May/14/2008
What are Congenital Gender Variations ?
Some of us hear the above title and immediately think this is only for Intersex and “other” conditions.
Not so. Let’s break the wording down.
“Congenital” basically means of what we were born with. When I looked up congenital in the Word documents’ thesaurus, they describe it as present at birth, innate, inborn, inherited and hereditary. There is all kinds of Congenital variations including Congenital Heart palpitations, congenital blood disease, congenital diabetes, and so forth. These are examples of something that runs in a family. Then there are the non-heredity conditions such as Klinefelter’s syndrome, limb variations, Turner’s Syndrome and personality traits for an example.
Gender Variations - most think of it as anything outside of the binary xx and xy but in fact it is all the genetic chromosomes. Think of it, xx is a variation as is xxy, xo, xxyy, xxxy, xyy, xy and so on. Even xxy is not in the binary but perhaps a combination of xy and xx or a gender variation in itself, the arguments go on forever. With the chromosome out of the ordinary binary system, we get those who have combined genders (not unheard of in the realm of xxy) or a predominant gender.
There is nothing to fear because in essence, this is the way the societies were built from. Some keep their gender a secret, some reveal only a certain part and some go all out and expose themselves to the menace of the world and society regardless. It’s all good.
In ancient times to present, those with two genders were revelled by mysticism and treated special or burned at the stake. Indian legend talks about a “two spirit” and were sought after to become their spiritual leaders in the forms of medicine men or women. There is a definite advantage to being a two spirit, they can understand not only the two distinct genders, but see the world though a combined thought which encompasses not only the male and female, but an extra understanding. The world can certainly use more of those as each gender have blinders to certain things.
So really, we are all a Congenital Gender variation, even those who are born xy male and born xx female.
I think it’s time we stop assuming what relatively new things are and start looking into what their function(s) are without frightful assumptions that only serve to push people away without reason.
2008-04-27 @ 07:32:13 pm
by Andre
Happy to be there with you ...
2008-04-27 @ 07:05:37 pm
by Boz