How Many Sexes? How Many Genders?
When Two Are Not Enough

by

Aaron H. Devor, Ph.D.

Sociology Department
University of Victoria, Canada

How Many Sexes? How Many Genders?
When Two Are Not Enough

TABLE of CONTENTS

Abstract
Introduction
Sex
Intersex People
Gender
Trans and Non-Binary People
An Extremely Abbreviated and Simplified History of Sex & Gender
Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality
The Ideology of the Dominant Gender Schema
The Gender Attribution Process
Some Gendered Sexuality Definitions
Three Examples of Gendered Sexuality
FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society
Concluding Comments

Amenophis IV

Intersex and gender-diverse people have been among us as long as human beings have existed. They appear in ancient history, myths, and tales of many cultures. Indeed, an older word for intersex, hermaphrodite, comes from ancient Greek lore. According to legend, the god Hermes (known as Mercury among the Romans) mated with the goddess Aphrodite (known as Venus among the Romans). Together they begat a son, Hermaphroditus, who, at the age of 15, so fell in love with a nymph that his body fused with hers and he became intersex.

Les Hermaphrodites ~ A 16th
century treatise on hermaphrodites

During these many centuries, Western thought was dominated by the belief that there was only one sex, which might come in three levels of perfection. The optimum physical form was male. Females and intersex people were believed to be sub-standard humans who had fallen short of maleness. Furthermore, tremendous social status hinged on one’s gender. Therefore, trans and non-binary gender expressions were not well tolerated. All persons, including intersex persons, were required to live as only one gender throughout their entire lifetimes and the penalties for gender transgressions during this period were severe, and often fatal. Nonetheless, stories survive of many persons who lived gender-diverse lives.

Lord Cornbury, 1700s

Things changed somewhat by the time of the Enlightenment. By approximately the year 1800, medical and legal opinion had shifted to the modern idea that females and males constitute two entirely different sexes rather than variations on a single sex. Intersex people began to be seen as defective females or males rather than a third variation in their own right. Genders came to be assumed to be natural outgrowths of sexes. However, during the 18th century, four genders began to be recognized in some European societies: feminine women and masculine women, and feminine men and masculine men. Those who crossed genders were assumed also to be intersex. Although there could be stigma attached to such gender crossing, many gender-diverse people enjoyed considerable fame and fortune.

Chevalier d’Eon, the old woman

For example: Lord Cornbury, colonial governor of NY and NJ from 1702-1708 was reputed to have often attended to political duties dressed as a woman. Similarly, the Chevalier d’Eon had a long and distinguished career as a spy and a diplomat. D’Eon’s sex was hotly debated throughout Europe for many years. James Gray, a.k.a Hannah Snell, served in the British military and later became admired and renowned for bravery. Anne Bonny & Mary Reed were infamous female pirates of their day. They lived openly gender nonconforming lives in defiance both of the law and of all social conventions.

Mary Reed

During the 19th and early parts of the 20th centuries the idea that genders must be indelibly wed to particular types of bodies became more firmly established. Intersex individuals continued to exist but became more and more hidden as medicine further pronounced them be defective human beings. However, gender diverse people continued to find ways to express their gender identities. The 1920s was a particularly heady time of increased freedoms for females and some gender-diverse females seemed to have availed themselves of that opening. Colonel Victor Barker/Valerie Arkell-Smith fought in the British military. Gluck, born Hannah Gluckstein was a successful English artist. Jane Heap was an upper class British intellectual.

Jane Heap

During the first half of the 20th century two medical developments transpired which were of great significance for intersex, trans, and non-binary people: Firstly, advancements in the field of endocrinology enabled the manipulation of sex hormones. Secondly, increased public acceptance of cosmetic plastic surgery paved the way for the alteration of sex characteristics in order to alleviate psychological distress. By the 1950s, these developments led both to the routine surgical alteration of genitalia and to the adjustment of the hormones of intersex people to make them appear more fully female or male. This was, and still is, often done to infants and young children well before they reach the age of consent. Furthermore, these developments also led to the possibility of the partial satisfaction of the demands of trans and non-binary people that their bodies should be made more commensurate with their gender and sex identities. It was in this context of the enforced invisibility of intersex people and the increasing visibility of trans and non-binary people that I began my work.

Gender Blending:
Confronting the Limits of Duality

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In the early 1980s, I began the research for my book Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality. In that work, I set out to study a few people out of a non-binary population I dubbed as “gender blending females”. They were people who may be of any sexual orientation and who have clear self-identities as biological females and as women. They dressed and moved in ways which are not stereotypically feminine but did not try to appear to be men or boys. Often, to their own consternation, they were not always successful at communicating their identities to other people who came into casual contact with them. Among their friends and acquaintances, and to many strangers, they were clearly women. Yet, they were often taken to be men when dealing with people who were meeting them for the first time.

Heather
Photo © Aaron Devor

For the purposes of my book, Gender Blending, I interviewed 15 gender blending females about their experiences of being mistaken for boys or men. All but one of them had experienced this situation for more than five years. All but three of them were mistakenly thought to be men or boys on an everyday basis, to the point where they no longer automatically expected to be recognized as women by strangers. I learned a number of important things from talking with these women. I learned that there were both advantages and disadvantages to their gender situations. On the plus side, they were able to sporadically and temporarily avoid some of the stigma often associated with being female in a patriarchal society, and to gain access to some of the privileges normally reserved for men. Although they enjoyed being given preferential treatment in their dealings with clerks, waiters, and the like, of far greater importance to them was the safety factor. Those gender blending females who moved through public spaces with confidence that they would be assumed to be men gained a freedom of movement which few women can even imagine.

As one woman said: I was walking down the street and men were looking me straight in the eye with this incredible amount of respect. I didn’t know what … was going on. … Like it was totally different, and I said … “This feels like being in another world, it was like being a human being.” I couldn’t believe the sensation. What a power trip! It was wonderful! So I started to learn, hey, if I looked like a guy no one is going to hassle me. (Anon.)

Ruth
Photo © Aaron Devor

… When it first started to happen regularly, like every day, I started to take it on. Like I was a freak, and I had to learn to live my life as a freak. Something that everybody could stare at whenever they wanted to, and comment about whenever they wanted to. … Well, if they thought I was a man from beginning to end, then I wasn’t a freak. The freak was in the mistake. So I didn’t correct them. I just sort of shrunk a little bit inside of myself, but I didn’t correct them. (Anon.)

The effect that this strategy had on this woman was debilitating.

There was quite a long time there when I wasn’t regularly employed, and I didn’t go out of the house. Because … sometimes I’d feel so fragile that I would feel that I couldn’t cope with it if it would happen one more time, so I just wouldn’t go out. This series of mistakes, over and over again, has really altered the way I deal with the world. (Anon.) 

More broadly, I learned some important lessons about the social construction of gender and sex. I learned that we are taught to think about gender and sex in one way, whereas when we actually deal in gender and sex in everyday life, we understand them according to a different set of unspoken rules.

First, a synopsis of the way we are taught to think about gender and sex, I call these rules the “dominant gender schema.” These are learned social beliefs. Not everyone agrees that they are all true, especially me, but they are widely believed to be true and, as such, generally carry the weight and moral authority of descriptions of “reality.”

Having been alerted to the possible profound implications of ongoing misattributions of gender, my curiosity was piqued to study those females who intentionally set out to transform themselves into men. I began a long-term project of studying transsexual men which culminated in my second book, FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society, Indiana University Press, 1997. More about that project shortly.

In the process of researching that book, I was asked to serve for three years, 1991-1994, on the Board of Directors of The International Foundation for Gender Education, a national advocacy organization for transgendered and transsexed people. During my tenure with the IFGE, I was exposed to a number of people and ideas which caused me to think further about sex, gender and sexuality.

1991 IFGE Convention Staff: Photo © Renee Chevalier

Let me describe to you a few of the kinds of relationships involving trans and non-binary people with whom I became familar during my time serving on the board of directors at IFGE.

1) Male crossdressers in a long-term sexual relationships with women who love the woman in their partner.

2) Male crossdressers who have sexual relationships with men.

3) Male crossdressers married to female crossdressers.

These people and their relationships posed new questions for me. I found that I did not have adequate concepts and language to describe how these people seemed to be living. Furthermore, neither did they.

Yvonne and Dan
Photo © 1989
Mariette Pathy Allen

In the process of pondering their, and my, dilemma, I began by recognizing that gender, sex, and sexuality, while seprate, are also all intricately linked. I noted that, with skillful manipulation of feminine or masculine cues, genders could be successfully enacted by persons any sex. I further noted that sexuality seems to begin in attractions to particular styles of gender presentation and that most people presume that the usual sexes exist to back up particular gendered appearances. I also thought that it would be useful when talking about gender, sex, and sexuality to make plain some of the differences between gender and sex as they function in sexuality. In so doing, I began to develop the idea of gendered sexuality using the following terminology:

Applying these distinctions to the three examples I just mentioned, I found that I could more readily make sense, for myself, and for the people in question, of some of the more unusual gendered sexualities which I had begun to encounter.

Three Examples of Gendered Sexuality

#1

The first example involves a male crossdresser in a long-term sexual relationship with a woman who loves the woman in her partner. When effectively crossdressed, the first individual is a male who presents as a woman. The partner changes neither sex nor gender, she remains female and a woman. However, when they have sexual relations they are one male and one female, hence heterosexual, and both are acting as women. Therefore, they are heterosexual on the basis of their sexes, but they are lesbian on the basis of their genders. Thus the male could be described as a male heterosexual crossdresser lesbian woman, whereas the female would be a female heterosexual lesbian woman. The term crossdresser is needed to explain how it is that these two people might appear to be both heterosexual and lesbian at the same time. It also explains how the first person might both be male and presenting as a lesbian woman.

#2

The second example involves a male crossdresser who has sexual relationships with men. In this case, both individuals are male. However, one of them presents as a woman, the other as a man. Thus, the crossdresser’s gendered sexuality could be described as male homosexual crossdresser straight woman, whereas the partner could be described as a male homosexual straight man. Once again, their sexes remain unchanged but the first individual crosses genders. This system of gendered sexuality describes their sexes, their genders, and their sexualities.

#3

The third example involves a male crossdresser married to a female crossdresser. Both crossdressers keep their sex statuses but switch their genders. Thus, the male’s gendered sexuality would be male heterosexual crossdresser straight woman, whereas the female’s would be female heterosexual crossdresser straight man.

As useful as this system proved to be under certain circumstances, its reliance on either/or dualisms still presented some important limitations which came to light in my work with trans men.

FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society

Order this book from Indiana University Press

In the course of working on my second book, FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society, I met and shared time at meetings, conferences, and social events with several hundred transmen, many of whom I count as among my personal friends. I have also interviewed 45 people, for 3-6 hours each, who identify transsexual men. The people whom I interviewed came from all regions of North America and represented a variety of socioeconomic, ethnic and racial standings. They also ranged from transsexual-identified people living as women, to people who had grown up living as females and had been living as men for approximately twenty years.

Trans Men Group Photo

On the physiological level, the fact remains that, at the present state of medical knowledge and expertise, most trans men retain some physical manifestations of their previous lives as females. More than 1/3 of the 35 participants in my research who discussed this issue, said that they began living as men without the aid of either hormone therapies or surgeries. Another 60% of them began their lives as men with the assistance of hormone therapy but, on the average, they did not have their first surgeries for another 3 1/2 years. Only six (15%) of the 39 transsexed men whom I interviewed had had any kind of genital reconstruction surgery. Furthermore, despite the fact that they averaged 6.5 years since beginning hormone therapy, and 7.9 years since beginning to live full-time as men, slightly more than half (51.5%) of those who had not yet had genital surgery said that they were not particularly interested in having any done.

As one trans man 15 years post-transition put it, I can stand up to pee down my leg just fine right now without spending [$50,000] and having medical problems for years to come. (Anon.) Thus, it would seem that, in their physical bodies, most of these trans men never ever fully ceased having some female physical characteristcs. Ultimately, most of these trans men lived with intersex bodies.

Furthermore, even those few trans men who did purchase all that medical technology had to offer ended up with rough approximations of male genitalia; most of them very rough. Thus, even those few trans men who were most completely physically transformed did not have bodies which could be presented in intimate situations without explanations.

Phalloplasty

Fortunately, most of them found ways to approximate male genitalia in situations where they can neither conceal nor negotiate around what they lacked. However, because they lived in a society which offered them only two socially acceptable and meaningful ways in which to describe their sex, many of then felt propelled into loosening their definitions of sex and decoupling it from their identities as men. As one transs man noted: I think that you can be a man without the body. … My masculinity does not depend on having a big thing to wave around. (Anon.)

On another level, many of these trans men also had some difficulty fitting themselves neatly into the two socially acceptable gender categories. More than 1/3 (37.5%) of the 24 participants in my research who talked directly about this issue, expressed some discomfort in this regard. A few people said that they never had been, and never would be, exactly a woman or exactly a man. A few people looked forward eagerly to the day when there would be more socially acceptable genders from which to choose. Meanwhile, a few of them said that they would always proudly retain many aspects of their personalities which were formed while they were living as girls and as women. That is to say, that many of these men appeared to recognize themselves as psychologically and emotionally trans even as they lived unambiguously as men. Indeed, it seemed from the conversations which I had with trans men, that many of them became considerably more comfortable with their more feminine aspects once they were living as men. In other words, they enjoyed being somewhat gender-diverse men, whereas they were profoundly unhappy as manly women.

Patrick
Photo © Aaron Devor

Several people who participated in my research talked about their feelings about their more womanly aspects. One man said: All of us have both inside of us even though most try to keep it in the background. … I think you are both all your life. … I may look more male, physically, but I still keep my femininity with me because if I didn’t I wouldn’t be myself. What I mean is that both are in me and I don’t want to lose either one. Physically, [I stopped being female] when most of the operations [were] done; but emotionally, never. (Anon.)

Another man likewise commented that he valued his more feminine traits. However, he also pointed out that no matter how unhealthy he thought that it was to be single-minded about gender, it was socially required that members of society strive to be exactly that way.

I think everybody is both male and female in their personality and their likes and dislikes and roles and everything. I think anybody who is totally one or the other is probably very unhappy, and rather sick. Very limited. … [But] I don’t think you can be both. … When it comes to the identity, you can only be one or the other. That’s black and white. (Anon.)

Some of the trans men with whom I spoke were less than complacent about the compromises which they had to make in order to slot themselves into the gender and sex categories of society. Like a great many of the other trans people whom I have met, many trans men are quietly dissatisfied with having only two genders from which to choose, and with being required to undergo dangerous and costly surgeries in order to live more legitimately as themselves. For example, one man railed against the waste of human creativity inherent in dichotomies of gender, sex, and sexuality:

This gender stuff is just outrageous. Why must it be? … There are some of us, like myself, who are going to have to make that change, but some people are being forced into the change because no one has a place for them. They just can’t be. And so, they’re forced either to be transsexed, or homosexual, or heterosexual. They can’t just be “sexual” …. (Anon.)

People are upset and miserable and lonely all the time … because people are, “You have to be this, and you have to be that.” If you comb your hair in a certain way. … just a slight part of the hair, and the whole world changes. That’s it. Boy. Girl. Life is set. Amen. It’s stupid! … I don’t want to hear all this madness. There’s something deeper here than what somebody looks like. (Anon.) .

Michael Dillion
1962

Not only did I learn a great deal about gender and sex from my contacts with trans people; I also came to have a greater appreciation of the intricate complexities of trying to combine ambiguous sexes with intermediate genders to formulate sexualities about which it might be possible to speak. Things can become quite complex.

Several of the trans men with whom I spoke had sexual relations with cisgender gay or straight men after they had become men themselves, but while they still retained their female genitals. Furthermore, several also had relationships with other trans people at a variety of stages of transformation.

However, most of the trans men with whom I spoke had relationships with garden-variety women. One interesting thing about these various relationships was that although the people who participated in them usually cast themselves as having the standard sexual orientations, those sexual orientations were always linked to their gender identities rather than to the sexes of their bodies.

For example, one trans man, who had female genitalia, had a series of relationships with other trans people. He described one he had with a female-bodied person in this way:

This was a gay male relationship. That’s the way we perceived it. … This person had had no surgery, and was not on hormones. … It was the first time for me that I could be physically close with someone, where I didn’t mind if they saw my body. I could undress or dress, and I didn’t mind if they touched me. … Probably because we were both … in the same boat. … And because this person saw me the way I perceived myself, as a male, despite the anatomical difference or deficiency. And I perceived this person as a male. So, we were both perceiving each other as we wanted to see each other. … I learned androgyny from this person, and I guess he probably learned it from me. This person … liked fantasizing … liked wearing female panties. … And I got into a bit of that, so we’d do that fantasy. So, in a sense, we were like male crossdressers. … When we were together, sometimes I would pretend … to be the girl. … He’d be the father … weird stuff like that. … I don’t think the researchers would be able to understand that, or the shrinks. (Anon.)

Another element common to most people’s sexuality which was also apparent in the stories told by these trans men was their, and their partners’, abilities to selectively attend to more attractive features of their relationships, and to collectively and imaginatively supply missing components. Thus, although these trans men came through complex journeys to become men, and although their bodies told the stories of both where they had been, and how far they yet had to go, they were able to engage in sexual relations which in many qualitative ways make use of the same kinds of conceits and compromises as do most other people in their own love lives. In other words, they and their partners, like the rest of us, took their sexual and body image fantasies to bed with them. They, like the rest of us, imagined themselves and their lovers to have far more perfectly formed bodies than they actually did. They, as do other more conventional members of society, projected onto their lovers, images of the people whom they wished them to be, while secretly hoping that their partners would obligingly do the same for them. They, as do many other people, joined their bodies together in enactments of sexual dramas which they founnd mutually titillating, and employed whatever props were effective in helping them to live out their sexuality. In all of these ways, they were, indeed, no different from other members of society who have the courage to follow their sexual yearnings to fulfillment.

Concluding Comments

James Green and Loren Cameron
Photo © Amy Arbus

As I have been learning from them, they have been teaching one another. We, as a society, now have among us a vocal and articulate movement of people asking and demanding that there be room for them to be as they are most genuinely themselves. We all have much to learn from the trans, non-binary, and intersex people among us, and within us. I urge you to take note and respond with openness and a sense of adventure.

Stonewall March

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