[lbo-talk] Gender: why do you want to know?

[joanna]

I used to think I had it all straight about gender. Then, when my 
daughter was about two years old, playing one of the many "what is it" 
kind of games one plays with two-year olds, I asked her to tell me 
whether so and so was a boy or girl. She seemed a little confused by the 
question. I don't remember whether she got the first question "right" or 
not, but continued questioning revealed that she was getting about 1 out 
of 4 "wrong." I distinctly remember that she guessed Grandma was a boy; 
otherwise, I don't remember the specifics. What I will never forget is 
the extreme anxiety she experienced after this conversation. Formerly 
careless about her dress, she now swung into a anxiously hyper-feminine 
phase, and for the next couple of years would not step out of the house 
except in frilly dresses, jewlery, and every other mark of  "femaleness" 
that could be scrounged around the house. I took a deep breath and just 
went with it because this is the kind of mistake (mine) that you can't 
just back out of. You kind of just have to let it run its course. By the 
time she was five, she was once again extremely comfortable wearing 
whatever the occasion (rather than ideology) demanded, and she has been 
fine since.

What this taught me is to let the whole gender thing go. And when the 
issue of correct labeling or intrinsic difference comes up, what mainly 
interests me is "why do you want to know"? I can think of four cases 
right off the bat where knowing makes a difference:

-- If I'm a doctor, I would probably be interested in whether a patient 
is male or female, because they present illness in different ways. For 
example, generally, men have very different symptoms for heart attacks 
than women.

-- If I'm a woman trying to get pregnant, then I'm very interested in 
whether my mate is physically capable of making that happen.

-- When I tell my kids what to do if they get lost in a crowd, I say 
"ask a woman for help. It's much safer. And I trust them to be able to 
find a woman....by the conventional signs...in the crowd."

-- If I were a psychoanalyst, I feel that I would need to know both what 
gender a patient is perceived as belonging to and which they perceive 
themselves to belong to; and I also want to know about all their 
gender-related fantisizing and imaginings -- because it's a deep and 
pervasive psychic metaphor.

Otherwise, I'm not sure why I would need to know or why it would matter.

Joanna