What do we mean by "sexual identity"?

Besides the basic split into male and female, which is called sexual differentiation, society comes into the picture. Society decides which modes of dress, kinds of behavior, etc., are appropriate to each sex. If male humans are statistically the more aggressive and females the less aggressive, society declares that the ideal man is very -- well, people might not want to say "aggressive" but they will pick words with good connotations, like "stalwart, brave, valiant," etc. Likewise, society will declare that the ideal woman is "demure, nurturing, ...", etc. Society thus makes it seem questionable when a man is nurturing or a woman is bold. Girls who are braver and bolder than those in the majority who are nearer to the polar ideal of the demure female get called "tomboys" for their positive qualities of courage. Boys who are, similarly, more nurturing will likely get called "sissies."

The term "gender" has come to be applied to the differences in behavior that are socially coded as "male-appropriate" or "female-appropriate." During the Vietnam War era young U.S. men were reviled for wearing long hair. But in 16th Century Ireland, Laoiseach Mac an Bhaird blamed behavior which, to him, was not male-appropriate. He attacked the men "who follow English ways, who cut short your curling hair... give up your long hair (the best adornment in all the land of Ireland) for an affected English fashion..." Scots wear kilts and do not do hand-stands on the stage at graduation. Malaysian men wear similar attire. Whether a skirt is "male" or "female" or gender indifferent is a matter of social custom and convention.

Hips thrust forward is "female" in America and "male" in Japan. The "hips thrust forward" stance is also seen in the sexually potent bad guy in movies about the old west.

How one stands, walks, talks... The list of gender-coded behavior goes on and on, stopping only at the limits of human patience and ingenuity. These coded behaviors often give signals about how each person in a social interaction is to be treated. Cross-culturally, a mix-up of such signals obviously can make trouble.

Now that we have established the meaning of the two important terms, "sex" and "gender," let's go back for a closer look at some of the factors which produce complications in the real world.

Mother nature is incredibly inventive, and is always tossing out wild cards that a "reasonable person" might never permit. Some things work well enough to survive and continue to exist, and some things do not. If you do not like that untidy aspect of life, your only recourse is to try for another universe somehow.

The first complication to the simple male-female picture is that while the vast majority of humans have either two X chromosomes (making them genetically female) or an X and a Y chromosome (making them genetically male), nature also permits individuals to be: XXX (fertile female), X (infertile female)
XYY (fertile male) , XXY (infertile male)

"Genotype" means what one could be on the basis of one's genetic inheritance. "Phenotype" means what one becomes as one's genetic inheritance works its way out in conjunction with the environment. One may be potentially tall and powerful on the basis of one's genes, but may not be so large as an actual adult due to malnutrition or disease earlier in life. Similarly, because of conditions in the mother's womb during gestation, one may be genetically male but look and/or act much like a female, or one may be genetically female but look and/or act much like a male. Prenatal influences may cause differences in the genitalia and secondary sexual characteristics, and/or differences in brain structure and related behavior.

People have known about some of these hitches in the developmental process for a long time. A freemartin ("unconventional heifer") is a female calf that has shared her mother's womb with a fraternal male twin. Freemartins have long been known to be impaired in the structure of their genitalia, and also, when sexually mature, to attempt intercourse as would a bull. The reason they do not develop into fully functional females is that the male hormone testosterone is carried into their bodies from their male twins at crucial times in their development. The testosterone acts as a signal to their bodies that says, "Develop as a male body."

So the presence of male hormones at the wrong time may cause a female fetus to develop into a baby whose body has been transformed in greater or lesser degree into that of a male, and/or it may cause the mind to develop in greater or lesser degree into that of a male.

Similarly, an insufficiency in testosterone (or a failure in the ability of the body to use it) occurring at a critical time may prevent or hinder a genetically male fetus from developing into a fully male body and mind.

A person may be genetically male (XY), female (XX), or one of the other combinations of X and Y chromosomes described above. The same person may be neurophysiologically male, female, or perhaps some indeterminate state in between -- depending on events that transpire in the mother's womb. The same person may have genitalia that appear to be male, female, or some state in between. (Very rarely, individuals can have a set of both kinds of genitalia.) And that same person may be socialized as male, female, or, perhaps, as something in between. So there is a chance that the same individual has discordant characteristics at these different levels.

In the past, individuals with ambiguous sexual characteristics have been surgically "corrected." Recently, a number of these individuals have come forward to express the forlorn wish that they might have been left in their original ambiguous state so that they could have participated in the decisions regarding any attempts to "normalize" their appearance and physiological performance. Given the above analysis of the many factors involved in a person's total sexual identity, it is easy to see why there is wisdom in the petitions of these individuals.

Let us suppose that a genetically XX individual undergoes events in the mother's womb that masculinize the brain and partially masculinize the genitalia. The suppose that the individual is surgically "corrected" on the basis of its genetic constitution. What has been produced is an individual with a masculine brain in a feminine body. In childhood, the parents and others involved in the child's education would presumably socialize it as a female. But at maturity the individual may wish that the doctors had left the baby with its imperfectly formed penis.

See the May/June 2000 issue of Psychology Today for a review of As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As a Girl by John Colapinto (Harper Collins, 2000), for a different case involving a real individual.

The first social factor that acts on the sexual identity of a child is whether the child is introduced to the family and the society as a boy or as a girl. When what is biologically a boy is introduced as a girl (or vice-versa), or when the child is announced as a boy and later the child's ambiguous genitalia are "assigned" to being female and the child has to be re-announced as a male (or vice-versa), then considerable mischief can be done by the discordant social inputs to the child's developing and very plastic sexual identity. Much trauma may also result when repeated surgeries are necessary to effect repairs in the structure of the genitalia of children.

Note that what one society regards as "male" (e.g., long hair on Irish lads of ancient times) another society may regard as "female." Whether the hair is long or not is of little consequence. What matters to society is whether the behavioral characteristics being learned by a child are consistent with that child's genitalia (truth in advertising). For the individual, matters are more complex. One would ideally possess a concordant mind/brain structure, genitalia, and learned patterns of behavior. But these considerations are more appropriate to a discussion of gender.