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Archive for the ‘op-ed’ Category

Great Expectations

January 21st, 2009 | benjamin

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8435

Mixed feelings about a transsexual breakthrough

December 3rd, 2008 | benjamin

The discovery of a ‘transsexual gene’ has been a cause for elation among many people in the fight against discrimination. The research shows that society has begun the slow crawl towards accepting those people who fall outside the rigid distinction of male and female.

While it is tempting to view such discoveries as an unambiguous victory, there are risks. If as a consequence of this research, we only accept transgendered people on the basis of biology, then this scientific mindset will lead us towards a new phase of discrimination.

Transgendered people continue to face discrimination by the law, in the workplace and in health care. As a result of such discrimination, many have been forced to conceal identities which feel so close to their sense of who they are.

It is little wonder then that members of the transgender community when scientists announced that they had uncovered a ‘transsexual gene’.

Sally Goldner, spokesperson for TransGender Victoria, says that the findings give transgendered people significant muscle in fighting discrimination

‘I think it’s pretty solid evidence…. You say, well if we exist and we need to live the way we need to live then we are entitled to relevant legal protection,’ she said.

Associate Professor Vincent Harley led the team that studied a gene closely related to the workings of the sex hormone testosterone in males. They found that this gene is longer and less active in male transsexuals and that this may limit the emergence of a masculine identity during the development of the brain.

Associate Professor Harley argues that the research constitutes a ‘biological basis to transsexualism’.

It is heartening that these researchers are working to legitimise gender diversity through their scientific endeavours. Yet we risk further discrimination if we allow the subtleties of gender to be absorbed into an inflexible scientific landscape.

The research only studied ‘transsexual’ people – people who clearly identify as a member of the opposite sex to that which they were born with.

Associate Professor Harley’s ‘biological basis’ does not apply to the more broader category of ‘transgendered’ people. This category includes all people who feel that their gender does not accord with their biological sex and express this in different ways.

As such, the research threatens to establish a whole new set of hierarchies and a whole new class of people who are excluded by society and the cool, detached eye of science from which it takes its cues.

What are the implications of the research for who feel that they were born into the wrong sex but who are found not to possess this particular gene?

And what about those transgendered members of the community who either reject gender altogether or who exist along its seams, never settling on either side?

When we focus entirely upon a ‘biological basis to transsexualism’ when mounting a case for legal and social recognition, then we exclude those people who do not conform to the dictates of genetic science. The social, legal and medical discrimination will unfortunately continue for such people.

There are good reasons for transgendered people to argue that their identity has a biological basis.

According to Sally Goldner, society can no longer deny transsexualism nor discriminate against it once it becomes a scientific reality.

‘You can’t get rid of it through silly ideas like conversion therapy and to know that obviously it is something that is part of our hardwiring, so to speak,’ she says

Unfortunately, while such scientific evidence may wield a powerful blow to those who discriminate against transsexuals, it strengthens the basis for legal discrimination against others who lack a scientific basis to their identity.

The dilemmas that we face are not exactly new. In fact, they belong to the long running and hard fought ‘Nature vs. Nurture’ debate.

In this debate, combatants take an identity of one sort or another and seek to attribute it either to the biological make up of an individual or the social environment in which this person developed.

Rather than affirming nature over nurture or vice-versa, why not make respect for difference, whatever its basis, the backbone for overcoming discrimination?

Instead of questing after scientific causes, we should interrogate the mindset which forces people to walk the high wire binary of of male and female, gay and straight, black and white and so on.

We may never find a biological basis for the desire to live in a world in which identity is a matter of free choice, but it’s worth fighting for anyway.