May 2014 – In February, Facebook made the startling announcement that it would begin allowing users to identify themselves using any gender they chose. Not either gender, any gender.

Just how many genders does Facebook recognize? Media reports put the number of Facebook options at 58 gender choices. That number included typical identities such as male or female, heterosexual, gay, lesbian or bisexual. But the options also included such obscure categories as “Cisgender,” “Gender Variant,” “Pangender” and “Two-Spirit.”

How can there be 58 genders? What has happened to a human race that used to be clearly delineated by two sexes – male and female?

Brielle Harrison, who worked on the project for Facebook and is “transitioning” from male to female, told the Associated Press: “All too often transgender people like myself and other gender nonconforming people are given this binary option, do you want to be male or female?”

For most Americans, Harrison’s language probably sounds strange. Why isn’t the “binary option” sufficient? What’s the puzzle here? There are men and there are women.

However, a “transgendered” person is an individual who believes his or her biological sex does not reflect what he or she feels like inside. So the big question is: What causes this confusion? Well, no one really knows. While some researchers have speculated that it might be related to prenatal exposure to sex hormones or genetic abnormalities, no studies have verified these theories.

One of the youngest people afflicted with this disorder was a five-year-old boy in the U.K. According to stories in the British press, when Zach Avery turned three years old he suddenly refused to live as a boy anymore, preferring to dress and act like a girl.

Zach’s parents, according to their own statements concerning their struggle, were told by mental health professionals “that although he had a male body, his brain was telling him he was a girl.”

Sex and gender
What does that mean? Why would Zach’s brain tell him something that was not biologically accurate? The answer is related to the definitions of two words: sex and gender.

For most of American history, sex and gender were interchangeable concepts. Male and masculine, female and feminine, were simply the noun/adjective forms of the same idea.

That changed over the last 40 years. Sex and gender were separated; the assertion was that sex was rooted in biology while gender was constructed by society. For example, Milton Diamond, a professor of reproductive biology at University of Hawaii at Manoa, defined the two concepts this way: “The term sex is related to anatomical structure, the term gender is related to an imposed or adopted social and psychological condition.” (Emphasis in original.) 

Of course, this is not totally false. Every society, for example, has certain ideas about what masculinity and femininity are. No doubt the majority of Americans still expect the man to ask a woman out for a date, or expect the man to pay for the date, at least initially. And people usually buy blue clothes for baby boys and pink for baby girls.

But is it a social construction to insist that a man with male genitals is a man and not a woman?

Ripples of revolution
That is precisely what many in the mental health profession believe: It is not always true that sex determines gender. What produced this shift from equating sex and gender to splitting them?

One early factor was undoubtedly the radical feminist movement, which insisted that cultural roles that burdened women were not rooted in biology but were social constructs. For example, a woman is biologically suited to bear and nurse children – that is rooted in her sex. But the idea that because of that reality, a woman must stay at home and not work outside of it was a construction related to gender roles imposed by the culture, feminists said.

The second factor was the sexual revolution as it began the process of overturning traditional views of human sexuality. According to Psychiatrist Richard P. Fitzgibbons and psychologist Philip M. Sutton, it was a controversial sexologist and psychologist from Johns Hopkins University named John Money who was instrumental in promoting the distinction between sex and gender that now governs the debate over the transgendered community.

The sexual revolution as manifested in the homosexual movement was also critical. As this movement began to organize itself in 1969, what would society say about a man who sexually desired another man? For the movement to gain traction with the general public, a gay man could not be forced to stay within the boundaries of biology, which clearly indicated that his sexual organs were made for those of a woman.

Some explanation had to account for the difference between biology and desire, and then the biological realities had to be relegated to a secondary status. In other words, biology should be set aside to accommodate the sexual desire of the person – not vice versa. 

Detaching sex and gender served that purpose. A person’s biology might indicate one thing, but his gender another.

The obvious next step
Money was the first to promote the idea of “gender identity,” said Fitzgibbons and Sutton. The idea of an individual categorizing himself in terms of gender is truly radical, but for many it is now set in concrete.

For example, the Human Rights Campaign, a pro-homosexual pressure group, applauded the move by Facebook to expand its gender categories. HRC President Chad Griffin said, “Over the past few years, a person’s Facebook profile truly has become their online identity, and now Facebook has taken a milestone step to allow countless people to more honestly and accurately represent themselves. Facebook’s action is one that I hope others heed in supporting individuals’ multifaceted identities.” 

Griffin’s reasoning is telling: (1) There are “multifaceted [gender] identities” out there – not merely two. (2) People “represent themselves” any way they choose – regardless of biological facts. (3) Society should “allow” them to do so without question.

This reasoning was also the driving force behind the policy change at Facebook. Alex Schultz, Facebook’s director of growth, told the AP: “Really, there was no debate within Facebook about the social implications at all. It was simple: Not allowing people to express something so fundamental [as gender identity] is not really cool so we did something.”

This buffet-style approach to gender means that the individual picks and chooses what he or she “feels like.” There is no true reality, because biology is secondary, and when it comes to feelings about gender, there are few limits. Facebook’s 58 genders demonstrate this.

But is reality truly malleable when it comes to sex and gender? Biology cannot be submerged quite so easily, can it? A deep voice; a five o’clock shadow; a woman’s breasts; broad and muscular shoulders – these are things that give the game away.

For those pushing the new gender ideology, maybe what’s “really cool” shouldn’t be the standard. Maybe what’s true should be.

Next month: What should society do?  

Want to circulate of this article? Feel free. AFA Journal allows anyone to distribute print or digital copies of articles as long as proper attribution: “Originally published in AFA Journal, May, 2014.” This website also includes an archive of issues.