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Overview

In Saint Peter’s Basilica, in Florence, Italy, Galileo Galilei’s middle finger is enshrined in a glass dome. It symbolizes his integrity as he fought for the idea of empirical research and refused to recant it when threatened by others. But that was a more benighted time. Today we don’t go around imposing backward opinions on forward-looking thinkers do we?

Prepare yourself for a story about an activist and researcher who came under fire while defending research on transgender people. In this passage, you’ll learn that being transgendered isn’t as simple as most people think; one psychology professor wanted to change the common view of what it means to be transgendered; and there’s a difference between being transgender and having intersex.

Big Idea #1: Transgenderism describes a distinctly different identity than intersex.

When discussing sexuality, many people get confused by the different terms. You might hear the words “transgender” and “intersex” and wonder what they mean.

First of all, intersex is a term that describes someone with an anatomy that doesn’t correspond to the accepted biological definitions of male and female. An example would be someone who is born with both ovaries and testes.

Throughout history, people who are intersex have had a difficult time. Society has tended to stigmatize them and make them feel guilty about their gender identity. Doctors often performed sex “normalization” procedures on intersex individuals that were invasive and traumatizing. These procedures included removing the clitoris from women who were considered too masculine or injecting hormones into men who were considered too feminine.

The author’s friend, Brian Sullivan, was born with both a uterus and testes. Doctors decided to remove his penis when he was nineteen months old because they thought that he might become fertile as a woman. As Bonnie, she became sexually active but realized later in life that she had no clitoris and couldn’t achieve orgasm.

There are plenty of other examples that prove how normalization efforts can be harmful, and they’ve led to severe dissatisfaction. The term “transgenderism” is related to a person’s gender identity, which means rejecting the gender assigned at birth.

Transgendered people face the opposite problems of those who are intersex. Many transgendered people want to take hormones and undergo sex-change surgeries, but they often have a hard time getting access to them.

The medical industry is heteronormative. It controls what gender people are allowed to be or not be. This presents challenges for both transgendered and intersex people.

Big Idea #2: Transgenderism isn’t an either/or issue; science shows that it is a more nuanced topic.

When someone comes out as transgender, it creates the illusion that they have found their true self. People think Caitlyn Jenner was always a woman trapped in a man’s body, but that’s not necessarily true.

Gender identity is a bit more complicated than one’s physical characteristics. Most people believe that gender identity is dictated by the brain, and that if you have a female brain trapped in a male body, then you are most likely to identify as female.

There are two ways to look at gender. One way is that there are only two genders: male or female. Some people believe that a person’s body and mind don’t always match up, which means that the person may identify as a different gender than their physical body says they should be. When someone transitions from one gender to another, it’s because they’re revealing what their true inner self really is.