By Beit Gorski
My body tells a story. When I move through the world, you notice. You notice my voice (low, warm, effeminate), and you notice my gait (shoulders high, headfirst, forceful). You see my clothes (jeans, V-neck T-shirts, hippie sandals) and my hair (partly shaved, dark brown with silver, spiked up like Tintin). Whether or not you want to, you notice that I’m light skinned and a little fat. I see the question flicker over your face: male or female? Likely, this is a subconscious process and it isn’t just you—plenty of folks are bothered by the pause in their day that my appearance provides. Whether it’s annoyance, curiosity, or just confusion, my androgynous expression isn’t something people usually appreciate.
When considering the topic of the marginalization of the body, my mind made a beeline for the medicalization of the gendered body because that was my first encounter with the violence of someone else’s story literally shaping my body. I was designated intersex at birth (having a body that defies binary assignment of male/female), and it’s unclear whether or not my parents were even informed before my newborn genitals were mutilated in a “normalization” surgery. Like many intersex people, I did not become aware of being intersex until well into adulthood but, unlike most intersex folks, I’ve never had the sense of being a man or a woman (binary gender identity). The first thing my body learned was that it was wrong and required violence to reign in its nonconformity to norms.
Perhaps you’ve been pregnant and can relate to this common scene: someone else’s hand is stretched out toward your belly and they ask, with wide and excited eyes, the pervasive question, “Do you know what it is?” Perhaps you move back a step and deflect the uninvited intimacy or perhaps you put your hand over theirs, guiding it to welcome the new life. Regardless, it is unlikely that you are confused by the question. Think of the power of that assumption. Without knowing you or your family, or having a cultural context, a perfect stranger can approach you with this vague question, and it is commonly understood that not only are they inquiring about the gender (actually, the biological sex) of your unborn baby, but they are also signaling that this is the most important and vital introductory information about your child. It’s as though all other social norms (e.g., basic respect and consideration, tones of greeting and treatment) hinge upon the shape and size of your baby’s genitals. And indeed, as many transgender people know, they do. When binary transgender people (those who identify as the “opposite” gender they were assigned at birth) take action to transition, they frequently seek the gender training that cisgender people (those who identify the same as they were assigned) take for granted throughout developmental years. They ask, “How is a man supposed to enter the restroom?” or “How are women supposed to shake hands?” in efforts to support their own safety and survival. People who are transitioning tend to be especially aware of the extent to which social norms are dictated by binary gender rules.
Beyond learned mannerisms, embodied gender is remarkably centered on superficial appearance. Your clothes and hairstyle decisions are received as though they are identity proclamations, but even the body itself is policed through a variety of gender-based medical interventions. Gynecomastia (growth of benign breast tissue that affects more than half of those designated as medically male) has been considered a medical condition for almost two thousand years even though it causes no medical problems. Cosmetic surgery is considered the only cure and has always been considered medically necessary and therefore available to cisgender men. Contrast this to an identical surgery for transgender men (bilateral mastectomy) that continues to be prohibitively expensive and, in the absence of the Affordable Care Act, is not generally covered by insurance. To be very clear, more than 60 percent of those designated male experience benign breast growth, yet growing breasts is considered something only women (should) experience.1
How do you embody your biological sex? Do you stretch out your movement or restrict it? Do you work to increase its strength and bulk or whittle it away into a series of deliberate angles and curves? Do you swish and sway or charge forward with a push? Are you using your body to meet social norms or resist them? Every day, I move through my communities with the intention of authentically presenting as myself (as a nonbinary transgender person), yet every day I’m greeted with “sir” or “ma’am” and referred to as “she” or “he” as though I’m a human-shaped mobile projection screen designed for everyone’s gender baggage. Driven by social anxiety, I frequently catch myself poring over the details and trying to identify patterns—to distinguish what is biological and what is learned through social interaction. So much of embodied gender is learned behavior, and almost none of it is intentional. At the age of three, all sexes have the same vocal equipment to use (structural changes don’t happen until puberty hits), yet those assigned male have learned to pull down on their vocal chords and pull their tongue back from their teeth while those assigned female have learned to pull up on chords and push their tongue forward. Take a moment to try this difference out with your own vocal equipment: make yourself sound butch, then femme. Did it change who you are? Likely not, but rest assured it would change how you’re received in the world.
This isn’t something that only affects intersex or transgender people. It’s vital for all intersex, endosex (those whose bodies fit binary assignment), transgender, and cisgender people to recover from and resist the violence of forcing our bodies to fit prescribed narratives of projection/reception, dominance/submission, large/small, physical/emotional, and so on. The story of oppositional sexism (a term coined by Julia Serano to describe the myth that there are two sexes and that they are somehow opposite from each other2) not only perpetuates homophobic and transphobic narratives about our bodies but also fuels a great deal of gender-based violence across the globe. If being a “real man” means being the opposite of a woman, then a man must divorce himself from all things culturally considered feminine (e.g., empathy, emotional intelligence, sensuality, vanity, caregiving). Whenever we place a part of ourselves into the shadow of our being and deny its truth, we punish it in others, don’t we? So, we can easily see how repressing cultural femininity in men requires violence against women. Conversely, in a patriarchal society, women are punished or scorned for taking on attributes culturally considered masculine, such as leadership, intellectual prowess, authority, arrogance, or provider roles. Clearly, the social roles of oppositional sexism don’t serve anyone well. But aren’t they rooted in biology? You may be surprised to learn the truth.
Let’s take a moment to review the scientific history of our current narrative about bodies. Histories of colonization perpetuate legacies of normativity (the story of normal). Fewer than one thousand years ago, scientists in southern Europe and northern Africa began practicing “modern medicine.” It’s important to note the cultural context of this birthplace: Abrahamic religious narratives of “first there was man and from him came woman and from their procreation came all of humankind” are the social story that these early medical scientists had already internalized and assumed as divine truth. As the European history of colonization took over the Americas, Abrahamic normativity was violently asserted. From this cultural context, modern medicine developed in the cradle of scientific thought but nursed on the milk of dominant narratives (white patriarchal supremacy working in the interest of wealth acquisition and retention). Values that centered biological sex as dichotomous directly equated oppositional sexism to procreation and survival, which then led to gender obedience being directly equated to morality.
With the assumption of this story, these privileged folks (mostly white, male, and wealthy) assessed and analyzed the body (through their religious lens) and determined more than eighty physical traits now considered “sex characteristics” with some being as arbitrary as the humeral trochlear angle (the angle of the wrist distal from the elbow). Of those more than eighty traits, an attending physician observes only two in order to assign what will become that child’s legal gender identity, shaping the child’s entire life in profound ways: labia/scrotum and clitoris/penis (any variance of these two traits results in a diagnosis of intersex).3 Once we enter puberty, two other traits become considered important in the causal diagnosis of biological sex: hair (amount/placement) and breast development (or the lack thereof).
So, let’s break this down—of more than eighty traits determined relevant to biological sex, medical professionals themselves consider only four across the lifetime of the average patient. Rarely are “sex chromosomes” tested (this information is generally assumed, not actually known), and any variance of XX/XY is considered pathological even though chromosomal variance itself is not problematic to healthy development. Indeed, some women are assigned female at birth, identify as women as they develop into adulthood, and participate successfully in procreation before finding out they are XY (gonadal dysgenesis). Put this all together with the fact that intersex babies in the United State are genitally mutilated every day for the cosmetic comfort of doctors and caregivers, and we can see that the myth of sexual dichotomy in humans is not only a pervasive problem but also bad science.
Chances are, you were given the following simplistic sex education: boys have penises, girls have vaginas. We’re taught from infancy that our bodies define us on a fundamental level via gender. Setting aside the transphobic foundation of this assertion, realize what this says about social devaluing of female pleasure. This narrative literally spells out the formula that boys are defined by their penises and that the bodies of girls serve the basic function of receiving those penises. How different would the narrative be if it changed to the more accurate “boys have penises, girls have clitorises”? Damaging enough for endosex children (those designated as “girls” or “boys” at birth, based on the appearance of external genitalia), the penis/vagina story incorrectly pathologizes intersex children (those whose bodies defy binary assignment). It also gives transgender children the fundamentally invalidating message of “you don’t know who you are—my story about your body defines reality for you.” From the beginning, transgender children (those whose gender identity is different from their gender assignment) are forced to decide which narrative they value: self-knowledge or social norms applied to their bodies. In other words, value yourself or value the stories others tell about you.
All of this is to show how medicalization of the body is marginalization of the body, for those of all sexes and identities. Medicalization of bodies tells us that human bodies are vehicles for the person yet also purports that our bodies define us, right down to core social identities such as gender, race, and ability. Medicalization tells the story that something is “wrong” with our bodies (and there’s always something to “fix”). Using the gender rules as markers for success in the never-ending project of fixing the body, we give preferential treatment to those who especially adhere their project to expected gender performance by literally shaping the body to enhance those rules and roles. Let’s call this what it is: the ripping of the spirit and psyche from the body, which I believe is a violent act. The animal of the body is left to merely perform; like elephants beaten into submission for the circus, we force our bodies to overwork and douse them with chemicals to speed up the recovery from exhaustion, to give us relief from the pain of a life pushed to its physical edge. We punish each other for having unpoliced bodies and use words like “inappropriate” and “unprofessional” to name the resistance to (or exhaustion from or lack of access to) rigidly prescribed behavior that often runs counter to our normal natural impulses. We glorify, reward, and praise those who push their bodies to extremes through deprivation and/or intense shaping, and we celebrate the control these folks have exerted over the body—extolling the virtues of masochist approaches to embodiment.
Here’s the good news about stories: we can change them at any time. They’re only stories. Let’s tell stories that honor and liberate the body, stories that affirm self-knowledge, stories that make everyone visible and valid, that enhance consent and empowerment, that celebrate every body. When a child asks for a story about biological sex, let’s say, “Some children have penises; some children have clitorises; some children have something in between.” Let’s let them know that the important facts are that it’s your private body and that it’s okay to use your body to feel good. Let’s cheer, “Everyone has a right to their own body, only!” Let’s agree to ask before touching, and let’s be clear in our bodies that “if it’s not a YES! then it’s a NO.” You might wonder, “What about identity?” Let’s get spacious with room for exploration and empowering transformations. Spaciousness is a totally realistic story.
Most of the retelling in the interest of liberation is simply not telling some of the stories that perpetuate oppression. Simply, the absence of the narrative that bodies dictate identity or social roles leaves room for the normal natural variance of humanity while automatically undermining systems of oppression and hierarchy. However, in such a rigidly gendered society that metes out lethal punishment to transgressors, it will take more than simply avoiding the dominant narrative to achieve equity. In the context of society as it is (and is increasingly so), it is imperative to actively embrace the body and our own self-knowledge and to support the self-knowledge of others. As we empower ourselves and each other, we work for more than a simply “inclusive” society—we actively move toward a collectively embodied life with the assets of diversity at our fingertips.
I want us to tell stories of body autonomy on every level. Let’s honor and respect the decision of what you do with your own body—where to live, how to express yourself, how to be in relationship with beloved others, if or when to participate in procreation, if or when to establish family relationships or raise children. Body autonomy is something we can all get behind because, when we release the idea that we control the body, we must then also abandon the rituals of controlling the bodies of others through anti-choice legislation, immigration bans, and healthcare policies that restrict access. When we accept the liberation of our own bodies, we must follow through to accept and support the liberation of all bodies. Then we can abolish the prison system and deny government regulation of relationships and family systems. Then we can celebrate free migration and actively work in the interest of building the integrity of our communities. We can arrange our social systems to freely welcome all bodies and their abilities, shapes, colors, and expressions.
Sometimes the body tells loud stories, such as bright red pain, expansive movements that demand attention, intense contact in the throes of passion, the gnashing of teeth in grief. However, some of the most fundamental stories of the body can be quiet and even seductive as they shape our experiences and identities: subtle movements, weighted touch, sensations that sink or rise, and invitations to grow bigger (or admonishment to shrink smaller). What does your body scream? What does it whisper? How do we shift from rigid rules and roles that police our bodies to a more spacious society where our bodies listen to each other and honor the stories from a range of normal and natural variance? What other stories can my body tell you?
What stories will your body tell me?
Blackless, Melanie, Anthony Charuvastra, Amanda Derryck, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Karl Lausanne, and Ellen Lee. “How Sexually Dimorphic Are We?” American Journal of Human Biology 12, no. 2 (2000): 151–66.
Johnson, Ruth E., and M. Hassan Murad. “Gynecomastia: Pathophysiology, Evaluation, and Management.” Mayo Clinic Proceedings 84, no. 11 (2009): 1010–15.
Serano, Julia. Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, 2nd ed. Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2016.