You’ve probably heard about the culture experiment of “gender-neutral babies.”  While this experiment involves only a small number of parents worldwide, it garners a lot of press, and from press comes pressure.  Some parents now wonder if they are being shameful, oppressive, and abusive by loving their children as female and male.

School and district leaders wonder, too: despite that boys are falling behind in education worldwide, “Do ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ actually exist anymore, or are they ‘gender stereotypes’ we have to avoid in schools?”

 

The Pressure of the Exception

 

In this four blog series I will argue that studying the science of sex is one of the most empowering of human pursuits–not shameful, oppressive, abusive, or “stereotyping.”  I will go further to argue that biological sciences can and should be used to protect sex and gender diversity for all children and thus all adults—boy, girl, woman, man, male, female, gender nonbinary, trans, gay/lesbian/bi, bridge-brain, and more.  Our biological sciences study and predict nature, including human nature, and nature is immensely diverse.

However, regarding the areas of sex and gender, Western cultures are now feeling pressured to create a culture of the exception.  This pressure in the sex/gender area mirrors other media/social-media driven social movements in which stories about exceptions-to-the-rule become part of the social media storm and we begin to feel pressure to do and say things that go against common sense.  When, for instance, academics and media personalities pressure people to believe that the titles “mom” and “dad” are abusive, or that breast-feeding should be replaced by “chest-feeding,” a culture of the exception is at play.  This culture is amorphous but palpable in our brain functioning.  We absorb it as it looks to persuade us of something that, if we stop to think, is existentially impossible.

In this vein, in August 2020, a division of the American Medical Association suggested that “female” and “male” should no longer appear on birth certificates because those two terms might disturb a gender fluid person later in life.   Though “male” and “female” are about sex and “gender fluidity” is about gender (as we’ll see in these blogs, they are not the same different thing) the suggestion from a small group within the AMA blasted through social media, gaining some traction.  People began to wonder, “Are boys and girls real?  Should we focus on them anymore?”

The pressure to create a culture of the exception is age old in many ways, but the existence of social media has amplified the pressure with some positive but a lot of negative consequences for adults and children in our trenches.  As I provide four blogs on these topics, I want your reading experience to be more like a journey than a quick social media stop, thus the blogs are longer rather than shorter.  A great deal is at stake for all our children as we face questions of sex and gender in the new millennium.

 

Changing Gender Roles Via a Culture of the Exception

 

Historically, our evolving human nature has built human cultures to advance both uniformity and diversity, two existential elements of ontology (our way of being) that reflect and codify our core experiences in the world.  Things that are basic to us yet also hold deep mystery rise to the forefront as we navigate them; each person, in turn, lives within the story that person makes in the culture, and the cycle continues in each generation.

Sexual dimorphism (male/female) has always been a part of our personal and cultural development; recently, gender has been added to the journey.   The roles of women and men are an example of the addition.  Previous sex roles, useful in many ways for generations, had calcified and caused harm, so, in the 20th last century, we changed “sex roles” to “gender roles” in our language and we expanded those roles for each sex incrementally.  Scientific inquiry helped us do that by helping us to study rules and exceptions, and majority and minority, the parts and the human whole.  Diverse elements in a culture, e.g., women working away from home alongside men, pressured uniform elements to admit the fragility of uniformity.  In the area of sex and gender roles, as in every other human area, the ongoing process of tension between rule and exceptions helps the human brain trek through its evolution.   Lots of mistakes have been made, but for the most part, the pressure of the exception has been a healthy pressure in scientific inquiry, and in human development.

 

The Impossible War:  Sex vs. Gender

 

In the area of sex/gender, however, areas of healthy pressure have changed to unhealthy, especially in recent years, and especially via short burst social media.  The pressure to erase “mom” and “dad” from our lexicon, or “female and male” from birth certificates, is destructive specifically because, unlike the women’s equality movement, the erasure of male/female cannot be anchored in the science of human nature.

When people profess on social media that “breast feeding” is anti-trans and “chest feeding” should replace it, they are calling “sex,” a basic component of every person’s natural being including a gender fluid person’s, dangerous, which it is not.  Meanwhile, by trying to erase both nature and common sense, it creates backlash in the culture; “anatomical sex” gets held up as the only human element worth discussing, and “gender” becomes something to be erased from discussion.  This is a sex vs. gender war in which I believe the two sides are conflating sex and gender, thus pitting human nature against social construction, which is an impossible war because it is unwinnable.

As I will show in these blogs, sex and gender coexist.  Gender should not try to erase sex–when social trends try to erase the nature of the human person, damage inevitably occurs as the unreasonable pressure of the exception destroys voice, identity, character, self, and personal ontology (way of being) in the majority in pursuit of saving voice, identity, character, self, and ontology in the minority.

Meanwhile, sex should not erase gender; people who argue that the minority–gender fluid, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, gender nonbinary–are anathema and should not exist cannot win their war, either, because all these people do exist.  The minority is a part of all of the whole–if we try to erase this part, we are trying to erase ourselves.

But right now, our majority and our minority are in an impossible war of erasure in which the extreme elements on each side have two things in common:  neglect of science and hyper-use of social media.

 

Social Media’s Power to Negate Hard Science

 

As I’ll explore with you throughout these four blogs, not until the prevalence of social media has a culture of the exception regarding human nature sought to prevail against that nature by advancing its politics with passion—an essential human practice—but meanwhile by denying science and common sense both.   With unscientific social media on sex/gender prevalent everywhere, we receive short bursts of false “facts” and impossible “ideas” blasted to us as “truth.”  Academics, school administrators, political leaders, even some primary scientists fear social media’s demonizing, blaming, scapegoating, and stereotyping so much, they step out of the impossible war for self-protection, taking real science with them.

For a previous blogs on social media’s influence on the brain, please see the Reality Cloaking series on the News page of www.gurianinstitute.com.  In it, I pointed out various ways that social media targets, bombards, and negatively impacts different parts of our own and our children’s brains.  For a similar blog series regarding Covid and Covide Response trauma (which also appears on the News link), you’ll see analysis of the fear-triggers in social media.  Whether one is far Left on the political spectrum or far Right, social media creates an algorithmic neural environment in which resilience often gives way to fear.

Social media bombardment does this by keeping the amygdala (a fear center in the brain) super-charged with brain activity, and our cortisol (stress hormone) high.  We become hypervigilant and afraid and often act, in turn, against the prosocial norms on which a culture’s successful evolution depends.  As we ourselves receive dopamine rushes (“dark reward” in the brain) from demonizing and hurting other people by exclusion or animus, we keep doing it to keep the rush going.  If you have personally spent time among the gangs on social media, you have likely felt the power of expressing rage against a group that is often a rage against reality.

In the area of sex/gender, social media acts for many people as a fear-based pressure to choose between inclusive science and a puristic culture of the exception.   The culture of the exception in the gender sphere operates out of sexodimorphobia, a fear of sexual dimorphism.  Sexual dimorphism is our human ontology–female/male, boy/girl, woman/man, mom/dad.   As our brains are bombarded, people begin to believe “breast feeding should become chest feeding” or “mom” and “dad” should not be said anymore because they will do damage.  Even some physicians entrench on one or the other side of the war:  “To be empathic to LGBTQ+ people we have to no longer admit that human beings are male and female (sexually dimorphic),” despite that those physicians know full well:  sex and gender are not the same thing.

 

What is Sex and What is Gender?

 

Despite that the word “gender” is used for nearly everything today regarding both sex and gender, it is a more recent phenomenon than sex in human development.  Sex is wired into human nature at conception.  Sex (sexual dimorphism) has two sex options, male and female.  This dimorphism is not just wired into our bodies but also our brains (brain sex).  In utero, our brains differentiate male and female, and babies are born boys and girls, in body and brain. This is true of all children, including children who later in life explore gender fluidity, have an LGB sexual orientation, or are trans.

But variety and diversity exist in large part because there is no single “male” or “female” brain.  There is no single girl or boy.  Instead, there is a male brain spectrum and a female brain spectrum.  Around 3.5 billion people on earth are on the male brain spectrum and around 3.5 billion people on earth are on the female brain spectrum.  Parents and other nurturers consciously and unconsciously work with each child as boy and girl wherever this boy or girl fits on the brain spectrum.  Some boys are more “extreme male” (e.g. boys on the autism spectrum).  Some are highly sensitive males (lean more toward female brain but are not trans).  Some are trans.  Some girls are, we sense, more “extreme female,” or highly sensitive, or “think more like a man,” or, we will realize later, trans.  We are smart people who sense in our boys and girls a vast spectrum of what can be “boy” and what can be “girl.”  Children mature through the “human” path of maturation, and through the sexually dimorphic path, simultaneously, because being male and female is part of humanity.

Gender grows from sexual dimorphism not against it.  It is a powerful wedge in society for ensuring diversity.  Girls and boys and women and men develop questions about who they are on the spectrum.  Cultures seek language for exceptions to rules, and for minorities within majorities so that the exceptions and minorities, from which the society learns a great deal, can be socially protected.   Gender does absolutely exist.  It is a framework for social construction essential our human and ontological development.

Meanwhile, LGBTQ+ brains (the primary subjects of blogs 3 and 4) have been placed, in social conversation lately, solely under the gender mantle.  I will argue that these brains fit not only under gender but also under sex.  I believe we must understand this point, too, above the social media noise if we are to provide specific help to all our children–whether sex/gender conforming or non-conforming.

So that we begin our journey through all of this with science at our finger tips, here are the the four categories of human ontology (way of being) connected to sex, brain sex, and gender questioning.

Physiological/Anatomical/Chromosomal Sex.  X/Y chromosomes create female and male bodies, reproductive organs, muscle mass, blood content, sex-specific gametes, and sex-specific molecular structure in our cells.  In Eve’s Rib:  The New Science of Gender-Specific Medicine, Marianne J. Legato, M.D., summarizes the importance of our knowing and celebrating sexual dimorphism:  “Everywhere we look the two sexes are startlingly and unexpectedly different, not only in their internal function but in the ways that they experience illness.  To care for them, we must see them as who they are:  female and male.”  Notice how Dr. Legato’s book title, in keeping with our times, uses the word “gender” when she means sex, but in the book itself, she uses the more accurate “two sexes.”

Brain-Sex/Sex-on-the-Brain/Neural Sexual Dimorphism.  X/Y chromosomes create body and brain-sex differentiation in utero (sexual dimorphism). This brain sex differentiation continues throughout the lifespan and includes trans brains and bridge brains (I will explore bridge brains in later blogs).   Louann Brizendine, M.D., has written The Female Brain and The Male Brain, two books you can access that provide in depth analysis of brain sex and sexual dimorphism in adults and children.  For your further reference, too, my own Saving Our Sons and The Minds of Girls, are practical parenting resources in this area.  David C. Page, M.D., professor of biology at MIT, recently noted the source of our brain-sex dimorphism: “Remember, our genomes are 99.9% identical from one person to the next as long as the two individuals being compared are two males or two females.  But if we compare the two sexes, the genetic differences are 15 times greater than the genetic differences for two males or two females.”

Evolutionary Exceptions within Our Human Sexual Dimorphism.  There are and have always been exceptions in particular areas of neural and physiological dimorphism.  For example, the sexually dimorphic nucleus in the anterior hypothalamus of the human brain that regulates sexual attraction is sized and formed for same-sex oriented (homosexuality) in approximately 5 – 10 percent of human (and other mammal) brains.  Heterosexuality is the rule and homosexuality is the exception, but they both exist in the brain.  Homosexuality is, thus, not actually, or mainly, a “gender choice” or “culture choice.”  It carries a genetic component, and is hard-wired into the person’s male or female brain.

Gender Fluidity and Gender.  Gender, as social construct, is fluid; it does, to some extent, involve more “choice,” given that it involves “choosing what gender to identify with.”  People can choose to be gender non-conforming, gender non-binary, or just to “bridge masculine and feminine.”  Fluid gender roles  can also add to fluid gender norms.  The child who says, “I’m gender nonconforming” may be LGBT, as well, or may be experimenting with fluidity in response to gender dysphoria, which is a form of depression, or may have experienced significant trauma, which gender nonconformity can help process and heal, or may be exploring adolescent identity more broadly than social norms have allowed.

Identifying as gender non-binary, however, does not negate either sex or sexual dimorphism; rather, it celebrates “gender exceptions” that impact gender roles and identities in our developing social norms, and helps children deal with issues linked to identity.  Debra Soh, Ph.D., a reproductive biologist, and author of The End of Gender (2020) looks at all sides of the debate from all advocacy standpoints.  I highly recommend her book.  Male and female are indeed, she says, locked “into our stem cells and gametes,” but, too, she agrees, there are exceptions to all rules, including women who are born without ovaries and thus produce little or no testosterone, and intersectional children with XXY or XYY chromosomes, and people asking gender identity questions like those your own child might be asking right now.

 

Programs that Serve Boys and Girls Serve Gender Nonconforming Kids Also

 

The crucial point, that gender grows from sex not the other way around, is a crucial point because even the children who are exploring their identities still start out male and female.  Everyone needs to know this in order to provide both mental and physiologic health treatment and intervention.  Remember what Dr. Legato said:  if we forget their sex, we make major mistakes in their care.   Understanding the structure and function of male/female body and brain, we can help all children best, including gender nonconforming children.  Building off this physiologic/mental health point is a further practical application, more sociological.

Because every child, even one who is gender nonconforming, is male and female, science-based insights, strategies, and information from the study of sexual dimorphism about how boys and girls operate, learn, and grow will always be helpful in school, home, society, and humanity.  Programs that serve girls will serve all girls in need, including gender nonconforming girls; programs that serve boys will be able to serve all boys in need, including gender nonconforming boys.  Our Gurian Institute field work has proven this starting in the 1990s.  When we provide “The Minds of Boys and Girls” and “Boys and Girls Learn Differently” intervention in schools, our trainings and programs deal with sex and, thus, also with gender.   The programs are all inclusive.  The schools use our work to help them:

*end the pre-school to prison pipeline

*close achievement gaps

*turn around low performing schools

*raise grades and test scores

*increase teacher effectiveness and teacher quality

*decrease unhealthy discipline practices, especially used with boys of color

*improve girls’ learning in STEM/STEAM areas

*improve boys’ literacy and social emotional learning

*increase crucial parent participation in the education of children

*prevent bullying and cyberbullying

*use trauma-informed and poverty-informed strategies across the curriculum

*expand inclusion for race, ethnicity, and gender.

Programs based in sexual dimorphism work to help every child and every teacher because they are based in the science of brain sex which all children and adults share.  You can learn more about our programs on the Programs and the Success pages of www.gurianinstitute.com, including www.gurianinstitute.com/success and  www.gurianinstitute.com/helping-children-of-color/.

If we created programs that included gender only, we and the school would leave out most students because gender-only programming focuses on a small minority of children.  By using a sex-based AND gender-based lens, we help the school address pedagogical and behavioral biases across the board.

Using the interaction of sex with the whole school system works, too, I think, because teachers and staff are often parents who know the visceral feeling of sex at birth and sex throughout life–they want to know more about gender fluidity, but meanwhile sense how important “boy” and “girl” are in the success of a school system.

 

A Gender War that Neglects Science Always Backfires

 

The gender fluid person, the exception, qualifies for significant voice in our culture—yet, too, especially via social media these days, the present social pressure to make gender the baseline and sex nonexistent is highly problematic.  In schools, teachers and parents become afraid to help the students right in front of them–boys and girls–for fear of being sued by someone arguing that “boy” and “girl” are gender stereotypes and thus illegal.  In their fear, they end up helping only a small group of students.

As their fear of sexual dimorphism rules their school board or school building conversation, programs for girls or boys disappear or never start up at all.  Sexodimorphobic, they choose to ax programs that help boys most of all but in the end, all children’s needs are neglected as sex is cast as dysfunctional and dangerous, and the science of sex decommissioned.   The preschool to prison pipeline that mainly affects boys, discipline referrals for minority boys, mental health issues among boys, girls, and the gender fluid, suicide success among boys and suicide attempts among girls, girls’ relational violence, cyberbullying, male educational crises do not get solved.

And ironically, as we’ll explore in the next blog, when a culture neglects or tries to erase the science of sex, the gender exceptions, too, will be under-served.  Sexodimorphobia is good for no one in the long run, including a child who is gender fluid.

 

End of Part I

 

 

Copyright © Michael Gurian 2021