateful I unlearned this and that is why Dembroff’s idea of how the biological world is far messier than XX and XY chromosomes is so important to me (Dembroff, 2018).
Up until a few years ago, I used to refute the “there are only two genders” argument by suggesting that there are various genders, but two distinct, opposite sexes, which is a phenomenon termed the sex binary.
I was so wrong. In fact, as early as the 20th century, scholars started to challenge and contest the idea of the sex binary. They argued that all males had female aspects and vice versa (Alok, 2021). Where I come from, educating yourself about sex and gender is discouraged, and you are encouraged to think of the two as synonymous and fixed. This is possibly done to prevent South Asian children from exploring their sexualities and gender identities to prevent “sexual deviance” according to our traditions. There is a commonly held belief that sexuality is a choice, and it is believed that if children are talked to openly about sexuality, they will “turn” queer. This is factually incorrect, ignorant, and harmful.
Reading the Dembroff text helped me realize how cis-heteronormativity not only impacts trans people but also intersex people. One particular resource I have found helpful in comprehending the spectrum of sex is the Instagram account of author and performer, ALOK.
One really shocking piece of information I learned from their page is the racist history of the sex binary and how the binary is a colonial invention. According to Alok’s research, in the pre-Enlightenment era, males and females were seen as different forms of the same sex. To be a male or female was cultural, not biological (Alok, 2021).
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However, after the enlightenment, male scientists started to try and distinguish between what they regarded as the two binary sexes. Consequently, organs that used to have the same name such as ovaries and testicles were linguistically distinguished. Scientists regarded the white people as superior because they had a clear distinction between “males” and females while this didn’t necessarily apply to racial minorities. In 1886, a German sexologist wrote that the higher the development of a race, the stronger the contrast between man and woman. This was echoed by others. This is also because the white people were considered the most “civilized”, which in this case was almost synonymous with “conforming to gender roles” (Alok, 2021).
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What is so vile about the sex binary is that it allowed men to justify limited women’s rights in the name of nature. This is because they would argue that women are biologically weaker, or more emotional, and less rational. This is why they would be given limited tasks and be expected to conform to strict gender roles. Their intellect was also questioned because they were labeled as “too emotional”. According to Alok, it was a method of naturalizing inequality, which I think is so important to note because of the extent to which the inequality between the sexes is socially constructed rather than innate.