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Complexity of the concept of gender

08/17/2024, 20:40:00 – Talking about gender science based and open minded, sharing views of Jack Turban from The New York Times, July 8th, 2024 essay: I’m a Psychiatrist. Here’s How I Talk toTransgender Youth and Their Families About Gender Identity.

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 The longer I am involved as a therapist in the field of gender, the more I am finding out how diverse and complex the understanding of gender for each of us is.

Psychiatrist Jack Turban shares some of his views related to gender, I am respectfully sharing (Jack Turban: I’m a Psychiatrist. Here’s How I Talk toTransgender Youth and Their Families AboutGender Identity. The New York Times, July 8th, 2024).

"Gender identity is neither just biology nor just a social construct. There’s dramatic variability in how people experience gender identity beyond cisgender (people who identify as the sex they are assigned at birth) and transgender or male and female." 

 

"The most basic part of gender identity is what I call our transcendent sense of gender. In a way that goes beyond language, people often just feel male or female, and some more strongly than others." Some ofmy young patients draw themselves as a certain gender and have a “wow, this isme” feeling. The transcendent feeling is the foundation of our gender identity, the scaffolding we’re born with." 

 

"The next part of our gender identity is the social domain. As we move through life, we build on the biology of gender identity with language and social experience, influenced by everything from the TV shows we watch to how we interact withclassmates and our families. Maybe you were raised to think women are nurturing, passive and creative while men are assertive and strong, or that dolls are for girlsand football is for boys. However, some people may love ballet and wrestling. Or they may enjoy pickup trucks and knitting. To make it even more complicated, these feelings can evolve over time — the way an 18-year-old college student thinks about her womanhood is likely different from how she thinks aboutit when she becomes a 40-year-old mother of three."

 

The social aspect can cut both ways. For some people, rejecting gender role stereotypes is even more vital to their gender identity than adhering to them. I’ve had patients, for example, who hate the expectations placed on women in American society. They began using they/them pronouns as a way to express rejection of those expectations. However, they loved their birth names and bodies and had no interest in gender-affirming medical interventions." 

 

"The third part of gender identity is the physical domain — how we feel about our bodies. Some people identify as transgender and are happy with their bodies. Others are distressed by their gendered physical attributes. They may feel that their deepening voices or the shapes of their chests are at odds with their senses ofself." 

 

"Gender identity is complex. It’s highly personal, and not everyone thinks about it the same way. To understand other people, we need to be flexible and listen to theirself-conceptualizations, even when their frameworks are different from the ones we’re used to."

 

Jack Turban (@jack_turban) is the director of the gender psychiatry program at the University of California,San Francisco, and the author of the book “Free to Be: Understanding Kids & Gender Identity.”

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