Metamorphosis- Growing up with Turner Syndrome

8. One X - less female? - Gender identity and Differences of Sexual Development

Especially nowadays, gender identity is a very sensitive subject. Yet, I would say, that I really do not care as much about gender identity, as many others seem to. I wrote this chapter, in order to explain why the importance of the concept "gender identity" might be overestimated. I however do know for a fact, that many, maybe even most women with TS would disagree with me at some point while reading this chapter. I am therefore, even more, than in any of the other texts, just expressing my very personal opinion here.

I have always felt like an outsider, just as many girls with TS seem to, a feeling I have described in chapter six more in depth. During puberty, I slowly understood, that my body was somehow different from other's and all of these physical differences, maybe even many differences in behaviour, were caused by a lack of female sex hormone. I would also point out, that I had these kinds of thoughts only occasionally and far later in my adolescence than you would probably expect. Still, it is a realization, which will hit everyone hard. It is not just about infertility, although infertility alone might be enough to cope with. "Regular" women experience infertility, too, and quite often so. The important thing is rather the fact, that every single cell in one's body, even the very wiring of the brain, differs slightly from what is considered typically female. This most certainly lead me to question briefly, whether I was "female" at all, which is also common for any girl with TS. It however did not make me question, whether I was comfortable with being addressed by female pronouns. And this is something I should probably explain a bit more closely.

You have surely come across the idea, that gender is fluid. I am somewhere on that spectrum between typically male and typically female, as is anyone else. At least this holds truth, if you define "gender" as the way you act, how you feel about your identity, the gender you can relate to most, or the social expectations you do or do not meet. I have actively searched for someone on the internet accurately explaining, what people mean by saying they "feel like they are male, female or intersex", because this concept seems to be beyond my capability to grasp. At least that is, what I thought. What I got were quite a few individuals describing how they could relate more to the way persons of a given gender thought, or they met the social expectations of one gender, or the other, or none of these. They just "knew". I might be wrong here, but all these explanations really made me suspect, that none of these people would have given their "gender identity" a second thought if they were living somewhere alone in the woods. It also made it seem, like one's gender identity can partly be subconsciously defined by the environment you grow up in and the people you interact with in early childhood, especially your parents. Whole groups of six- year olds deciding at the exact same point in time they identify as trans are not unheard of. "Non- binary" people, who have typical sex- chromosomes and feel quite comfortable in their body typical for their sex assigned at birth are not unheard of. So what is "gender identity"? Can any emotion, any concept really be that difficult to explain? – Well, obviously, it can be. My current opinion is, that "gender identity" is just a concept trying to explain how you interact with others in social situations. How you feel you fit into the social constructs of typically male or female. You might or might not believe, that one's "gender identity" is something every single person to ever walk this earth has at least briefly thought about. I however do not think so. In contrast to "sex drive", which is innate and instinctive for most humans (and sexual orientation together with that, of course, think about the gay pinguines), gender identity is a concept, which was in my opinion created by Western societies. It tries to put a label on one's personality instead of body, forcing a person into one out of three (instead of just two) boxes. (Quite litterally- here in Germany, we have for a few years had "divers" as a gender option equal to male or female- which is supposed to include everyone from the non- binary/ intersex to even the trans (!)- population. Often, this is talked about as the "third gender", using exactly that expression). Something, that could be as simple, as just living your life however you please and being addressed with one or the other personal pronoun without giving it a second thought, is suddenly made incredibly hard to grasp.