(IN)SANITY
I live in Florida which, according to self-proclaimed “anti-woke” Governor Ron DeSantis, “represents a refuge of sanity and a citadel of normalcy” in a “mad” world. DeSantis proclaimed this statement when he “signed into law the largest slate of anti-LGBTQ bills in one legislative session in the state’s history,” according to Joe Saunders of Equality Florida. Included in this legislation was a bill that “criminalizes anyone who uses a toilet or changing facility that doesn’t match the gender they were assigned at birth” (Villareal).
Perhaps “sanity” and “normalcy” are subjective terms, but using a bathroom doesn’t strike me as strange and criminalizing that usage doesn’t seem like a rational response. This attitude is at best absurd and at worst an abuse of power that uses harmful rhetoric and prejudicial legislation to demonize and dehumanize people who don’t fit neatly into binary categories of sex and gender. These either/or classifications persist and infiltrate almost every aspect of our personal and social lives – we’re born into them and many people spend all of their lives not giving them a second thought… people except those familiar with the rainbow of natural diversity – those who know that “nature abhors a category” (Roughgarden, 26).
Ecologist and evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden reflected that “To most people, ‘sex’ automatically implies ‘male’ or ‘female.’ Not to a biologist” (33). Our pre-conditioned concepts of binary are turned upside-down when considering that in the plant and animal kingdoms, the most common bodily forms encompass both male and female sexes either simultaneously or fluidly throughout their lives. There are also many species that display multiple genders in addition to various sex forms. A series of studies at John Hopkins Hospital concluded that “sex was a label that could be (re)assigned” (Zheng, 8).
In addition to the variety of sexual diversity found in biology, the rainbow of gender identification and experience spans across the world and throughout history. In fact, the very concept of gender was not uniformly and universally found in all global cultures; societies the world over have recognized other genders beyond man and woman. We can trace this back to ancient Egypt with hieroglyphs that point to “sekhet” as a third gender, and the pre-1500s CE where we find the concept of “Two-Spirit” in Indigenous North American culture – so why are we conditioned with the either/or? We have the early spread of Christianity to thank for that, as it propagated the Judeo-Christian concept of gender binary and imposed it upon world cultures through colonization. This view ramped up and bolstered in the 1900s and beyond, persisting in the gender norms we know all too well in present day.
Biology and world history make it clear that sex and gender are varied and do not fall into specific and restrictive binaries of male/female and man/woman. However, the powers-that-be eschew these scientific truths and instead opt to organize by category, perpetuating the either/or “on every level of society, from how children are taught gendered behavior and recreate it to how larger communities, organizations, and societal institutions reproduce and reinforce the separation of man and woman” (Zheng, 10).
One might ask: It’s the way things are and we’re all used to it – where’s the harm? Consider this: 7% of all Americans identify as bisexual, gay, or lesbian. Almost 2% of American adults are nonbinary or transgender, and many Americans (up to 44%) know someone who identifies as such. The Pew Research Center gathered these statistics in 2022, representing an uptick compared to a prior survey, so it’s safe to assume that these numbers have increased again. Homosexuality was listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a “mental illness” until 1987 (Richard-Craven). In recent years, 90% of transgender Americans reported that they either experienced discrimination in the workplace or hid their identity in hopes of avoiding it. The concept and enforcement of the either/or binary matter very much to those who don’t ascribe neatly to its definitions and demands.
At the intersection of science and society, we find that the pervasive (and false) narrative of binary overshadows actual biology. Our framework and institutions are ”constructed with strong cultural tendencies to assume that gender identity is binary and always corresponds to assigned sex at birth” (Zheng, 10). Cultural imperative in the form of essentialism dictates what is “normal” and expected of those born as either male or female, and does not tolerate the ambiguity or fluidity found in the liminal space between binaries. These fixed and unforgiving categories do not bend for “human imagination or experimentation” and refute the reality that, for many of us, our desires and identities are “continually being shaped throughout our lives, in the very specific contexts in which we discover and rehearse them” (Ambrosino).
Humans are social animals, biologically wired for connection. It’s essential for our species that we are accepted by the “in-group,” for in this belonging we find safety, security, and survival. But for the person who doesn’t ascribe to socially- and culturally-imposed binaries, they face a painful choice: “paying a psychological price for the relative safety of invisibility, [or] paying a potential social and economic price for being open about one’s identity” (Gattuso). Science shows us that sex is not inherently binary, and history reminds us that neither is gender. What is “mad” in the world is the denigration and punishment of those who do not conform to rigid categories. Free and fluid expression is a natural aspect of the myriad forms of identity in the vibrant rainbow of life.
BORNE INTO BOXES
I didn’t plan on having a child… ever. I was a cat and dog mom and an Auntie, and was perfectly content in those roles. I didn’t even think I could have kids because of the endometriosis, ovarian cysts, hormonal treatments, and other complications I endured since my teens. So when I got pregnant in 2012, it was a shocking and disruptive upheaval. I felt no connection with this anonymous conglomerate of cells growing inside of me that was making me so physically sick and mentally and emotionally anguished.
But as the first trimester eased into the second, my bitterness (and nausea) waned. The day I discovered that I was having a girl, I came home to find that a beautiful white lily had bloomed in the backyard – it felt like a sign and also confirmed the name I had chosen for what I now knew was my daughter. Her nursery was painted sage and filled with stuffed animals like ALF and the Muppets. Her closet was filled with pop-culture-themed outfits. Her library was filled with Little Golden Books and other classics. And the life that awaited her was filled with loaded expectations regarding her sex and gender – boxes that all of us are unwittingly and unwillingly borne into, shaping and structuring and defining and confining us.
It was presumed and seemed completely natural that I would find out the sex of my child in the fateful doctor’s appointment that so many expectant parents look forward to. It was an exciting milestone both in my pregnancy journey and in the planning for my child’s life outside of the womb. Twelve years later, I have the perspective to ask: What determined her sex to begin with? and more personally: Did I do my daughter a disservice by proactively assigning her the gender that is assumed to correlate with her sex?
When I was pregnant, all I had to go on was my very basic knowledge of XX and XY chromosomes, and that we all start out with the potential for both sexes. I can presume that the Sex-determining Region Y (SRY) gene did not factor into my daughter’s sexual development, as that gene provides a push for male differentiation. So in the absence of SRY, a follicle-stimulating hormone activated the development of her ovaries, which then produced estrogen, and in turn triggered the development from the Müllerian duct of her oviducts, cervix, and uterus (Hake and O’Connor).
But this is just one aspect of how genes interact. It’s humbling and awe-inspiring to consider that “a bewildering number of underlying mechanisms” (Bachtrog, et al) determined the biological sex of my child, including unpredictability and “a cacophony of developmental histories” (Roughgarden, 205) that play into the process of how sex is developed. Additionally, while chromosomes do play a role in determining sex, “environmental factors introduce additional wrinkles into the developmental process” (Hake and O’Connor).
If sex can be perceived as the outcome of relationships among components (to loosely borrow a phrase from Roughgarden), then so too can gender, which is constructed from the integrations and intersections of society, culture, religion, tradition, and the interpretation of biological sex as always being binary and always determining a correlating binary gender. From the moment of conception, we are being fitted for our boxes – biological males in the male gender box; biological females in the female box. This either/or binary classification maintains tidy categories in virtually every aspect of our lives, from athletics to algorithms and even to assumptions made about interpersonal relationships (Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, anyone?)
Our society and rearing also genders personality traits with the expectation that males are stoic, strong providers and females are emotional, maternal caregivers. “As these behaviors are continually performed, they are assumed to be essential gender differences” (Zheng, 51). Legendary entertainer RuPaul quipped we’re all born naked, and the rest is drag, meaning that people “do gender” through a variety of external expressions such as body language and verbal communication, clothing, accessories, hair and makeup, color palettes, and even entertainment – think of how beer and action movies are geared towards men, while rosé and rom-coms are targeted at women.
While I didn’t furnish my daughter’s nursery and closet with pink frills and princesses, learning that her biological sex was female did result in my use of “gendered verbal interactions” and “anticipatory socialization” (Barnes, 187) which manifested as using she/her pronouns, the choice of her formal name, and even just the concept of having and raising a girl/daughter. I was well-intentioned, but didn’t consider that “anatomy is not always destiny” (Barnes, 188)
For as open-minded, progressive, and feminist as I thought myself to be, I only now understand that I still predetermined my daughter’s gender based on my understanding of her biological sex, and reinforced certain social expectations of how that gender would be expressed. The boxes of binary that enclose us create and sustain a world that dictates what are acceptable and normal attributes, inclinations, and behaviors for sex and gender. We can challenge and reject these constraints by honoring all the nuance behind the biology of human development and embracing the myriad forms of sexual identity and gender expression.
SUGAR & SPICE & EVERYTHING NICE
There was a plaque hanging on the wall in my childhood bedroom with the inscription of a 19th century nursery rhyme: What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice. (The other lyric of the rhyme is: What are little boys made of? Snakes and snails and puppydog tails.) Even as a child, I found this sentiment to be absurd. I remember wondering who decided those qualities, and feeling that as a “little girl” myself I was not accurately represented in that description. I didn’t yet understand that expectations that I would be deferential, obedient, mild-mannered, people-pleasing, happy, pretty, thin, chaste, and heterosexual generated not just from how my parents were rearing me but also from long-standing, insidious, and pervasive norms in culture and society.
Like so many other children, I was socialized based on the presumption that because I was assigned the female sex at birth that it meant my corresponding gender was female. It was also presumed that the tidy categorization of binary was appropriate based on the female genital area observed in the ultrasound when I was in utero. But “genetics does not dictate a gender binary,” and even a gendered body is “not constrained by the genetics of sex determination” and is thus “free to adapt evolutionarily” (Roughgarden, 201). It’s erroneous to presume that female or male sex is so clear-cut given that all of us are “as genetically diverse as snowflakes” (Roughgarden, 201).
Individuals are genetically diverse, but males and females are not entirely different biologically. For example, both sexes possess similar hormones such as estrogen and testosterone. These “sex” hormones are actually quite similar to each other chemically, and both males and females can synthesize them all too. Hormones are vital to developmental morphology. In both males and females, estrogen causes breast growth and testosterone causes pubic hair growth. Likewise, the anatomy of the brain is similar for both sexes; some differences are found in aptitude such as verbal fluency for females (thought to be influenced by estrogen) and spatial relation / tasks for males.
Here’s where it gets tricky. These variations in aptitude “can be amplified by social convention… The social character required by an occupation may lead to the belief that an occupation is a ‘man’s job’ [spatial tasks] or ‘woman’s work,’ [verbal fluency] far outweighing differences in native skill” (Roughgarden, 216). This leads me to posit that anticipatory socialization, both in real-time and carried inside of us from all prior generations, impacts our aptitudes as well as orientations.
In many ways, we are prisms that reflect and refract the myriad influences that socialize and shape us. Culture, society, media, education, and peers all play a role, but it can be argued that “parents remain central to the process of gender socialization because they control their children’s exposure to cultural discourses about gender” (Averett, 191). Parents are also the ones controlling the names, pronouns, clothing, decor, books, toys, and behaviors of their children from the very start.
The practices of child-rearing are usually gendered, with emphasis on conforming to gender-normative behavior. This comes with a baked-in assumption that gender conformity is linked to heterosexuality – even though there is no proveable correlation that gender-normative behavior in early years predicts a child’s future sexual identity. But that’s not stopping so many parents from molding their children into what they want them to (and think they should) be.
Take clothing, for example. Just as it’s presumed that spatial skills correlate to a “man’s job” (e.g. construction worker) and verbal fluency correlates to “woman’s work” (e.g. schoolteacher), so too are colors and clothing assigned to gender. But oddly enough, before the 19th century, there were no color options for babies – they all wore white gowns that were practical, functional, and universal. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, gender-designated colors emerged, but with a twist: pink was suggested for boys and blue for girls. This only changed when clothing manufacturers and department stores reversed those color correlations in the 1940s and since then, those gendered colors have been cemented in the collective social and cultural consciousness.
University of Maryland Professor Jo Paoletti explains that clothes are associated with gender when “their pattern of use [lines] up with concepts and cultural norms that we assume are unambiguously connected to a specific gender” (PBS Origins). Hence little girls in frilly pink dresses that are preparing those “little princesses” for their presumed feminine roles where they will perform gender with emphasis on appearance, beauty, and caregiving, and little boys in practical blue overalls that are readying these “tough guys” for their masculine gender roles as stoic, strong, providers.
From the very beginning, the influence of gender binary is at play in a person’s life. It’s an all-encompassing force that “establishes a set of cultural presumptions about one’s gendered preferences, expressions, and identity relative to an assigned sex” (Rahilly, 356). The ultimate result of this entire process of socialization is an individual’s sense of self – thus little boys are raised for “snakes and snails and puppydog tails” (gender- and hetero-normative masculinity) and little girls are brought up as “sugar and spice and everything nice” (gender- and hetero-normative femininity). That plaque on my bedroom wall served as a sort of challenge; a catalyst that propelled me into an adolescence that rebelled against what was expected of me as not just a girl, but a good girl. No dolls, no frills, no pink, no princess mindset – I refused to conform then and now. We owe our children so much more than these pre-packaged gender norms. By acknowledging all the ways that we are biologically similar and by awakening to the presumptuous dictates of society and tradition, we can expand gender expression and identity beyond the binary and into free, flexible, individual authenticity.
NORMAL & WORTHY
I came of age in the early 1990s, reared by repressive and dysfunctional “old-fashioned” Roman Catholics. Puberty wasn’t explained to me, nor was any other facet of my body or developing identity. Gender was either male or female, sexuality was hetero, and that was that. The extent of sex-ed at my Catholic school was sole emphasis on binary gender and biological sex (using Adam and Eve as the source of “truth”) and heterosexual intercourse that was strictly for procreation. Anything that strayed from a strict heteronormative binary was a “sin” and out of the question. It was also out of the conversation at home, so I had to cobble together an understanding on my own through media influences and years of exploration and experience.
Many people (including me) say that you couldn’t pay them to go back to puberty, that period of transition between childhood and adulthood that is marked by such significant growth. There are three “endocrine events” (Blakemore, et al) that comprise puberty. First is adrenarche, the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis to release hormones. Second is gonadarche, when the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis is at play; the follicle-stimulating and luteinizing hormones are produced with the purpose of maturing gonads and developing secondary sexual characteristics such as enlarged breasts, and the growth of facial hair and pubic hair. Finally there is the pubertal growth spurt, resulting in changes in the composition and size of adolescent bodies. The pubertal growth spurt is responsible for causing “high rates of suicidal ideation, suicidality, depression, anxiety, and substance use due to social hostility, harassment, bullying, and [associated] stressors” (Poran). Puberty is also a time of “profound changes in drives, motivations, psychology, and social life” (Blakemore, et al) for adolescents.
During my youth in the 1980s and ‘90s, “gay” was a prevalent pejorative and being anything other than heterosexual and gender-conforming meant you were portrayed in entertainment as insane or a killer (Basic Instinct, Silence of the Lambs), a token best friend used as a prop by a heteronormative peer (Clueless), and demoralized, demonized, or reduced to a joke (Ace Ventura, Mrs. Doubtfire, Soapdish, The Crying Game). These tropes persist in present-day and couple with “an environment of school, family, and peer life that is often hostile to notions of sexuality and gender diversity” (Poran) – it is through this lens of perception (driven by the binary norms enforced by society) that so many young people learn about gender and sexuality as they are going through puberty.
Both within the family and outside of the home, “gender intensification pressures youth to adhere to dominant… norms of gender; bodily developments are then measured and experienced in relation to those norms” (Poran). At the crucial time of puberty, an adolescent experiences heightened awareness and development of their bodies and identities. “Kids who don’t fit the perfect boxes [imposed by the gender binary dominant in society] are often left asking themselves what the truth is” (Johnson, 1).
Gender dysphoria is when a person feels “marked incongruence between the expressed or experienced gender and the biological sex at birth” (Kaltiala-Heino, et al). This can cause anxiety, confusion, distress, and depression – all compounded by familial and social environments, bodily changes, and blossoming potential for romantic relationships with peers. Of significant note, “adverse parental reactions toward an adolescent’s gender nonconformity have been noted as a special risk… [for] negative psychological outcomes” including not just overall mental health but also risk-taking behaviors and homelessness (Kaltiala-Heino, et al).
The Trevor Project is the leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention nonprofit organization for young people who identify as LGBTQ+. In 2023, it reported that less than 40% of LGBTQ+ youth felt that their home is LGBTQ-affirming, and 41% of LGBTQ+ youth seriously considered suicide. This is shocking, disturbing, and I believe preventable through intervention and support at home. Young people deserve compassion and care; to feel that they are worthy of belonging and love. It starts by caregivers creating a family environment that is an open and nonjudgmental safe space, free of shame. This includes learning together through a “gender conscious perspective that provides a fuller space to talk about gender pressures and gender identities, and to discuss that bodies do not mean how one relates to that body and/or that one must identify as the culture expects one” (Poran).
And for young people struggling with gender dysphoria, it’s crucial to have caregivers who not only listen with empathy and an open heart, but also support them with quality healthcare options such as gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues (known as GnRHA therapy) that temporarily suppress the process of puberty. This is a completely reversible therapy that delays the developments resulting from puberty, which gives the young person time to reflect and “explore gender identities without the pressure of dysphoria associated with gender-incongruent physical development” (Turban, et al). Throughout puberty, I was riddled with confusion, discomfort, and questions such as: Was it “normal” that I’d rather dress in baggy t-shirts and combat boots than preppy dresses? Was it “normal” that I had butterflies in my stomach for both David Duchovny in The X-Files and Madonna in Dick Tracy? Was I “normal?” I felt out of place within my own body; my very existence was a deep source of shame, exacerbated by a complete lack of empathy and support from my parents. My heart aches for young people struggling with gender dysphoria or any crisis of identity in a world that enforces binary rules and expectations that simply aren’t realistic for the fluid beings that we truly are. Caregivers must display through their actions and words that their children are “normal” just as they are, no matter what. They can do this by creating safe spaces in their homes to offer support and unconditional love for their children, showing them throughout all stages of their development that they are not alone, that it’s okay to have questions or feel confusion, and that however they identify, they are worthy of acceptance, care, respect, and belonging.
MARS & VENUS
Once upon a time, Martians (an entirely male species) peered through telescopes and spied Venusians (an entirely female species). The Martians were immediately enamored with the Venusians and, spurred on by this love at first sight, they swiftly created the means to traverse space and go from their home planet of Mars to Venus to unite with their beloveds. The Martians and Venusians lived in blissful harmony and one day decided to relocate to Earth. Things were fine for a short while until the atmospheric conditions on Earth caused amnesia for the Martians and Venusians, making them forget that they were from their own respective planets and were therefore meant to be different. “And since that day, men and women have been in conflict.” So concludes relationship counselor John Gray’s fairy-tale thesis that serves as the bedrock for his book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus which became a cultural phenomenon when it was released in the early 1990s.
This theme is the core of Gray’s relationship advice: “remember that your partner is as different from you as someone from another planet.” According to Gray, these inherent differences between men and women include communication, intimacy needs, “loving attitudes,” methods of coping with stress, motivation, ways of arguing and keeping score, and values. Gray also assumes that a partnership is heterosexual, monogamous, and between a cis-gender man and a cis-gender woman. It may be incredulous to some that Gray’s ideas actually had traction, but Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus has sold over 15 million copies and spawned everything from seminars to stage productions on Broadway and in Europe.
What Gray is proposing is actually nothing new, and fits neatly into the paradigm of binary that is the foundation of our society. The title of cognitive neuroscientist Gina Rippon’s TED Talk says it all: a gendered world makes a gendered brain. Rippon explained that for centuries (before people could actually see and observe the brain), the long-standing narrative has always been that male and female brains are different and consist of the characteristics that define males and females respectively. There was also this notion that “biology is destiny” and therefore “fixed, inevitable, invariant.” Thus, the gendered male or female brain follows “some kind of biological script, inevitably unfolding; reaching a fixed, hard-wired end point.”
Are there differences between male and female brains? Yes – but only superficially. For example, men’s brains are roughly 11% bigger than women’s – but the size of the brain is proportional to the size of the body. When considering individual brain regions, one finds only roughly 1% variance between men and women, “and even these tiny differences are not found consistently across geographically or ethnically diverse populations” (Eliot). There is also a very small difference between men and women in the connectivity between the left and right hemispheres of their respective brains – but there is no sound evidence that this causes any difference in behavior between genders.
Just as the proposition of a gendered brain is refuted by actual science, so too is the insistence that sexuality is innate and driven by the biological imperative of procreation between heterosexual cis-gender men and women – which presupposes that any orientation other than heterosexuality is a deviation from the norm, or strictly dictated by genetics. “Substantial evidence points to both genetic and environmental components in the development of same-sex sexuality. No one who pushes one factor to the exclusion of the other can be correct” (Roughgarden, 248). The experience and understanding of both gender and sexual orientation is highly influenced by cultural norms and are thus “profoundly social” (Silva, 54).
Just as we understand gender to be fluid, “sexual orientation is [also] a continuously distributed characteristic of individuals, and all decisions to categorize it into discrete units, regardless of how many, are ultimately external impositions placed on individuals’ experiences” (Savin Williams, 452). As much as our society loves neat and tidy categorical boxes, those restrictive and constraining views don’t allow for the whole reality of nuance, fluidity, and spectrum. Both sexual orientation and gender are social structures, but those policing the norms want to insist that binary divisions and heterosexuality are what’s “natural.”
From the moment of conception, external forces are writing the script for identities that are appropriate, acceptable, and normal. We learn from all of the influences around us: family, friends, media, school, culture, and society – “the world is a brain influencer” (Rippon). The messaging reads loud and clear: gender is binary, sex is hetero, men have certain traits and roles to play and women have their own. “The brain is a rule scavenger, and it picks up its rules from the outside world. The rules will change how the brain works and how someone behaves. The ‘gender gap’ becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy” (Rippon).
Neuroscience professor Lise Eliot describes the brain as “a sexually monomorphic organ” and that “gendered behavior comes from running different software on the same basic hardware.” Yet even as the brain can be clearly shown to have less differences and more similarities, the gendered narrative persists. John Gray echoes and perpetuates the sexist pedagogy when he insists that “Not only do men and women communicate differently but they think, feel, perceive, react, respond, love, need, and appreciate differently. They almost seem to be from different planets, speaking different languages and needing different nourishment.” The system depends on the narrative; its very survival requires there to be definitions that divide and create power-over dynamics. Confirmation bias is a powerful force – and so too is the patriarchal structure that insists upon, codifies, and relies on the “Mars / Venus” binary.
THE COST OF DISCRIMINATION
Many children are raised with the idea that we are all “unique like a snowflake” and that our special identities should be embraced and celebrated. The beloved Fred Rogers of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” sang to his young audience for over thirty years: I like you as you are / I wouldn’t want to change you / Or even rearrange you / Not by far. However as time goes on, the messaging evolves… “Pink is for girls.” “Quit crying, sissy.” “Daddy’s little princess is gonna grow up and marry her prince and have beautiful babies.” Societal norms dictate that gender is binary and associated with the biological sex that a person is assigned at birth; we were made to “be fruitful and multiply,” thus heterosexuality is the natural and acceptable orientation. These norms are enforced on every level of public and personal life, from the home to media outlets to the workplace. To deviate from these socially-imposed gender and sexual norms is to defy the dominant group, and violations are punitive.
Science shows again and again that binary gender and heterosexuality are not the norm in biological life. The most common bodily forms in the plant and animal kingdoms encompass both male and female sexes either fluidly or simultaneously. Non-heterosexual behavior is rampant in over a hundred mammalian species, almost a hundred bird species, and dozens of species of fish, insects, and reptiles. In primates, homosexuality is so “conspicuous… that it cannot be ignored, resulting in a relatively extensive literature going back to the 1970s” (Roughgarden, 144). Indeed, a rainbow of diversity exists across a brilliant biological spectrum proving that, unlike society, “nature abhors a category” (Roughgarden, 26). Throughout human history around the world, from ancient Egypt to the Indigenous people of North America, we find examples of fluid gender incorporated into diverse cultures. Yet society insists upon restrictive binary categories that infiltrate every facet of our lives “from how children are taught gendered behavior and recreate it to how larger communities, organizations, and societal institutions reproduce and reinforce the separation of man and woman” (Zheng, 10).
Those who do not conform to societal norms of gender and sex feel the sting and impact keenly in the workplace where “a range of discrimination experiences across a large number of organizations [are] caused by ignorance, negligence, fear, and/or prejudice” (Zheng, 145). LGBTQ+ folks face discrimination just by virtue of their identity when “people stereotypically assume that sexual minorities have characteristics that violate traditional gender roles and reflect cross-sex patterns of stereotypic characteristics” (Bryant-Lees and Kite). Gay men are penalized for not conforming to hegemonic masculinity and lesbian women are penalized for not conforming to traditional femininity. “LGBT identity disclosure in the workplace has been linked to increased instances of identity-based workplace bullying, lower pay relative to heterosexuals, difficulties with career advancement, and both hiring and termination decisions” (Bryant-Lees and Kite).
Additionally, 90% of transgender people surveyed report that they have experienced various forms of harassment and mistreatment at work, or have concealed their identity to avoid discrimination. “Non-conformance further results in transgender persons facing discrimination, stigmatization, and social rejection in response to a transphobic perception that their gender expression does not match their expected gender identity based upon their sex assigned at birth” (Winiker, et al.).
Mistreatment at work can lead to or worsen depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. It also causes or exacerbates anxiety and stress. Discrimination can lead to internalized stigma and compromised self-esteem. And since mind and body are inextricably connected, all of this mental anguish inevitably wreaks havoc on a person’s physical health as well, causing problems with appetite, sleep, headaches, muscle tension, and cardiovascular issues.
It is absolutely crucial that individuals and organizations are properly educated “to replace people’s negative, stereotypical, and inaccurate representations of [LGBTQ+ folks] as sexually deviant, predatory, morally lacking, undesirable, and unprofessional with more realistic ones” (Zheng, 151). Scientific findings prove that “genetics does not dictate a gender binary,” and even a gendered body is “not constrained by the genetics of sex determination” and is thus “free to adapt evolutionarily” (Roughgarden, 201). Simply put, there is nothing “abnormal” about a person who doesn’t conform to society’s strict rules about gender and sex.True science refutes the concept of a gendered brain, as well as the view that sexuality is innate and that heterosexuality is the natural (read: normal) orientation. Thus, we should hold the scientific community “professionally responsible for refuting claims that homosexuality is unnatural. The dereliction of this responsibility has caused homosexual people to suffer persecution as a result of a false premise of ‘unnaturalness’” (Roughgarden, 128). Humans are social animals, neurobiologically wired for connection. Social exclusion is a threat and a danger to health. The cost of discrimination in the workplace is high, and LGTBQ+ folks are burdened by the toll it takes on their overall well-being.
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