Intrinsic Inclinations: Explaining Gender and Sexual Diversity
1 For simplicity’s sake, in this chapter and throughout much of this book, I will refer to “gender expression” in singular form. Unfortunately, some may misinterpret this to mean that femininity and masculinity are singular, monolithic programs or entities—this is not my intention. I believe that gender expression is best thought of as a collection of heterogeneous traits, each having potentially different biological and/or sociological origins. For a more nuanced discussion on this subject, see chapter 19, “Putting the Feminine Back into Feminism.” 2 Roughgarden, Evolution’s Rainbow, 280-288. 3 Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1999); Roughgarden, Evolution’s Rainbow.
4 Richard A. Lippa, Gender, Nature, and Nurture, 2nd ed. (Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2005), 4-9. 5 Melanie Blackless, Anthony Charuvastra, Amanda Derryck, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Karl Lauzanne, and Ellen Lee, “How Sexually Dimorphic Are We? Review and Synthesis,” American Journal of Human Biology 12 (2000), 151-166. 6 For an overview of these different groups, see Serena Nanda, Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations (Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 2000), and references therein. Also, there are many examples of FTM spectrum transgender people in other cultures, although they tend to receive less attention than their MTF spectrum counterparts.