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Embracing Diversity: A Comprehensive Guide to Gender Identity Terminology

In our journey toward inclusivity and understanding, we recognize that the language surrounding transgender identities is dynamic and ever-evolving. Our glossary serves as an initial step, a foundation upon which we build a bridge of comprehension and acceptance. With each addition, we enrich our collective vocabulary and foster a deeper connection within the LGBTQ+ community and beyond.

Gender refers to the different ways people understand themselves as men, women, or another identity.

It's not just about biology; it includes how we think, feel, and act based on social and cultural influences.

Many societies see gender as either male or female, but some people don't fit into these categories and may identify as non-binary.

Understanding Gender Identity is important for how societies organize themselves.

Long ago, "gender" mostly referred to grammar, but in the mid-20th century, it started being used to talk about social roles too. This helped people see that gender isn't just about biology. Nowadays, experts in fields like psychology, sociology, and biology study gender to understand how biology, society, and individual experiences all shape our sense of identity and behavior.

The term gender had been associated with grammar for most of history and only started to move towards it being a malleable cultural construct in the 1950s and 1960s.

History of the concept of Gender

Gender, as we understand it today, is a recent idea. In ancient times, people didn't think about gender like we do now. The word "gender" used to be mainly about grammar. It wasn't until the 1950s and 1960s that the general public started realizing gender was something cultural and flexible.

Before this shift, "gender" was rarely used outside of grammar discussions. For example, between 1900 and 1964, it didn't even appear in a bibliography of 12,000 references on marriage and family. In academic articles from 1945 to 2001, "gender" was much less common than "sex" at first, but by the end of the period, it became more common, especially in social sciences, arts, and humanities.

In the 1970s, feminists began using "gender" to talk about socially constructed differences between men and women, as opposed to biological differences.

*The term gender had been associated with grammar for most of history and only started to move towards it being a malleable cultural construct in the 1950s and 1960s.

Before the terminological distinction between biological sex and gender as a role developed, it was uncommon to use the word gender to refer to anything but grammatical categories. For example, in a bibliography of 12,000 references on marriage and family from 1900 to 1964, the term gender does not even emerge once. Analysis of more than 30 million academic article titles from 1945 to 2001 showed that the uses of the term "gender", were much rarer than uses of "sex", was often used as a grammatical category early in this period. By the end of this period, uses of "gender" outnumbered uses of "sex" in the social sciences, arts, and humanities.

*It was in the 1970s that feminist scholars adopted the term gender as way of distinguishing "socially constructed" aspects of male–female differences (gender) from "biologically determined" aspects (sex).

In the last two decades of the 20th century, the use of gender in academia has increased greatly, outnumbering uses of sex in the social sciences. While the spread of the word in science publications can be attributed to the influence of feminism, its use as a synonym for sex is attributed to the failure to grasp the distinction made in feminist theory, and the distinction has sometimes become blurred with the theory itself; David Haig stated, "Among the reasons that working scientists have given me for choosing gender rather than sex in biological contexts are desires to signal sympathy with feminist goals, to use a more academic term, or to avoid the connotation of copulation.".

In 1993, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) started to use gender instead of sex to avoid confusion with sexual intercourse. Later, in 2011, the FDA reversed its position and began using sex as the biological classification and gender as "a person's self-representation as male or female, or how that person is responded to by social institutions based on the individual's gender presentation."

In legal cases alleging discrimination, a 2006 law review article by Meredith Render notes "as notions of gender and sexuality have evolved over the last few decades, legal theories concerning what it means to discriminate "because of sex" under Title VII have experienced a similar evolution":

In a 1999 law review article proposing a legal definition of sex that "emphasizes gender self-identification," Julie Greenberg writes, "Most legislation utilizes the word "sex," yet courts, legislators, and administrative agencies often substitute the word "gender" for "sex" when they interpret these statutes.". In J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B., a 1994 United States Supreme Court case addressing "whether the Equal Protection Clause forbids intentional discrimination on the basis of gender", the majority opinion noted that with regard to gender, "It is necessary only to acknowledge that 'our Nation has had a long and unfortunate history of sex discrimination, in 1769, a history which warrants the heightened scrutiny we afford all gender-based classifications today", and stated "When state actors exercise peremptory challenges in reliance on gender stereotypes, they ratify and reinforce prejudicial views of the relative abilities of men and women."

As a Grammatical Category

The word gender was still widely used, however, in the specific sense of grammatical gender (the assignment of nouns to categories such as masculine, feminine and neutral. According to Aristotle, this concept was introduced by the Greek philosopher Protagoras.

In 1926, Henry Watson Fowler stated that the definition of the word pertained to this grammar-related meaning:

"Gender...is a grammatical term only. To talk of persons...of the masculine or feminine g[ender], meaning of the male or female sex, is either a jocularity (permissible or not according to context) or a blunder."

Sex &+ Gender

In 1945, Madison Bentley defined gender as the "socialized obverse of sex". Simone de Beauvoir's

1949 book The Second Sex has been interpreted as the beginning of the distinction between sex and gender in feminist theory, although this interpretation is contested by many feminist theorists, including Sara Heinämaa.

Controversial sexologist John Money coined the term gender role,

and was the first to use it in print in a scientific trade journal in 1955. In the seminal 1955 paper, he defined it as "all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself or herself as having the status of boy or man, girl or woman."

*Gender Role = is defined as the actions or responses that may reveal their status as boy, man, girl or woman, respectively. Elements surrounding gender roles include clothing, speech patterns, movement, occupations, and other factors are not limited to biological sex.

In contrast to taxonomic approaches, some feminist philosophers have argued that gender

"is a vast orchestration of subtle mediations between oneself and others", rather than a "private cause behind manifest behaviors".

___________Eunuch___________

A eunuch generally means a person who was assigned male at birth, and who was castrated. Though many historical eunuchs were made so without their consent, eunuchs often occupied a nonbinary gender role (often called third gender), and some of them were what we now call transgender. Then, as now, some people are eunuchs by choice, and some of them see this as a nonbinary gender identity. Nowadays eunuchs are recognised more and more as being part of the transgender spectre.

Since this is not Wikipedia (see Wikipedia's article on eunuchs).

Usually a Eunuch is one who has been castrated either by at least taking away the gonads (testicles), called orchiectomy, sometimes including the removal of the scrotum, or by taking away the gonads as well as the phallus (penis), called emasculation. Eunuchs have existed for virtually all of written history: the earliest record of them was in Sumer, in the 21st century BCE.

Before the creation of more elaborate kinds of gender-validating surgeries, nonbinary and other transgender people in many cultures were also eunuchs by choice. Traditionally, Hijras were eunuchs, and many of them today prefer to be so, even when they have the option to get the kind of surgeries that transgender women can get today. Some other identities that have often been eunuchs include Ashtime and Gallae.

Eunuch is not necessarily a nonbinary or transgender identity. Many cultures around the world also had a tradition of making someone into a eunuch without that person's consent. The purpose of this was to ensure that they couldn't have children with a nobleman's concubines, or to give them a higher singing voice (Castrati). These eunuchs usually identified as men. Eunuch is also not necessarily a surgical process. In some ancient writings, sometimes "eunuch" means a person who hasn't been castrated, but who can't or won't have children, because of being sterile, intersex, gay, asexual, or just not interested.

The modern academic sense of the word Gender, in the context of social roles of men and women, dates at least back to 1945, and was popularized and developed by the feminist movement from the 1970s onwards (see Feminist theory and gender studies ), which theorizes that human nature is essentially epicene and social distinctions based on sex are arbitrarily constructed. In this context, matters pertaining to this theoretical process of social construction were labelled matters of gender.

The popular use of gender simply as an alternative to sex (as a biological category) is also widespread, although attempts are still made to preserve the distinction. The American Heritage Dictionary (2000) uses the following two sentences to illustrate the difference, noting that the distinction "is useful in principle, but it is by no means widely observed, and considerable variation in usage occurs at all levels."

The effectiveness of the medication appears to depend on the sex (not gender) of the patient.
In peasant societies, gender (not sex) roles are likely to be more clearly defined.

Gender Identity and Gender Roles

Gender identity refers to a personal identification with a particular gender and gender role in society.

The term woman has historically been used interchangeably with reference to the female body, though more recently this usage has been viewed as controversial by some feminists.

There are qualitative analyses that explore and present the representations of gender; however, feminists challenge these dominant ideologies concerning gender roles and biological sex. One's biological sex is often times tied to specific social roles and expectations. Judith Butler considers the concept of being a woman to have more challenges, owing not only to society's viewing women as a social category but also as a felt sense of self, a culturally conditioned or constructed subjective identity. Social identity refers to the common identification with a collectivity or social category that creates a common culture among participants concerned. According to social identity theory, an important component of the self-concept is derived from memberships in social groups and categories; this is demonstrated by group processes and how inter-group relationships impact significantly on individuals' self perception and behaviors. The groups people belong to therefore provide members with the definition of who they are and how they should behave within their social sphere.

*Categorizing males and females into social roles creates a PROBLEM for some individuals who feel they have to be at one end of a linear spectrum and must identify themselves as man or woman, rather than being allowed to choose a section in between. Globally, communities interpret biological differences between men and women to create a set of social expectations that define the behaviors that are "appropriate" for men and women and determine their different access to rights, resources, power in society and health behaviors. Although the specific nature and degree of these differences vary from one society to the next, they still tend to typically favor men, creating an imbalance in power and gender inequalities within most societies. Many cultures have different systems of norms and beliefs based on gender, but there is no universal standard to a masculine or feminine role across all cultures.

Social roles of men and women in relation to each other is based on the cultural norms of that society, which lead to the creation of Gender Systems.

*The Gender System is the basis of social patterns in many societies, which include the separation of sexes, and the primacy of masculine norms.

Philosopher Michel Foucault said that as sexual subjects, humans are the object of power, which is not an institution or structure, rather it is a signifier or name attributed to "complex strategical situation". Because of this, "power" is what determines individual attributes, behaviors, etc. and people are a part of an ontologically and epistemologically constructed set of names and labels.

For example, being female characterizes one as a woman, and being a woman signifies one as weak, emotional, and irrational, and incapable of actions attributed to a "man". Butler said that gender and sex are more like verbs than nouns. She reasoned that her actions are limited because she is female. "I am not permitted to construct my gender and sex willy-nilly," she said. "[This] is so because gender is politically and therefore socially controlled. Rather than 'woman' being something one is, it is something one does." More recent criticisms of Judith Butler's theories critique her writing for reinforcing the very conventional dichotomies of gender.

The World Health Organization defines gender as "the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed". The beliefs, values and attitude taken up and exhibited by them is as per the agreed upon norms of the society and the personal opinion of the person is not taken into the primary consideration of assignment of gender and imposition of gender roles as per the assigned gender.

Gender is fluid. The World Health Organization defines it as socially constructed traits. Gender roles are learned from birth and influenced by various factors.

Gender identity can deviate from assigned gender. Studies question gender develops further during adolescence. Ridgeway and Correll argue gender is institutionalized. David Reimer's case challenges parenting's sole role in gender identity. American Academy of Pediatrics notes parents can influence gender expression but not identity.

In 2015, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a webinar series on gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender, etc. In the first lecture Sherer explains that parents' influence

(through punishment and reward of behavior) can influence gender expression but not gender identity. Sherer argued that kids will modify their gender expression to seek reward from their parents and society, but this will not affect their gender identity (their internal sense of self).

Non-binary and Third Gender

*Historically, many societies have recognized only two distinct, broad classes of gender roles, a Gender Binary of masculine and feminine, largely corresponding to the biological sexes of male and female.

FYI: When a baby is born, society allocates the child to one gender or the other, on the basis of what their genitals resemble.

However,

many societies have historically acknowledged and even honored people who fulfill a Gender Role that align in the middle of the Gender Continuum between the feminine and masculine.

For example the Kathoey of Thailand known as Ladyboys.

the Hawaiian Māhū, who occupy "a place in the middle" between male and female,

The Native American Ojibwe Ikwekaazo, "men who choose to function as women",

or Ininiikaazo, "women who function as men". In the language of the sociology of gender, we define this as Third Gender, especially by those in gender studies or anthropology.

Contemporary Native American and FNIM people who fulfill these traditional roles in their communities may also participate in the modern,

Two-Spirit community, however, these umbrella terms, neologisms, and ways of viewing gender are not necessarily the type of cultural constructs that more traditional members of these communities agree with. See Pre-colonial communities’ history of Gender Fluidity.

The Hijras of India and Pakistan are often cited as Third Gender.

Another example may be the Muxe (pronounced [ˈmuʃe]), found in the state of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico.

the Bugis people of Sulawesi, Indonesia have a tradition that incorporates all the features above.

In addition to these traditionally recognized third genders, many cultures now recognize, to differing degrees, various non-binary gender identities. People who are non-binary (or genderqueer) have gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine. They may identify as having an overlap of gender identities, having two or more genders, having no gender, having a fluctuating gender identity, or being third gender or other-gendered. Recognition of non-binary genders is still somewhat new to mainstream Western culture, and non-binary people may face increased risk of assault, harassment, and discrimination.

Measurement of Gender Identity

Two instruments incorporating the multidimensional nature of masculinity and femininity have dominated gender identity research: The Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ).

Both instruments categorize individuals as either being sex typed (males report themselves as identifying primarily with masculine traits, females report themselves as identifying primarily with feminine traits), cross sex-typed (males report themselves as identifying primarily with feminine traits, females report themselves as identifying primarily with masculine traits), androgynous (either males or females who report themselves as high on both masculine and feminine traits) or undifferentiated (either males or females who report themselves as low on both masculine and feminine traits). Twenge (1997) noted that men are generally more masculine than women and women generally more feminine than men, but the association between biological sex and masculinity/femininity is waning.

Biological factors and views

Some gendered behavior is influenced by prenatal and early life androgen exposure. This includes, for example, gender normative play, self-identification with a gender, and tendency to engage in aggressive behavior. Males of most mammals, including humans, exhibit more rough and tumble play behavior, which is influenced by maternal testosterone levels. These levels may also influence sexuality, with non-heterosexual persons exhibiting sex atypical behavior in childhood.

The biology of gender became the subject of an expanding number of studies over the course of the late 20th century. One of the earliest areas of interest was what became known as "gender identity disorder" (GID) and which is now also described as gender dysphoria. Studies in this, and related areas, inform the following summary of the subject by John Money. He stated:

The term "gender role" appeared in print first in 1955. The term gender identity was used in a press release, 21 November 1966, to announce the new clinic for transsexuals at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was disseminated in the media worldwide, and soon entered the vernacular.

The definitions of gender and gender identity vary on a doctrinal basis. In popularized and scientifically debased usage, sex is what you are biologically; gender is what you become socially; gender identity is your own sense or conviction of maleness or femaleness; and gender role is the cultural stereotype of what is masculine and feminine. Causality with respect to gender identity disorder is sub-divisible into genetic, prenatal hormonal, postnatal social, and post-pubertal hormonal determinants, but there is, as yet, no comprehensive and detailed theory of causality. Gender coding in the brain is bipolar. In gender identity disorder, there is a discordance between the biological gender of one's external genitalia and the Brain Coding of one's gender as masculine or feminine.

___________Gender Identities & Sexual Orientations___________

May this glossary serve as a beacon of understanding and acceptance, illuminating the path towards inclusivity and compassion. Together, let us continue to expand our vocabulary, embracing the diversity of human experience with open hearts and open minds.