On the road…again!!!
Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams
Chronicles of a Footloose Forester
By Dick Pellek
Don’t Confuse Me With Facts…My Mind Is Made Up
Very often the stimulus to pen a chronicle is based on a recent event that opened up old wounds. The most recent stimulus had to do with a presumably friendly discussion about the differences between sex and gender issues. It was not intended to be a discussion that included religious teachings or personal views, but it ended up that way.
The Footloose Forester is an avowed liberal and does not shy away from expressing his views when asked with a purported absence of a hidden agenda. Sadly, some kinds of hidden personal agendas are often part-and-parcel of private dialogues. The one about the differences between sex and gender issues was loaded with personal viewpoints.
By way of explaining his viewpoints on many things in life, the Footloose Forester has long ascribed to a fact-based approach. Thus, he sought out (via a word search and Artificial Intelligence) the clinical differences between what is meant by a person’s sex and a person’s gender. The AI findings did clarify some things and formed or informed the basis upon which the Footloose Forester was prepared to discuss the issues. Some of what he found is pasted below:
Gender
If sex and gender would have the very same meaning in all sexually reproducing species, there should be no need for two terms: Sex would suffice. Gender does indeed have no meaning in the few species which only produce one type of gamete, which is egg-like, thus in the few species in which no males occur. Such species have special means to maintain the diploid status of their somatic cells. Gender requires the presence of males and females. But why is there need for two terms? In non-human animal research, gender is commonly used to refer to the biological sex of the animals. Thus in classical biology, the nature of gender is not a hot topic, and hardly ever have efforts been undertaken to come up with a good definition. The opposite situation prevails in the humanities, in particular since the 1960-ties, when some sociologists and historians started raising questions about the reasons why males and females behave so differently, why specific tasks were typically attributed to females or males, and why man and woman were not always treated as equals, e.g. in receiving the same pay for the same work/job. An answer like e.g. God had a different set of tasks for man and woman in mind (see e.g. the story of creation in the Book Genesis of the Bible, or other stories in other cultures) when He created the species Homo sapiens as heterosexual as He had done before in other species; was rightly no longer accepted as a valid argument. Even to date, defining gender remains tricky.
There is no generally accepted definition of gender, because the concept itself is not static but dynamic [20]. According to Weed [21] the meaning of gender depends on who uses the word, in what context, and for what ends. A few examples of definitions as used in medicine or in the humanities, in particular in sociology are:
- Gender: the behavioural, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex (Merriam-Webster Medical dictionary)
Gender: is a constitutive element of social relationships based upon perceived differences between the sexes and gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power (historian Joan Wallach Scott [22]).
Gender: is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex (i.e. the state of being male, female or an intersex variation which may complicate sex assignment), sex-based social structures (including gender roles and other social roles), or gender identity [23]).
Since 2011, the FDA [24] started using sex as the biological classification and gender as a person's self-presentation as male or female, or how a person is responded to by social institutions based on the individual's gender presentation.
Lest one forget, the Footloose Forester uses this website as a receptacle for his own Legacy Stories because the website itself was created with that goal in mind. Therefore, the views are usually ones that he has harbored for some years.
In his ignorance about the range of gender issues, most of what he learned has come from medical literature. Nobody can truly get into another’s mind, so we depend upon what is relayed by others about their own case histories and has subsequently been recorded in appropriate archives concerning physiological, anatomical, and psychological literature on gender issues.
As noted above, there are only two known sexes in primates: male and female. However, the wide range of gender issues that are possible includes more than anatomy. Some of those issues include value systems, individual hormonal balance, urges, and literally the wiring of the neurons in the brain. No two people are created with the exact same parameters of height, weight, skin color, genetic identities, and hormone function. Transgender people exhibit characteristics that are not visible as physical attributes and thus are largely misunderstood. All physical and mental attributes, subsequently to be expressed at various stages of our lives, are initially coded within us at birth. We do not choose what we will eventually look like, nor do we choose how our hormones and brain neurons will function throughout the entirety of our lives. Geneticists tell us that genes can express themselves at any stage of life.
The literature on transgender issues is a bit dense in its reading, yet clearly one can conclude that nobody chooses to be gay or lesbian at birth. We as informed members of society should learn to accept everyone as creations of God’s choosing and to love them as we wish to be loved.
A prominent gold medalist athlete and a transgender woman from South Africa named Caster Semenya, wrote a book entitled "The Race to be Myself" in which she describes the indignities she has suffered just because she has high testosterone levels. When confronted by other females in a female locker room, she replied, "Yes, I may like shorts. I may like vests. But I'm a woman." She also had to undergo two gender-verification tests in order to compete.