THE FIRST QUESTION I ask each new cohort of transition year students taking my gender studies module is always the same: “What is gender? Define it for me.”
There is an immediate shift of energy in the room. This is something they know is dangerous territory. They have heard a range of opinions on the topic and followed various related controversies in the media.
Everyone has an opinion: parents, social media influencers, favourite authors and even teachers taking court cases in the name of religion. Some students already have strong views on the question of gender, but it is something they are very slow to talk about due to their very real care for the transgender student also sitting in the room.
“Go on,” I say. “Don’t be afraid of saying the wrong thing. We all know what gender is, don’t we? So, define it for me as best you can. Explain it to me as if I was a five year old.”
A few minutes later, I set a second task: “This time I want to know what sex is.” The class laughs. “No, not what ‘having sex’ is; we’ll talk about that in a few weeks. I mean your sex, the sex that you are. What is it? Define it for me.”
And the third question then follows: “So then what’s the difference between sex and gender?” Five years ago, when I first developed this course, it took a whole 80-minute class to tease these questions out. Now, it takes 10 minutes.
The current generation of young people in Ireland is clear on this: sex is determined by biology. It’s a scientific classification and apart from about 1.7% of the global population, (around the same number of people born with red hair) who have biological traits of both sexes, biology splits humans into two categories, those that have female sex organs, women and those who have male sex organs, men.
Gender, on the other hand, is social, not biological. It is how we interact with the world because of our sex. It is expressed through gender norms, the set of expected behaviours that different cultures and communities in human society reinforce in their children so that they grow up behaving in the manner that each society has decided is appropriate for them.
Historically, in western society, there were just two genders, and the traits and behaviours associated with these two genders were taught to children, directly based on their sex. So, for a long time, sex and gender were synonymous with each other, and the words were used interchangeably.
Sex was gender and gender was sex and so now, many adults can’t answer those three questions that my transition year students can address so articulately after 10 minutes of guided discussion.
The next question I ask is, “What is it to be trans?” They’re on it immediately: a transgender person (or trans person) is someone whose sex does not correspond to the gender they know and feel to be right for them. In other words, the way they’re expected to perform socially because of their sex, does not feel natural. It does not feel like it’s who they are; they know it isn’t who they are.
At this stage the class starts to relax into the discussion and people open up a bit.
“Is it linked to sexual orientation?” a student asks.
“No. It’s totally separate,” the trans student answers.
“Do they all want to change their bodies?” the first student asks. “Some do but not all.”
They look at me; it’s my turn to speak: “Some transgender people experience what’s called gender dysphoria, when the difference between their biological sex and their gender identity can cause them varying levels of distress and they need psychological or medical support to help them through that. And whereas all people who experience gender dysphoria commonly identify as transgender, it’s important to know that not all transgender people need their physical body to match their gender identity.”
We take a moment to make sure we all understand this before continuing.
“So, then what’s non-binary?” a student asks.
Another student explains: “Non-binary is when neither gender represents who you are and how you feel, or when who you are needs to be expressed in some ways that are traditionally male, as well as in other ways that are traditionally female.”
“Then aren’t we all a little non-binary nowadays?”
“Well, no, actually,” I clarify, “some men feel absolutely comfortable expressing themselves exactly as they’ve been traditionally taught, behaving exactly as society has always expected them to behave; the same goes for some women and it’s important we respect those men and women’s experience also.
“Just because it’s traditional, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. But you are right; the traditional ideas society had about gender norms are also changing and becoming more flexible, not just for trans and non-binary people, but for everyone.”
Irish society has changed utterly since the late 20th century. As a country, the majority of us now not only tolerate, but celebrate various sexual orientations, accepting that who you’re sexually attracted to is not a “lifestyle choice” but part of your innate being.
But what many of us are slower to accept is that the same goes for gender identity. None of us gets to choose whether or not we are going to feel like ourselves in the gender identity we have been raised as or scarier still, whether or not our children will.
And that’s still very difficult for many of us to accept. And it is absolutely understandable that in a world where gay and trans people are still beaten and murdered in towns and cities around the world, that parents still have fears about their children being ‘different’.
But the solution to that fear is not to ignore that these experiences exist for some of our children or to hope that it won’t be our child.
The solution is to create a society that accepts and celebrates different sexualities and gender identities so that no child is afraid to express who they are, so that no parent is afraid to embrace every aspect of who their child might be.
A very small minority of (fewer than four in every 1,000) people are transgender. As teachers, we know they exist because they sit in front of us in our classrooms and tell us they exist. They don’t get to choose whether or not to be trans; they only get to choose whether or not to tell us they’re trans.
Our job as teachers is to provide all our students with the education they are entitled to in a manner that sustains both their wellbeing and their dignity, and to that end, we accept and respect each student’s lived experience and facilitate their learning, be they traditionally gendered, trans or non-binary.
In fact, the truth is that the courage of our transgender and non-binary students to express who they really are can empower the rest of us to ensure that our own traditional gender identities still serve our best interests as healthy human beings living in the modern world.
Being transgender and questioning one’s gender norms are often conflated as the same thing. They are two totally different things, two totally different processes – neither of which should be rejected by society.
Questioning our gender norms is universally beneficial. It is an essential process which ensures people are not limited by traditional gender roles, unless of course, they want to be.
If women, 200 years ago, spurred on by the writings and advocacy of Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen, had not started questioning their gender norms, they would not have recognised that the traditional expectations society placed on them did not serve their best interests.
As human beings who had as much drive, passion and ambition as men, they recognised that they had as valuable a contribution to make to the development of every aspect of society as men did.
If women had never questioned how their gender had been socially defined and fought to change it, they would not have the vote, would not own property, would still have to give up their jobs when they got married; they would not have achieved the success they have as leaders and innovators, wearing the trousers both literally and figuratively, beside their male colleagues in politics, education, medicine, engineering and many other fields of human endeavour.
Men are about 200 years behind women in this regard. The world consistently preaches more and more loudly every day about gender equality but still implicitly teaches boys that in order to socially succeed as men, they need to treat others unequally – have more money, status and power than the other people in their lives, to provide for their families and to be dominant, especially regarding the women in their lives.
I know this because the 16-year-old male students in every gender studies module I teach tell me it’s how they feel. So, on the one hand, young men are being raised to feel they are expected to be socially dominant and on the other are being told, that’s “toxic” and that society certainly can’t provide for or fulfil those kinds of expectations anymore; the resulting distress has proven too much for many of us.
It is vital that boys and men are taught to embrace the questioning of our gender norms just as women have done so effectively for so long. It’s time men liberated themselves from the constraints and pressures of the patriarchy too. In doing so it’s the only way we can ensure that the male gender identity becomes both flexible and robust enough to serve the best interests of all the men living in our modern world.
Unlike the experience of being transgender, questioning the traditional gender norms society has placed on all of us because of our sex is something we can choose to do. It’s how we survive and thrive as men and women in an ever-changing world. The earlier we are facilitated to do so, the more beneficial for all us and for all of society too.
Eoghan Cleary is a secondary school teacher and assistant principal who has lived and worked in Co. Wicklow teaching English, Drama, SPHE and Wellbeing for the last six years. He has over 10 years previous experience as a youth worker in the east inner cities of both Dublin and Galway and has studied at UCD, NUIG and TCD, completing master’s degrees in Drama and Theatre Studies, International Human Rights Law, and Education.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say