Gender is a complex affair
She was born a girl but believed that she was a boy. Any time she raised this in the family they dismissed her, laughed at her, and even rebuked her. PHOTO| FILE
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But a year down the line things seemed to have changed. It was for this reason she came to see me. “Please call me Lucia, not Jeremy,” she said.
“Surprising. Why Lucia again?” I asked, confused. “Is your mind now in agreement with your body?”
She shook her head. There was palpable quietness in the room. Then she said, “It is all very confusing. I sometimes feel like a girl and sometimes like a boy,” she confessed.
It was the second time I was seeing Jeremy. I had attended to her a year earlier just after she turned 18. Back then, she had come to me for a sex change operation.
She was born a girl but believed that she was a boy. Any time she raised this in the family they dismissed her, laughed at her, and even rebuked her. “A demon has entered your head!” her elder brother would tell her.
She would wear boy’s clothes. She preferred playing football with the boys over sitting around with girls.
At puberty, her menses came. She developed breasts. There was no hair distribution on her face. Nothing in her physique caused any doubts about her being a girl.
But her mind was that of a boy. She found comfort in behaving like a boy and had it not been for her parents’ insistence, she would have gone to a boy’s secondary school. The moment she turned 18 and out of her mother’s house to live in a college hostel she decided to live her life like a boy. When she came to see me for the first time she had decided to change her name from Lucia to Jeremy to reflect her perceived gender.
But a year down the line things seemed to have changed. It was for this reason she came to see me. “Please call me Lucia, not Jeremy,” she said.
“Surprising. Why Lucia again?” I asked, confused. “Is your mind now in agreement with your body?”
She shook her head. There was palpable quietness in the room. Then she said, “It is all very confusing. I sometimes feel like a girl and sometimes like a boy,” she confessed.
THE NATURE OF GENDER IDENTITY
Well, that is the nature of gender identity. On the surface, we are either male or female and usually, our brains agree with our physical bodies. Then there are those men and women who have a tendency to do what is normally the preserve of the opposite sex but yet maintain their gender identity in conformity with their anatomical bodies. Some may be cross-dressers, meaning that they like wearing clothes meant for the opposite sex without necessarily feeling like they belong to that other gender.
There are people who, though carrying male or female bodies, have brains that have no gender orientation. They are gender neutral and would not exactly want to be a man or woman at any point. They are therefore genderless.
Then there are people with the physical body of one gender and the brain of another gender. They may be male physically, but in their heads they are female. They do not feel comfortable in their current physical bodies. These are transgender people. Most of them only feel comfortable after their physical bodies are changed through surgery to match their brains.
There are definitely other gender identities. There are people who feel like they belong to both sexes. Their brains are made in such a way that they feel like male at one point and like female at other times.
“That sounds just like just what I am!” Lucia interrupted, her face beaming. She explained that when her family forced her to remain a girl, she was totally dissatisfied. The moment she went to university and had her freedom to behave the way she wanted, she jumped head on into being a boy only to discover that it was not exactly what she wanted. She would sneak back to her female self and that was gratifying for a while then again slip back to her male self. Her gender was therefore mixed.
The world around us has predetermined only two gender groups: male and female, based on the biological appearance of our bodies. Other forms of gender identity are vehemently rejected and stigmatised. The resulting opposition is many times too strong for affected individuals to bear, and a number have committed suicide.
Well, Lucia was different because she had a strong will and pushy personality so she could tolerate the difficult social circumstances her type of people face.
“But am really grateful for the explanation, you have provided,” she said as she stood to leave. “Now that I know my gender I will see how to navigate the social complexities around it.”
As she walked out of the door, I wondered what her sexual orientation was; maybe she was heterosexual when feeling like a female and a lesbian when feeling like a male? It is all very complicated.
