Ha! I knew that would bring the geeks in! Sorry, though. This isn't about computer failure, it's about societal failure.

There's a wonderful discussion going on now in Nick B.'s blog on what it means to be a transsexual. Nick's goal is to publish an article on the 'net that will help dispel ignorance and help promote acceptance.

The root problem, as I see it though, is society's current binary view of gender. It's a rigid view, much of it promoted by religions, who point to their holy books as arbiters of all things, and only choose to read and interpret certain verses in doing so.

A few years ago, I happened to be reading an article in an English newspaper having something to do with religion, and I noticed a sidebar listing all the major religions and denominations in the U.K. Wondering how they would describe various religions in general and my own Judaism in particular, and so I could compare to the U.S., I started clicking on everything and reading the descriptions. When I got to the Quakers, I was suddenly stunned. Here was a religion that seemingly believed in the equality of all people, didn't proselytize that they were the only real, or best religion, and claimed to recognize, and celebrate, the inner spirit of every person, regardless of... pretty much anything!

Okay, before anyone gets too uncomfortable, I'm about to get off the subject of religion and back to the topic. I just have to make one more point. I'll get there in a sec. I checked them out, found a Meeting in my neck of the world, read their Faith and Practice, which is sort of an operating manual for the religion, and just started crying. They welcome all. Straight, gay, transgendered, interracial, everyone. They clearly state that all religions offer a path to spirituality, and they celebrate the spirituality of all people, no matter their method of worship. They not only support gay marriage, they perform them, although our state doesn't recognize them. I felt these people not only represented my views, but I wanted to join them, and support them. In a world of what I viewed (from my limited viewpoint, and I've since learned better) as Christian hostility, bigotry and homophobia, these people were a shining beacon. Later, studying about my new religion, I realized that I'd gone from being the target of antisemites to joining one of the most persecuted Christian denominations in the post-Medieval period. Well, at least I maintained one thread of my heritage. :)

Back to the subject. Fundamentalists, and secular society at present, want to divide all people into two genders. Despite the fact that the Bible says that God created everything and everyone, this seems to be too inconvenient for the prejudices of many Christians, and they judge people who don't fit neatly into these two preconceived categories quite harshly.

The root of the problem is this binary gender model. It fails the reality test. If it could be made to go away, then many related problems would go away, too. Our homophobic society has made great strides in accepting gays over the last couple decades, but still has miles to go. Transsexuals are slowly receiving more recognition and acceptance. Male crossdressers, especially straight ones, are still firmly in the closet. And, intersexed babies are still victims of medical assault without consent, which too often ruins lives because the doctors can't guess the mind of an infant, and randomly assigning a body won't change the mind if you guess wrong.

This binary failure is most obvious and undeniable when it comes to these people who are intersex (IS), or in current terminology, the victims of a Disorder of Sex Development (DSD), a prenatal condition in which something happens to prevent normal development as a 46XX female or a 46XY male. It turns out there are dozens of conditions that can interfere with this, and a larger-than-you-might-imagine number of children are born with some degree of ambivalence in their sex organs or hormonal makeup.

Up until recently, the medical profession attempted to "sort this out" immediately after birth, using a fairly inefficient and barbaric protocol, which guessed wrong sometimes more than half the time, depending on which disorder caused the problem.

We TG folks, TS and CD alike, need to band together, not for our own rights, but to gain recognition for these physically non-conforming people, intersex people who are undeniably the way they are because that's how they were born, that's how God made them. In my opinion, they are the clearest argument against a societal binary model of gender, and an exception that, if accommodated, will make the M/F dichotomy on public records and in public life, an archaicism. Once that strict binary view of gender is forced to accept an exception, it will begin to crumble, and I think our lives will become better, too.