The links between body, gender, and sexuality are all assumptions. The normalization that society imposes has no greater scientific merit than any person’s random opinion. The current theories in psychology are at great odds with those in other disciplines. They also require a large amount of synthesis, and many assumptions. To the psychologist, gender identity is something constructed from an early age. In neurology, does it even make sense to talk of “gender identity”?

The main point being that we may be trying to make all of this too complex. I don’t think creating a model with three axes (one for sex, one for gender, one for sexuality) is particularly enlightening or useful. I think it obscures the root causes of all three and misdirects our attention from something more fundamental.

What about looking at the situation with only regard to the body? It is much easier to begin with one part and add more to the model as you go along. What brings me to this thought is the writing of various intersex activists. Most people seem to think intersex is a particular group that belongs in the same category for some reason. But in reality, intersex is just another variation on the human theme, the same as male and female.

In this sense, if you take all humans on a chart using some standards such as genes and their expression and other characteristics, two peaks will occur which could be labelled “male” and “female”. This is only with respect to the body, leaving out the mental aspects.

Intersex then, would fall further away than, say, one standard of deviation from the peaks. This says nothing about the level of comfort or discomfort a person outside the 1st standard of deviation would have with their body or gender role. It only describes the physical traits of an organism.

If you read the accounts of many people who fall in this range, their primary concern is not finding a gender. Also, in many cases they do not experience body “dysphoria” unless they have been surgically altered without their consent as children. A person who is born in this range may be perfectly fine with their body, and perfectly happy with the lack of male or female assignment- except that society demands otherwise.

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Alice

Here a reaction of henk from Budapest. I m back in groningen wednesday late evening. so we have to contact eachother for an appointment with my partner Deborah in budapest. So thursday I m the whole day at the office. see you and greetings. Greetings also from Deborah.