Gender isn’t just about the genitals you’re born with: The gender conundrum

Photo by Yasmin Yusef / Unsplash 

A year or so ago, I saw a scientist on PBS who was talking about gender dysphoria. I wish I could remember her name. She was adamant: there are only two genders. But what she didn’t say was that gender is a spectrum. It may not seem like that to most people because most folks are okay being male or female. Generally, straight (cisgender) people are also more easily accepted by society because they don’t challenge our thinking (not to mention some people’s sense of morality) in the way LGBTQ people do. But they are not more normal.

Years ago, I read a book called Why Men don’t Listen And Women Can’t Read Maps: How we’re different and what to do about it.  It was written by a married couple, Allan and Barbara Pease. Published originally in 2000, it was an international best seller. Yet despite the ground-breaking research it highlights, I’ve not met anyone who has ever heard of it.

My guess is that’s because the real value in this book has nothing to do with understanding how men and women differ, despite the title. What is truly groundbreaking in this extraordinarily well-researched work is their inclusion of scientific studies that prove gender isn’t just about the genitals we are born with—and most folks aren’t comfortable with this information.

In one of the final chapters in the book, titled “Boys Will Be Boys, But Not Always” the authors highlight studies that show a complex relationship between gender, identity, and sexual orientation—one that is determined not only by genes, but also by hormones.

The combination of genetic and hormonal influences leads to tendencies that are every bit as normal as any cisgender person’s—they just haven’t been understood as well.

Take, for example, the gay brothers and sisters discussed in the sub-chapter “The Gay Gene.” (Note: There is no "gay gene" but this book was written 21 years ago and that was what they called the chapter where the research cited here can be found.)

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Research done by Dr. Dean Hamer in 1993 found that out of 40 pairs of brothers, who were homosexual, 33 shared genetic markers in the same region of the X chromosome. Interestingly, they did not find the same genetic pattern in lesbians. It seems hormones in the mother’s body when a female fetus is developing are the biological basis for gay women. The key is that in both cases, the determining factor is not choice, but biology.

You might expect then that all identical twins share the same sexual orientation, but they don’t. The reason for that is something called “penetrance.” Gene penetrance is basically how much power a particular gene has to become activated. If you’ve heard of the BRCA1 gene, you probably know that a variant of this gene is considered a marker for breast cancer. But why do some people with this variant develop cancer and others don’t? The answer is penetrance.

Hormones, apparently, can have a profound effect on penetrance. “If, during the early stages of pregnancy, testosterone is suppressed and the fetus is male, the chance of giving birth to a gay boy dramatically increases because it is the female hormones that configure the brain.”

Any number of things might suppress testosterone while a fetus is developing in the womb. One of them appears to be stress, bit it’s important to note that any major life change is stressful; it’s not necessarily bad. Maybe the mother is planning her wedding, or just got promoted. Day-to-day life is stressful. This is normal.

In addition to the research the authors studied, they met with a Russian professor of brain surgery who confessed to a series of “brain-altering experiments” that were carried out in humans. The research was done in secret and no specific studies were cited. But the results he provided were astonishing.

“…they had changed boys into girls and girls into boys by altering their brains in the womb with male hormone. They created their own gay, lesbian, and transexual people.” (Italics, mine)

As you might imagine, these experiments were not without problems. (In one case, they created a boy with both male and female genitals.) The original term for a child with both male and female genitals was “hermaphrodite.” Today, scientists appear to agree hormone levels are the reason for this, and most are now using the term “intersex.”

While this affects a relatively small population (.02-.05%) it becomes problematic less for what it is than for the reaction of parents who traditionally insist that doctors surgically fix the sex of their child immediately—without taking the time to discover what gender the child might wish to be.

Interestingly, In 2015, Malta became the first county to outlaw non-consensual modifications of sexual anatomy. This is important because studies have shown that a child’s sexual identity may be fluid until puberty. Therefore, making the gender choice for that child, prior to puberty, means there is a potential for making the wrong choice.

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Another fascinating discovery highlighted in the chapter “What Happens in the Womb” is that scientists have identified different centers in the brain that affect gender identity and sexual preference. What this means is the possibilities are not nearly as limited as we’ve been led to believe.

If the center for gender identity does not line up exactly with the center for sexuality, a person might identify as one sex but behave in ways more traditionally associated with the other. Or a person might be right in the middle of the identity spectrum and feel no strong urge to identify as either male or female but have a definite preference for sex with men. Another alternative could be someone very strongly female in her identity but attracted sexually to both men and women.

Based on this research, it isn’t surprising that gay men can be very masculine, and lesbians can be very feminine. We are not all one or the other. It’s a spectrum.

This may also explain why some prefer the pronoun “they” vs. “him” or “her.” If their identity center is hormonally balanced, such that neither male nor female feels normal to them, this is how they can define themselves in a way that fits how they feel and who they know themselves to be.

(On a side note: I know a lot of people have trouble with the whole “they” thing. I am one of them. It’s got nothing to do with disparaging people who don’t wish to be identified as male or female. It’s a language thing. To me “they” means plural. I understand if a person prefers not to be identified as male or female, but they are still one person. So, it messes with me a bit. Still, out of respect for them, I’m getting used to it.)

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I read this book years ago, not long after it was published. I expected to see headlines highlighting this amazing new discovery. Instead, crickets. The coverage and follow-up studies I was eagerly anticipating were virtually non-existent--until recently. The reason is both upsetting and ridiculously simple: people didn’t want to know.

As pointed out in the abstract of a paper published by the National Institutes of Health in 1995 titled Present controversies in the genetics of male homosexuality, “molecular research of homosexuality does present particular problems because of the intense stigmatization some societies accord to these individuals…It is apparent that scientific discoveries do not resolve moral dilemmas.”

In short, for years scientists dismissed the evidence of a genetic link to homosexuality because it interfered with “moral dilemmas.”

Here’s an even more blatant example of willful ignorance on this subject, also from an NIH publication. This one is titled Ethical complications of scientific research on the causes of sexual orientation:

“We argue that even if scientists could explain how sexual orientation develops, no significant ethical conclusions would follow. Further, we suggest that the current emphasis on finding a biological basis for sexual orientation is potentially harmful to lesbians, gay men and other sexual minorities in various ways (although perhaps it is in some ways potentially helpful as well).”

The stated assumption that “finding a biological basis for sexual orientation is potentially harmful to lesbians, gay men and other sexual minorities in various ways…) is perhaps the most egregiously ignorant statement I’ve ever read in the abstract of a scientific journal. And I’ve spent over a decade in biotech and have read a lot of abstracts.

Fortunately, prevailing attitudes have since changed.

As documented in the article “Stop calling it a choice: biological factors drive homosexuality” on the website The Conversation, a study done in 2019 confirms the ground-breaking research begun in 1993 and referenced in Why Men Don’t Listen And Women Can’t Read Maps.

The jury is in, finally: “… there is overwhelming evidence of a biological basis for sexual orientation that is programmed into the brain before birth based on a mix of genetics and prenatal conditions, none of which the fetus chooses.”

It’s time to face reality. When it comes to sexual orientation and gender identity there is no normal, there are only varying degrees of weirdness. And like it or not, we're all on that spectrum.