Convention Reporter

This post is primarily background information and further reading on the various issues discussed by the panel.

What is Gender?

I have posted a brief Gender 101 over at my own blog.

For more information about Gender Theory Jason Bourget recommended Michel Foucault (see here for a discussion of Foucault’s influence on Feminism). For a more digestible read I would recommend Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer, by Riki Wilchins (reviewed here).

Sex changes in nature

Many animal species are capable of changing sex in the wild. Here are a couple of examples.

“In the wild, black sea bass are born as females and turn into males at around 2 to 5 years old,” Professor David Berlinsky, University of new Hampshire.

A West German research team reports that females of two related frog species can become males without hormonal or surgical intervention. So complete is the transformation — observed so far only in the laboratory — that the newly male frogs breed successfully with members of their former sex. Research by Ulmar Grafe and Eduard Linsenmair, University of Wurzburg.

What remains a puzzle, according to Yale scientists, is why the phenomenon is so rare, since their analysis shows the biological “costs” of changing sexes rarely outweigh the advantages. – The American Naturalist (March 2008).

Hormone pollution

Sex changes in wild animals are generally instigated by sex hormones in the body. As noted above, with many species this occurs naturally, but there is increasing concern that some environmental pollutants encourage and accelerate such changes, including changes in gendered behavior.

In the USA the Environmental Protection Agency has been concerned about this for years. Here is an example study of estrogen pollution causing sex change behavior in fish dating back to 2003. Robert L Shipp, Alabama Center For Estuarine Studies (ACES)

At the University of Cardiff Katherine Buchanan discovered that male starlings were starting to sing like females, and fingered estrogen pollution as the cause.

Perhaps the most starting example is the sudden appearance of large numbers of hermaphrodite polar bears. The report fingers, “chemical compounds commonly used in Europe and North America to reduce the flammability of household furnishings like sofas, clothing and carpets” as the mostly likely cause of this phenomenon.

And if polar bears can be affected, surely humans can too. A study by the Malmo University hospital, Lund University in Sweden suggests that such pollutants can result in reduced male fertility.

A round up of such stories can be found in this article from The Independent.

Politics and hormone pollution

While the effects on animals (and even on humans) seem undeniable, the exact cause of these changes is hotly disputed. Hard line feminists blame the use of Hormone Replacement Therapy. The Vatican blames contraceptive pills.

However, estrogen is by no means the only hormone that can cause feminizing effects. A study by Charles Tyler at the University of Exeter suggests that the cause could be androgen suppressants (chemicals used in prostate cancer treatment and fertilizers).

The BBC’s Horizon program highlighted the issue way back in 1993. The program, “Assault on the Male”, has been re-broadcast in the US by Discovery. Extracts from the script are available here.

A much more recent story can be found in the New York Times.

Another suspect chemical is DES (diethylstilbestrol). This was used in a drug given to pregnant mothers to prevent miscarriages. It was pulled from market by FDA in 1971 after links to vaginal cancer were discovered. Increasing numbers of Male-to-Female transsexuals are discovering that they were DES babies.

Intersex & Trans numbers

How many gender-ambiguous people are there in the world? According to the Intersex Society of North America, if you ask experts at medical centers how often a child is born so noticeably atypical in terms of genitalia that a specialist in sex differentiation is called in, the number comes out to about 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 births. See here for a list of different conditions and their frequencies.

As for the trans population, in the UK 900 new people a year seek treatment, 300 a year have operation, register for GRC (source, Christine Burns).

A recent report by International Lesbian and Gay Association and Transgender Europe, supported by the European Commission make this astonishing assertion:

What we can claim is that the evidence from this report strongly suggests that the trans population is growing exponentially and the ratios between those assigned male and female at birth are probably as near as 1:1.

(My emphasis)

In America the HRC estimates the trans population as anywhere from 0.25 to 1 percent of the U.S. population.

800 gender reassignment operations are performed in the USA every year (source, Lynne Conway)

Gender Development

Can gender be influenced by biology? A study of fruit flies by Professor Ken-ichi Kimura of the Hokkaido University of Education in Japan shows that manipulation of brain can cause females to adopt male gender-specific behaviors. (Neuron, Sept 11, 2008)

Another study by scientists at the University of Kiel found that the development of gender-specific features in embryos is influenced by hormones as well as by chromosomes.

“A significant fraction of gene expression differences between males and females in the human appears to have its roots in early embryogenesis and is not only caused by sex chromosomes but also by long-term sex-specific hormonal programming due to presence or absence of androgen during the time of external genital masculinization. Genetic sex and the androgen milieu during embryonic development might therefore independently modulate functional traits, phenotype and diseases associated with male or female gender as well as with DSD conditions.”

Disorders of sex development expose transcriptional autonomy of genetic sex and androgen-programmed hormonal sex in human blood leukocytes – Paul-Martin Holterhus et al, Univ. Kiel

Caveat

None of the above is intended to suggest that gendered behavior is not heavily influenced by the social environment and upbringing. The influence of culture on gender is so obvious that it should not even need stating. However, the way in which human beings, and all other animals, manifest as male or female, in both their physical appearance and their behavior, is way more complicated than the simple social binary would suggest. People whose gender is ambiguous in various ways do exist, in quite large numbers. The presence of various pollutants in the environment may be causing an increase in those numbers, though that is a long way from proven as far as humans are concerned. The future of gender, therefore, seems likely to be one of increased understanding, and from that increased variety.