despite what certain christian apologists may argue, this genetic v. environment debate is largely rejected altogether by science. christian apologists? well, this you-don't-have-a-choice nonsense is not science but a "progressive" opinion coming out of the religious fundamentalism of everybody following "god's plan". if you paid close attention in sunday school, this denial of agency in gender roles should be entirely logical to you. yet, it's truly hard to make sense of it, otherwise.
remember: i'm not a christian progressive. i'm an anarchist. so, i have a strong attachment to the idea of a tabula rasa. my politics make no sense if we're all genetically determined. if that were true, i'd have to concede to some conservative concept of "human nature" and fall into the standard hobbesian apologism for deep totalitarianism. i readily concede that humans are assholes, but i blame capitalism and not biology. that's the point of being an anarchist: that abolishing capitalism will abolish this right-wing concept of "human nature" and allow us the freedom to decide how and what we want to be. if we have no way out of this, we're stuck with the police state - and the most violent forms of repression and surveillance become justified. i don't have any patience for this middle-of-the-road liberal nonsense: we can either transcend capitalism or we can't.
and, i believe that we can. but, we need to be able to change. the technically correct statement comes from chomsky: we don't yet understand humans well enough to know if we have a nature or not. yeah, well you probably fell for a strawman. your source probably sucks, and that's your epiphany, there. the term is currently meaningless. but, the way it's thrown around has to essentially be right-wing propaganda. otherwise, just give me a gun and get the fuck off my lawn.
so, because i'm an anarchist and not a christian progressive, my biases are towards tabula rasa rather than genetic predetermination. and, because i don't get my science from left-wing political rallies, i've run into quite a bit of push back on my refusal to uphold certain types of loaded sloganeering. let's be clear on that point.
real scientists will tell you that there's no evidence for a genetic basis for gender nonconformity. in fact, it's not even considered to be a psychological condition, let alone a genetic one. think of it like this: suppose your daughter wants to wear pants. nobody even cares anymore. you might even buy your daughter pants without even thinking about it. but, suppose your son wants to wear a dress. well, that's seen as some kind of mental illness. the only mental illness here is repressed misogyny in the parents! yet, i'll acknowledge that it's an empirical question. sort of. what do the studies say?
the truth is that they're all terrible. one of the studies you see thrown around to argue it's genetic relies on the reversal of flawed notes. so, the doctor that did the study has acknowledged that he falsified data and even sexually assaulted the participants. such a study ought to be completely discarded. instead, advocates of the genetic theory just negate all of the notes. this is their core argument. see, the staunch truth is that this is the best they can do in terms of presenting evidence in favour of a genetic basis for gender non-conformity. they may also throw some studies about twins at you, but if you look at the data closely it invariably actually contradicts their argument.
what i can't make sense of is why any scientifically literate person would consider it to be a valid hypothesis in the first place. it's behavioural. genes don't code for behaviours. that's religious thinking. but, in the sense that it remains an empirical question, i need to see a properly designed study. unfortunately, such a study would no doubt be unethical.
i can accept some concept of hormonal imbalance as a complicating factor, but i remain convinced that the issue is primarily environmental. so, we have another straw man: i'm arguing it's a choice and that conversion therapy should be attempted. which is completely ridiculous...
the argument that we are shaped by our environment is not in any way the same as the argument that we have a choice in our sexual orientation or sexual identification. that should not need to be stated. i often have a difficult time arguing this point, because i can't even make sense of the implication. the reason, again, is that i'm not a christian progressive. i'm an anarchist. the only reason you would come up with such a ridiculous assertion is if you're framing the issue in terms of a religious debate. so, these christians come at you with this idea that it's a choice and you're evil or something (i don't even know...), and your response is "no. it's genetic.". so, if i'm rejecting the idea that it's genetic, i'm taking the side of the christians you're arguing with.
i've made this argument about nihilism. i've been accused of nihilism, because i'm so openly atheist. but, an atheist cannot even make sense of nihilism, because it's framed in religious terms. likewise, i cannot make sense of these arguments from progressives because they are framed in religious terms.
so, no i don't think it's a choice. not exactly. i think it's a consequence of the stochastic processes of the universe. see, that's another atheist thing: i believe in chaos and randomness. your life is not determined by some supernatural force. you were not "programmed" by anything or anyone. you are a consequence of chance, and may have come out entirely differently had certain events in your life been different.
so, when i think back to being a girly boy at the age of four or five, i think it's obvious that the reason is that i spent all of my time with girls. i had a mother, a grandmother, two aunts, a sister, a female cousin and little girls living in the houses around me. dad was around, but kind of distant. that's not genetic, and it's not a choice. it's just a function of chance. if i had an uncle or a boy cousin or there was a little boy across the path, things may have been different.
but, that doesn't mean it's a good idea to enforce an arbitrary gender binary, either. remember: not a christian progressive. an anarchist. i reject the nuclear family, too.
the recurring dream places me in a field with a baseball glove. it was t-ball, technically, not baseball. i'm very young - 4. 5. i'm supposed to be paying attention, waiting for a ball from the sky, but i don't really care. i'm more interested in picking flowers. well, i'm in a field. that's what i usually do when i'm in a field with my grandmother. a ball rolls by me, and i choose not to respond to it. my dad whirls in in a rage, scoops me up and brings me to the car. he's ashamed. that's the dream: remembering his shame.
it's a quiet drive back to my mom's.
when we get home, he takes me out of the car, walks me to the door and promises he'll never make me stand in a field by myself ever again.
--
my parents were both libertarians, although they wouldn't have identified that way. my mom was a poorly educated white person, and had political perspectives (or lack thereof) that would be stereotypically associated with a poorly educated white person - support for social services and redistribution, peppered with a lot of xenophobia and social exclusion. not so much into the gays. but, my grandmother was far more liberal (small and big l - card carrying, in fact) and had a bigger effect on me. my mom struggled with addictions and would disappear for weeks at a time. i have almost no recollection of the elder trudeau, other than that my grandmother loved him and my mother hated him.
my dad wasn't really white, but he was more of the typical canadian - "fiscally conservative and socially liberal". he was, for a time, this strange canadian political animal: a progressive conservative. not an old tory. a pc, meaning he had strong support for progressive social policies but demanded that they be paid for through responsible taxation. you could maybe call him a tax and spend liberal, except to point out that he demanded the tax as much as the spend, which is usually a straw man when applied to liberals (who don't actually care about deficits). he was the only person i've ever met that was in support of the gst in the 90s - because he didn't want to see spending cuts. he voted for kim campbell, and defended it until the day he died. yet, he was also in the group that was highly critical of the reform party and never dropped his opposition to harper, instead opting for the right-leaning side of the liberal party. his perspective on social issues was always staunchly libertarian, whether he ever really realized it or not. the gays never bothered him, so he didn't bother them. the chinese never bothered him, so he didn't bother them. the blacks....well, maybe they bothered him a couple of times, but it's better to just get out of their way.
the point is that they were both into hands-off parenting. i had huge free rein from a very young age. this is another reason why i'm decidedly gen x: they were both very opposed to helicopter parenting and very much into letting me develop "naturally". i've grown up as an advocate of free range parenting, as well (i am an anarchist, after all). but, i think that this perspective is important to point out in the environment v genetics debate.
the reason is that the assumption was always that i'd grow out of it - which is genetic determinism. after all, i have male chromosomes, so my inner male tendencies should eventually over power and i'll in the end grow into a man. i'm just being a kid.
what i was trying to get across in my liner notes is that this is a type of naturalistic fallacy. in the end, i would not just magically become a boy in the absence of any instruction due to genetic determinism. but, it leaves open the question: if there was stronger instruction, might i have?
i don't know. i really don't.
what i do think that i can state with a lot of certainty is that the segregation was a bad idea, and i reacted pretty strongly to it. my parents never did this, but the school system did. the more that the teachers told me i wasn't allowed to be a girl, the more i insisted upon it. but, if you understand kids, you know that's how kids are - they want what they can't have, and the more you say "no" the more they push back.
i would propose that the error in approach was less in telling me what i can't be and more in failing to teach me what i "ought" to be. "you can't have this candy" is one thing. "have this apple instead" is another. the kid can't just magically fill in the blank that it should have an apple instead of the candy, it just dwells on not having the candy. the apple has to be presented as an option before it can be accepted.
of course, the apple can also be rejected. might i have rejected the apple and insisted on the candy? see, if you take my position on this, you have to realize that this is not pre-determined. the choices i would have made would not have been in a vacuum - they would have depended on the people around me. i can't consequently know if i would have rejected the apple had it been presented to me. i can just point out that it was never really presented. i was just told i can't have the candy.
and, yes i do think this is the right way to think about gender roles in kids.
so, i'm left with a complicated set of alternate outcomes:
1) had the system not tried to beat the girl out of me,
a) i might very well have grown out of it on my own.
b) or, i might have grown into it younger.
that would have depended on the environment around me. but, at least i wouldn't have internalized it and it wouldn't have become this thing i struggled with.
2) on the other hand, had the system more rigorously enforced maleness in addition to penalizing femaleness,
a) i may have been more effectively masculinized.
b) or the internalization may have been that much worse.
i think the key thing is in rejecting 2a) as some kind of ideal. this "ought" ought not be an ought. randomness is what it is. shit happens. but, kids need positive reinforcement one way or the other, and the ability to make these choices in a way that is free of shame or coercion.
so, i can't say what choices i would have made in the absence of coercion. i can only point out how the presence of coercion affected the choices i did make.
