Gender Orientation, Identity, and Expression

January 16, 2013 ·

[su_cwtop]

I’ve witnessed many arguments and misunderstandings explode over the conflation of these THREE dimensions of what we in trans discourse collectively refer to as gender:

  1. Gender Orientation: One’s subjective experience of one’s body, including its sexed attributes.
  2. Gender Identity: Identity labels used when socially constructing sexed personas within the context of social groupings.
  3. Gender Expression: One’s situational expression of cultural cues which communicate gender identity.

Note that gender identity and expression are absolutely culturally influenced. However, even if you stick me on a deserted island, I am still going to have a subjective experience of the material reality of my body’s sexed attributes. It’s through culture that I label my gender orientation and situationally express/repress it. Just because someone’s gender orientation is female does not automatically mean that the person’s gender identity and expression will also be female. So-called reparative/ curative therapies focus on controlling one’s gender identity and expression in an attempt to change one’s gender orientation. Ironically, this approach reveals the reality of a fixed gender orientation:

I had become addicted to certain forms of behavior in order to nurture that fantasy. I had chosen to abandon my manhood, one of God’s good gifts to me… Eventually, I could see that abandoning that behavior was best for my life. Daily I continued to yield my life’s choices to Christ in the pursuit of personal wholeness… My own reflection in the window pane is different now. It’s no longer a stylish woman, waiting for the receptionist’s announcement. Now I see the man God created me to be. No longer must I be seen as Jennifer. My real identity is contained in the name I proudly answer to: Jerry. – Reality Resources, Jennifer or Jerry?, p.23

The individual in the above narrative is attempting to change their gender orientation through a perpetual practice of ritualized rejection which involves demeaning their orientation while taking on male identity and expression. The foundational falsehood of this strategy is immediately apparent to those who understand that gender is more than cultural modalities for if there is no innate subjective experience of one’s own phenotype, the “ex-transsexual” would not require a daily ritualized practice of denial and repression.

This strategy is again employed in the following religious “healing” narrative:

He could see that I was processed of this thing, which only now, I realize was demonic. I knelt on the study floor, in tears, I was choking, forces were telling me not to do it, to walk out; freedom as a woman awaited me, after all, I had made such progress. I fought back, I cried aloud, I repented, I rebuked what had gone on in my life… All this happened 18 months ago… I gave them my suitcases of dresses, clothes, make up etc. It made me feel sick, and it was a major thing for me to do. I had to get rid of all that had held me before. They disposed of the stuff. I stopped having manicures, and cut my nails short, I grew a small beard. I threw all the [hormone] tablets away, and turned away from anything that had to do with my desires. I asked my Pastor for a verse that I could look at every day and enjoy my new freedom as a man, a father and a husband. I put a piece of paper next to my bed, with encouraging verses, which I read every morning when I got out of bed. I knew that the woman inside was dead. The power of Christ had destroyed her, and all she stood for. Eighteen months on, the devil still tries to persuade me, but he knows that I will not go down that path, as the consequences for my family would be immense. I am accountable to several people, and I am enjoying my manhood. – Sam’s Story

Again, the strategy is to change one’s orientation by assuming an identity and expression in opposition to their orientation. The failure of this approach is apparent in their need to engage in a daily ritualized practice of denial and repression. TERFs make the same mistake that anti-trans religious apologists make when they conflate gender identity and expression with gender orientation:

My main conclusion is that transsexualism is basically a social problem whose cause cannot be explained except in relation to the sex role and identities that a patriarchal society generates. Through hormonal and surgical means, transsexuals reject their “native” bodies, especially their sexual organs, in favor of the body and the sexual organs of the opposite sex. They do this mainly because the body and the genitalia, especially, come to incarnate the essence of their rejected masculinity and desired femininity. Thus transsexualism is the result of socially prescribed definitions of masculinity and femininity, one of which the transsexual rejects in order to gravitate towards the other.

Thus I will argue, in Chapter III, that the First Cause of transsexualism is a gender-defined society whose norms of masculinity and femininity generate the desire to be transsexed…. I believe that the primary cause of transsexualism cannot be derived from intrapsychic attitudes and/or behaviors, or even from family conditioning processes. One must begin with the roles of a gender-defined society, as the First Cause of transsexualism (that which, in the Aristotelian sense, sets all other causes in motion.) – Janice Raymond (1979), The Transsexual Empire, page 16

There you have it: framing the transsexual experience in terms of gender identity and expression. Raymond asserts a belief that the transsexual’s subjective experience of their own phenotype is caused (and can therefore can be cured by) modifying the cultural gender modalities available within the context of a patriarchal society. After asserting her views of transsexualsim with all the hubris of the religious fanatic, a year later Raymond wrote the brief that the Reagan Administration used to justify excluding trans health care from care plans:

While there are many who feel that morality must be built into law, I believe that the elimination of transsexualism is not best achieved by legislation prohibiting transsexual treatment and surgery but rather by legislation that limits it and by other legislation that lessens the support given to sex-role stereotyping, which generated the problem to begin with. Any legislation should be aimed at the social conditions that initiate and promote the surgery as well as the growth of the medical-institutional complex that translates these stereotypes into flesh and blood. More generally, the education of children is one case in point here. Images of sex roles continue to be reinforced, at public expense, in school textbooks. Children learn to role play at an early age. – Raymond (1980), Technology on the Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery

Here again, we see the TERF narrative mirroring the religious fundamentalist narrative by asserting that the issue transsexuals face is one of identity and expression. Nowhere in Raymond’s burbelings does she recognize that each of us has a subjective experiences of our own physical phenotype.

Either controlling gender identity and expression changes one’s gender orientation or it doesn’t. Either the TERF/Fundie position harms people or it doesn’t.

To be clear: The issue for me as a transsexual wasn’t that I was a culturally constructed woman trapped in the physical body of a man; rather, my subjective experience of my physical phenotype has always been female. When I assert that my subjective experience of my phenotype has been always female, I mean exactly that.  My pain wasn’t about a need to wear certain clothes or to act a certain way. I went to bed praying to have a god fix me or allow me to die in my sleep not because my gender identity and expression wasn’t feminine; I began praying to die around the age of 5 because my phenotype betrayed me.

While TERFs and religious fundamentalists seem particularly invested in asserting that the issue of gender orientation for transsexuals is simply a question of cultural modality, all one need do to test the real-life efficacy of their theoretical framework is to look at the suicide rate among transsexuals living within systems which attempt to modulate gender orientation through controlling their gender identity and expression (BTW, in a study of 6,400 trans folks, the rate of attempted suicide was 41% as compared to 1.6% in cis folks). TERFs and religious fundamentalists use gender identity and expression as a means to “cure” our innate gender orientation.

Nonsexist counseling is another direction for change that should be explored. The kind of counseling to “pass” successfully as masculine or feminine that now reigns in gender identity clinics only reinforces the problem of transsexualism. It does nothing to develop critical awareness, and makes transsexuals dependent upon medical-technical solutions. What I am advocating is a counseling that explores the social origins of the transsexual problem and the consequences of the medicaltechnical solution. 

 Raymond (1980), Technology on the Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery

Here we have Raymond herself advocating for the development of a curative therapy model focused on gender identity and expression as a way to readjust gender orientation. If you want to know what happens to a someone who is forced to adopt a female identity and expression even though his orientation was male, I suggest you read up on the cautionary story of  David Reimer.

Feminists like myself envisage a time beyond gender when there is no correct way to behave according to body shape. In such a world, it would not be possible to conceive of a gender identity clinic. The idea of GID is a living fossil – that is, an idea from the time when there was considered to be a correct behaviour for particular body types. – Sheila Jeffreys

Contrast TERF/Fundie dogma with what the evidence has born out over the last half-century:

In over 80 qualitatively different case studies and reviews from 12 countries, it has been demonstrated during the last 30 years that the treatment that includes the whole process of gender reassignment is effective. Accordingly, all follow-up studies mostly found the desired effects. The most important effect in the patients’ opinion was the lessening of suffering with the added increase of subjective satisfaction. – Pfäfflin F, Junge A. (1998). Sex Reassignment. Thirty Years of International Follow-up Studies After Sex Reassignment Surgery: A Comprehensive Review, 1961-1991 .

Now, contrast the above demonstrable reality with the apparent schadenfreude TERFs enjoy by conflating gender orientation, identity and expression with sexual orientation, identity and expression:

“… because the fact of the matter is that unlike born-women, who have everything (literally, everything) to lose from rape culture, transwomen have at least something (everything?) to gain. to a transwoman, cutting off her dick and turning it (inside out) into a fuckhole between her legs makes her feel better. from transwomens own mouths, we know that these fake fuckholes alleviate transwomens suffering. turning their dicks into extra-large condoms for other men to penetrate (or not, whevs…thats my hat-tip to the internet “lesbian transwomen”) actually tamps down their anxiety, and feelings of dysphoria.”  – factcheckme.wordpress.com

In the above purportedly feminist representation of  the issues facing transsexuals, the subjective experience of one’s phenotype is reduced to sexual function.  In the above context, my issue at the age of 5 was that I wanted a “fuckhole” so that men and/or women could sexually gratify me. In this version of “feminism,” it is represented that my 5-year-old death wish fueled by anxiety and feelings of dysphoria could have been cured by a man penetrating me.

The Power of Rhetoric

 

 

Figure 2: model of gender orientation, identity and expression

Figure 1: model of gender orientation, identity, and expression

The Sex Orientation Scale (S.O.S.) likewise lists seven categories or types (not necessarily stages), the zero, however, separately, as it would apply to any person of normal sex and gender orientation for whom ideas of “dressing” or sex change are completely foreign and definitely unpleasant, whether that person is hetero-, bi-, or homosexual. – Dr. Harry Benjamin, 1968

There was a time when we talked about gender in terms of an orientation. We don’t associate the term “orientation” with gender any longer and I think there’s a reason. Everyone from Virginia Prince to TERFs jumped on the John Money ‘everyone is born gender neutral’ bandwagon in the 1970s. Once everyone from Money to TERFs ensured that gender could only be discussed in terms of conditioning and choice, “orientation” became irrelevant to the rhetoric of gender.

Rhetoric in Practice: Gender Orientation, Identity, and Expression

One’s gender orientation might be male, while their gender identity could be female even though their gender expression is androgynous.  Gender is, in fact, multi-dimensional and not all of these dimensions are always aligned. When we talk about gender, we’re talking about these three dimensions. When someone says that their gender is hard-wired, they’re saying that they have an innate sense of their body’s sexed attributes that is oriented somewhere along a continuum. They’re saying that their orientation on this continuum is experienced as being innate.

However, when we talk about the way we subjectively view our orientation, we move into the murky waters of a personal identity that can be affected by a number of factors including (but not limited to) pride and stigma; audacity and aversion; respect and shame; integrity and guilt; etc. How one might identify their gender may not actually reflect one’s gender orientation. We call that experience, “being in the closet.” Likewise, one’s expression of their gender may not reflect the reality of their orientation (or even the way they personally identify, for that matter).

So-called “reparative therapy” is just an exercise in equivocation. When these organizations claim to change someone’s “gender,” they’re merely claiming to change one’s gender expression and identity (usually through exposure to fear, shame, and guilt). These organizations pretend that…

Identity + Expression = Orientation

… when the reality is:

Orientation + Identity = Expression

The belief is that behavior drives orientation. That belief is false.

Gender Discourse: Poisoning the Well

 


Use of sexual orientation, sexual identity and sexual expression in printed materials, 1960 – 2008

The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DSM in 1974. What we find is that discussing sexuality in terms of an expression or identity decreased as the public’s view of homosexuality as merely being a deviant lifestyle choice also decreased:


Source: General Social Survey, NORC/University of Chicago, September 2011

The use of “orientation” as a rhetorical foundation of discourse is fundamentally tied to the nuanced way in which our culture viewed sexuality. If you mean to note that that sexuality is innate, you’ll most often speak in terms of “orientation.”  Consider the following critique of the use of “homosexual identity” from a 1983 paper:

Despite the fact that the concept homosexual identity has been used extensively in the literature on homosexuality since the late 1960s, investigators have shown little concern for defining or discussing the manner in which it is used. As a result, the study of homosexual identity has been characterized by confusion, disarray, and ambiguity. A multiplicity of terminologies makes comparisons between studies difficult. There has been little attempt to place theoretical proposals or data within the framework of existing psychological literature on identity. A number of assumptions critical to an understanding of homosexual identity are commonly made, and several of these are discussed: The synonymity of homosexual identity and self-concept; homosexual identity as childhood identity; homosexual identity as sexual identity; and homosexuality as distinct essence. This review also considers the following issues: The distinction between identity and behavior; the utility of an identity construct as applied to the study of homosexuals; the definition of identity in developmental theories of homosexual identity; and homosexual group identity. – J Homosex. 1983-1984 Winter-Spring;9(2-3):105-26.

Imagine what sexuality discourse would be like today (especially in politics) if the nuances of sexuality were limited to only identity and expression. Likewise, it seems that when the nuances of gender are limited to only identity and expression, discourse is poisoned. When the parameters of gender rhetoric exclude orientation, every aspect of gender discourse is entangled with culture:

In a hormonal male, after puberty, the imagery of sex reassignment, either way, may appear vividly in masturbation fantasies… It is characteristic of this condition that, in the dissociation manner of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the classic literary example of multiple personality, the two gender identities may be expressed in alternation, the transvestite’s two personalities each has its own wardrobe… The degree to which each personality will appear publicly convincing will depend, for the most part, on the extent of its experience in public, eliciting gender-appropriate reactions from other people, until its own responded, in turn, become habitual and artless… A full-time cross dresser may eventually achieve the goal of his life-time’s longing and quit changing back to his masculine clothes and role. Some such people have for so long felt utterly out of place in the role of their external genitalia that they demand the body, as well as the clothing of the other sex. Properly speaking, they are not transvestites but transsexuals. Their compelling desire is for hormonal and surgical sex reassignment so that they can live full-time in the gender role for which, they feel, they themselves always have had the matching gender identity. – John Money, Man & Woman, Boy & Girl: Gender Identity From Conception to Maturity, page 20

Without the rhetorical tool of “orientation,” trans advocacy seems to be fighting a battle with one hand tied behind its back. This reality hasn’t gone unnoticed by those who wish to use the limitations of our current rhetorical landscape to disguise bigotry as a mere concern:

Cathy Brennan and Elizabeth Hungerford’s letter to the United Nations seeking to have trans protections overturned.

Compare Brennan and Hungerford’s rhetoric with that of the hate group know as the Liberty Counsel:

Under this law, gender identity is defined as the gender related identity, appearance, mannerisms, or other gender related characteristics of an individual with or without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth. If this passes, can we expect rest room gender divisions to become blurred? Could protecting women and young girls in such situations cause a person to be in violation of E.N.D.A.? – Mat Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, 6/12/12

When we talk about sexual orientation, one’s identity and expression are viewed as extensions of that which is innate. Currently, our rhetorical landscape does not, IMHO, permit this same type of nuanced yet succinct gender discourse.

[su_cwbottom]
Next Post

What Say You Now, Suzanne ‘Brazilian Transsexual’ Moore?

After all, the Julie Birch Ill Society probably just cheers whenever a transsexual woman gets ‘cut out.’ From Pink News: It’s being reported that a transwoman has been shot dead in Brazil. According to the ‘Guerrilla Angel Report’ blog site, it is claimed the victim, named…
Read
Previous Post

The Human Rights Campaign Just Needs More Education About Transphobia

The Human Rights Campaign has a history of making moves that make it seem like it is becoming more and more trans aware/friendly/positive. After all, they hired Allyson Robinson: and they gave Lana Wachowski the HRC Visibility Award: So they're…
Read
Random Post

GLAAD ACTION ALERT: Transadvocate.com Is Worse than Randi Rhodes and Michael Savage Combined!

I'm waiting for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) to put out an action alert calling for a ban on Transadvocate.com. Why? Because I've asked them to advocate for  the "T" in their mission statement with the same…
Read
Random Post

uh-oh.

(crossposted in several places, and people are welcome to forward this on freely to others in the transgender and GLBT communities, as I see this as being very serious -- Mercedes) A short time ago, I'd discussed the movement to…
Read
Random Post

#TERFweek: Remember Filisa Vistima

Before you read further, I need to state a strong Trigger Warning: The following post recounts the circumstances surrounding the suicide of a trans women. Filisa Vistima was a 22-year-old transsexual woman from Seattle who had not been able to access the…
Read
Random Post

This Says It Better Than I Ever Could

From Alas, a blog Amp has been personally attacked many times because of this cartoon. I believe it's because it's speaking truth. Some folks don't like to see their own reflection, or refuse to believe it and react violently when…
Read
  1. We need to talk – about something you never said.
    27
    Monday
    Jul 2015

    Posted by M. A. Melby in Bigotry, Civility, Feminism, Gender

    ≈ Leave a comment

    TagsTERFs

    I’d like to share an exchange. This happened on a blog post entitled “We need to talk” where an article entitled “You Are Killing Me: On Hate Speech and Feminist Silencing” was heavily quoted.
    I criticized the article but tried to move the conversation forward by suggesting that we use terms for gender preferred by a trans activist I know in order to make better distinctions.
    This. This is extremely trans antagonistic.

    The conversation remained civil and constructive. One of the people in the conversation thought I was being a bit unfair, so I defended my interpretation of the text.
    The VERY next thing Jones says is this: “[Trans ideology] comes perilously close to naturalizing the oppression of women.”
    I’m not just reading into things, k?

    And then something really strange happened.
    I’m tired of debating whether [the author] rises to the level of TERF or not. She’s not a TERF.

    Since when was this a conversation about whether or not the author was a TERF?

    This all started as trans people screaming that [the author] is a TERF and a horrible person.

    I mean, people who identify as trans. Attacking [the author]. Come on. M. A. Melby. I’m growing increasingly tired of your objections.

    I wasn’t the only one confused that this came out of the blue. The dismissal of someone’s anger towards the author as “trans people screaming” didn’t set well at all either.
    The author did engage with some of the criticism but stated that she had no clue as to why anyone would be upset. Then argued against what was assumed to be part of “trans ideology” according to the article: that being cisgender meant embracing the social constructs of gender. That is something I’ve never heard a trans person say, but I have heard cis feminists say it, and rail against it, all the time.
    I’m just saying that not being trans does not equate to being totally at home in one’s assigned gender.

    Someone in the conversation disclosed that he was trans and told us that “the way this discussion has been going kind of creeps me out”. He explained that lack of adequate language in expressing the realities of trans people might be part of the issue.
    To add to that, there are lots of people, especially people in power over us, who wish to define us and interpret who we are (or simply deny our existence) in terms that fit into their understanding of How Things Really Are.
    Some of our language and our so called “ideology” is an attempt to assert the validity of our existence in the face of a dominant way of thinking that wants to erase us.

    My friend put a fine point on what the article might represent. And yes, he used the dreaded term “TERF” to describe it.
    The linked post is a perfect example of what I was saying about TERFs subtle and not so subtle bigotry. They provide a very polite reasoned argument that trans women are a danger to feminism and [cis] women. If you can’t see where that is heading there’s no hope.

    Share this:TwitterRedditFacebookTumblrGoogleLike this:Like Loading…

    Related

    About M. A. Melby
    Writer, physics instructor, feminist, arguer, atheist; Secular Woman Board Member, Block Bot admin, Transadvocate contributor; she, cis; opinions my own

    View all posts by M. A. Melby »

  2. […] Trans people who will probably contemplate transition at some point will experience anything from annoyance to profound and crippling suffering regarding any of these 3 issues at some point. Generally speaking, for transsexuals, one will begin experiencing significant issues with Category A at a very early age. It is common for these children to experience depression and even suicidal ideation concerning their bodies as early (or earlier) than 5. When speaking explicitly of Category A – the subjective experience of one’s own sex attributes – that awareness is sometimes referred to a one’s gender orientation. […]

    1. Yes but thats means gender in different context. Gender as the constructed class is referring to sex role scripts, not sex related identity. The sex role scripts are a means of social control and are about power. But children build a gender identity at a young age and at this age sex role script social conditioning is not complete, sex role script socialization is done by controlling instrumental and expressive trait development.

      The problem is, the trans movement has stopped looking at the genderality dimension as a separate concept to gender identity and it just is. Its making it very hard for us to criticise sex role scripts and social gender construction. I think the best hope is for us all to stop using the words masculinity and femininity to refer to several things.

      Abolishing of the sex role scripts with aim to revert everyone to their own inner compass is the aim of radical feminism.

      As for cis, maybe if you were willing to call it cis* it might go down better.

  3. Also i want to add that as far perceiving other peoples gender orientation goes we can’t because of sex stereotypes getting in the way. Through the gender orientation lens one could be acting in a way culturally perceived as masculine but see themselves as fully intune as female doing it.

    So i think gender role orientation should also be added as the culturally constructed layer on top of it. Gender roles are what act to box in gender expression of everyone no matter what their gender orientation. So i think we could build a theory where there is two gender maps, one for male ———other——-female and another for the cultural masculine————-mix————–feminine. Take for example muscles, men have more tendency but many women want them as women and want to experience being strong and powerful as female but may be perceived masculine. Gender orientation may not always predict social role, a subjective sense of self as female may not mean one wants to take a female social role through the cultural gender role lens.

  4. I think gender orientation can be worked on and developed, but not as another transsexual theory as something else and better. I had this idea too before i found your post, and i think i want to develop it further. I have opinions you probably wont agree with though, because i think all the dysphoria is socially constructed and results from enforced gender roles into a binary. I think i can prove it, and i also think if gender orientation was not stifled very few people would get sex dysphoria because less people would experience their sense of gender orientation out of line with their sex fully, some would only experience it slightly and find all they want to do is alter some sex specific aspects or modify them. Like for example a masculine woman or feminine man, or what other term they use to describe the same state. Gender orientation in my view is about sex related expression and when that expression is not inline with the expected expression identities are constructed. I think the true gender orientation spectrum had space right across it for both biological sexes and for those who dont fit them to be any point on that spectrum free from dysphoria and i think enforcement of the standard expected gender orientation onto someone causes gender dysphoria not the gender orientation itself.

    Just as there was a time when being homosexual was considered inversion because attraction to the opposite sex was seen as part of being a man or a woman, so same sex attraction had to mean ones brain had been flipped around. This left no room to explain people who had fluid sexuality or bisexuality that remained fixed. Then sexual orientation as a concept explained both sexes could have attraction to either sex and it was something separate from being either male or female. Sexual orientation is ones subjective experience of ones sexuality, its a direction in sexuality.

    Gender orientation is a direction in gender, and i think if one is left to follow that direction in gender irrespective of ones sex those who arrive at a transsexual state will do so with less suffering and dysphoria and also without pressure to identify within the binary. Many people who are dysphoric now won’t be dysphoric, they will be just people in whatever body following their inner gender compass.

    I think there would be room to separate gender orientation from biological sex in a way that would allow a range of expressions in any body without any pressure to identify, transition or not do. Without those pressures there would be no mistaken transitions, no tough choice about having to either come out at the opposite sex or be stuck in the current allowed mode of expression for that sex.

  5. Excellent work.

    I still have problems comprehending how “professionals” manage to get it so wrong. I do understand the religious types, having been under their influence for a time in my life – for them, well-defined, carved-in-stone “truths” are more comforting than the fluid, messy reality that is life.

    That indoctrination followed me for years, after I rejected the Church, and is one of the many reasons that I had to undergo nearly a decade of therapy before I could begin my journey of transition, just so that I could return to the reality that I knew when I was 4, and brutally reinforced by society when I was 12. I sought help when I was younger, and the only ones offering any help were the Church. As a result, I bought the Church’s dogma hook, line, and sinker – even though my feelings were counter to their teachings and I had daily thoughts of suicide for nearly a decade. Such is the power of denial.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.