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ZoΓ« Blade's notebook

Gender orientation

𐑑𐑧𐑯𐑛𐑼 𐑹𐑾𐑯𐑑𐑱𐑖𐑩𐑯

Your gender orientation (otherwise known as your gender identity, or simply gender) is the sex your brain needs your body to be. It can be female, male, or nonbinary.

This is the one type of gender that's innate, rather than a social construct.

It's been proven to correlate with neurological sex.[1][2][3] It presumably also correlates with the part of the brain that houses the body map. If it's ever revealed that there's a type of neurological sex that can be determined individually and not just in aggregate, then it will presumably correlate with that too.

Gender orientation was inadvertently proven to be innate by John Money's attempts to prove the opposite. He convinced surgeons to perform an unnecessary vaginoplasty and orchidectomy on the cis, endosex infant David Reimer, and later made him take oestrogen. He similarly convinced surgeons to perform equally unnecessary surgery on countless intersex infants, gave them hormones without their consent, and lied to them about it. Meanwhile, countless transsexual people were just as vehemently denied the hormones and surgery they needed to bring their bodies inline with who they were. In spite of all the gaslighting to the contrary, and all of society's attempts to suppress them, all of these people still knew who they were.

In short, it's been categorically proven that you can't force someone to be a sex that's incongruous with their gender orientation, nor to pretend they have a different gender orientation. That merely gives them gender dysphoria. Rather, you need to let them tell you which gender orientation they are, and help them bring their body inline with it if it isn't already.

In a just society, respecting people's bodily autonomy should go without saying, but as the enduring popularity of John Money's long-since debunked theory shows, our society is still all too often authoritarian.

See also

References

  1. "15. Human Sexual Behavior I" Robert Sapolsky, Stanford, May 2010
  2. "Gender Binary & LGBTI People β€” Myth and Medical Malpractice" Veronica Drantz, Apr 2012
  3. "Transsexual and Intersex Gender Identity" ZoΓ« Brain

Gender and sex: Dysmorphia and dysphoria | Gender dysphoria | Gender orientation | Medical model | Woman