by Robyn Ryle
Gender will also impact your health by way of your social networks. People with strong social support networks have better health outcomes. Men’s networks tend to be larger and composed of more nonkin connections—more people from outside your family. That sort of network is helpful for things like finding a job, starting your own business, or landing a promotion. But it’s less helpful at providing you with the kind of emotional and psychological support that can be crucial when you’re battling an illness. A lack of supportive networks becomes especially problematic as men age. Men who find themselves without a spouse or partner in their elderly years often lack the social networks to help them navigate the declining health that can come with growing old.
GO TO 148.
159
As a woman, you’re likely to live longer than men. From an early age, your gender can impact your health. A historic preference for sons over daughters still persists in some places today, and that can sometimes mean that more resources are directed toward boys. That’s especially true in places like China, where female fetuses are often aborted and girls are sometimes abandoned as babies or given up for adoption. A preference for sons can often be subtler, shaping the way that resources are distributed between sons and daughters. These cultural beliefs about gender (that sons are more valuable than daughters) can have physical, bodily effects too.
For example, these beliefs can contribute to whether you’re taller or shorter than men. How tall you are depends partly on genetics, but it also has to do with nutrition. In the past, and still in some places, feeding sons takes higher priority over feeding daughters. However, height differences between women and men have been converging in developed countries over time. Women are getting taller, and that has to do with how daughters are treated by their families. When more daughters get better nutrition from their families, women will grow taller over time. In this way, gender beliefs actually shape how gender plays out physically in the bodies of women and men.
Despite this preference for sons over daughters worldwide, you’re still probably going to live longer as a woman. Women are less likely to engage in risky and life-threatening behaviors. The riskiest behavior that you’ll engage in as a woman is most likely to be giving birth, and the dangers associated with childbirth have decreased over time.
You’ll also live longer as a woman because of the kind of work that you do. Men are more likely to work in jobs that are dangerous and take a toll on their bodies. Statistically, you’re less likely to work in such risky professions as police officer, military member, or firefighter. There’s also a lower chance that your job exposes you to toxic substances. In fact, labor laws might specifically prohibit you from working certain jobs because of the risk to potential pregnancy. Even though men’s exposure to toxic substances can still cause birth defects in their children, labor laws are unlikely to protect them from such hazards.
You’ll live longer as a woman, but that doesn’t mean that your gender won’t impact your experiences with your health in other ways.
You go to the doctor for a checkup or some other health issue. GO TO 149.
You go to the doctor for birth control. GO TO 150.
160
As a transgender person, you might face a unique set of issues in regard to your health. You might experience discrimination and hostility inside the doctor’s office because of your gender-expansive identity. As in many other areas of life, being transgender can make you vulnerable to these sorts of stressful interactions, even when all you want is some help with a stuffed-up nose. Take the experience of one transgender patient who went to the emergency room for an asthma attack. In the exam room, the doctor called in colleagues, saying, “Take a look at this.” Or the experience of another transgender patient who reported overhearing the receptionist insisting that they had to be either male or female and asking, “Which one is it?”
You’ll potentially face the same set of anxieties in the doctor’s office as you do in other settings. Will the doctors and nurses use the correct pronouns and your correct name? Given that they’ll have access to your medical records and to the information from physical examinations and tests, will they insist on treating you as the wrong gender?
In addition, if you use hormone therapy or have had gender-confirming surgery, you might have special health issues that not all doctors are equipped to deal with. You might struggle to find a doctor who is both accepting of your transgender status and able to help you with your unique set of health issues.
GO TO 148.
161
You’d like to imagine something completely different! Maybe your world incorporates some aspects of gender as we know it, or maybe it has nothing in common with existing systems of gender. Maybe you imagine a world full of formless blobs, and how could formless blobs have a gender? (Though you might be surprised to find out just how gendered formless blobs can be.) Maybe it’s a world where we’re nothing but free-floating consciousness. Could our consciousness be gendered? What if it’s a world full of robots or artificial intelligence? Would there be gender then?
You’re looking for a gender possibility that no one’s even thought of yet. Cool! You’re ready to begin creating your own new and exciting gender path!
Pick a different gender ending: TURN TO 148.
Or KEEP READING to check out the conclusion.
CONCLUSION
You’ve come to the end of your gender journey. Or have you? One book, even a book as great as this one, can’t cover everything there is to know about gender. All the paths laid out in this book are best guesses about how gender might unfold, based on a body of social science research. They don’t imply that everyone’s journey will look the same. Just because a path leads in a certain direction in this book doesn’t mean that it always works that way for people in the real world. And the many branching paths laid out here don’t even begin to reflect the real complexity of gender as it’s lived on a day-to-day basis, and especially as it intersects with other identities like race, social class, age, and nationality, to name just a few. That’s because, in reality, there are infinite gender paths, and each of them is totally unique.
So your gender journey isn’t really over. You could easily spend a lifetime learning about gender and still not know everything. That might seem discouraging, but it’s also pretty exciting. You haven’t come to the end of your journey because there’s always the possibility of something completely new and surprising around the next corner. You can keep exploring gender and how it intersects with other parts of your experience. You can seek out information about the gender experiences of people who are very different from you. You can choose to keep moving.
Hopefully this book has helped you to see that you are, in fact, on a journey. You always have been, whether you knew it or not. Gender isn’t something solid and unmoving. It’s shifty, like water that’s constantly flowing. Or gender is a world that’s in a state of constant transformation, like a magical realm. Gender is an epic adventure.
Maybe after reading this book, you’ll decide that you want to become someone who helps determine what the terrain of gender will be like in the future. As we’ve seen throughout our journey, although it can be fun to explore the complexities of gender in this create-a-path book format, our actual gendered lives have serious consequences. Gender as a social system is the cause of widespread inequalities. Because of gender, people sometimes lose their jobs, their families, their health, their safety and sense of well-being, and, in the very worst case scenario, their lives. Gender is much more than just a game.
GENDER OUTLAW
n. /ˈjen-dər ˈau̇t-ˌlȯ/
Someone who breaks all the gender rules society has established.
Because of that sometimes life-or-death aspect of gender, you might decide to become a gender outlaw, or someone who breaks all the gender rules that society lays out for us. Every day there are new attempts to push back the progress we’ve made so far at loosening the grip of gender on our lives.
Maybe these attempts are the very last gasp of those people who want to use hatred and fear to gather power for themselves. As a gender outlaw, you’ll find plenty of new work to do in order to keep us moving forward in our larger gender journey. Maybe you want to guide people along their own gender paths, or become a trailblazer, making whole safe and new tracks for those who come behind you.
Wherever you take your gender journey next, you’ll know that there are always more questions to be asked. There are always more complexities to explore. There’s always a new branch in the trail up ahead. Here’s to fun and safe journeys ahead for all of us!
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
American Men’s Studies Association
www.mensstudies.org
The Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN)
www.asexuality.org
Bitch Media
www.bitchmedia.org
Black Girl Dangerous
www.bgdblog.org
Black Lives Matter
www.blacklivesmatter.com
Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities
www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/csmm
Everyday Feminism
www.everydayfeminism.com
Feminist Frequency
www.feministfrequency.com
Feministing
www.feministing.com
Geek Feminism Wiki
www.geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Geek_Feminism_Wiki
Gender Spectrum
www.genderspectrum.org
GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation)
www.glaad.org
GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBT Equality
www.glma.org
GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network)
www.glsen.org
The Good Men Project
www.goodmenproject.com
Intersex Society of North America (ISNA)
www.isna.org
Kiva–Women
www.kiva.org/lend/women
Men Against Violence Against Women
www.mavaw.org
Men Can Stop Rape
www.mencanstoprape.org
National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE)
www.transequality.org
NCADV (National Coalition Against Domestic Violence)
www.ncadv.org
OII Intersex Network (Organizational Intersex International)
www.oiiinternational.com
RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network)
www.rainn.org
The Society Pages: Feminist Reflections
www.thesocietypages.org/feminist
The Society Pages: Girl w/Pen
www.thesocietypages.org/girlwpen
Trans Student Educational Resources (TSER)
www.transstudent.org
The Trevor Project
www.thetrevorproject.org
UN Women
www.unwomen.org
The WAGE Project
www.wageproject.org
“Why Gender Equality Is Good for Everyone—Men Included,” TEDWomen talk by Michael Kimmel
www.ted.com/talks/michael_kimmel_why_gender_equality_is_good_for_everyone_men_included
Women’s March
www.womensmarch.com
World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)
www.wpath.org
The Youth and Gender Media Project
www.youthandgendermediaproject.org
NOTES
“Estimates vary because” M. A. Blackless et al., “How Sexually Dimorphic Are We? Review and Synthesis,” American Journal of Human Biology 12, no. 2 (2000): 151–156.
“For comparison, that’s” Rachael Rettner, “5 Health Risks of Being a Redhead,” LiveScience, August 22, 2013, https://www.livescience.com/39095-redhead-health-risks.html.
“Maybe like Tonë” Serena Nanda, Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc., 2000).
“Estimates suggest that” Elena Becatoros, “Tradition of ‘Sworn Virgins’ Dying Out in Albania,” Welt, October 6, 2008, https://www.welt.de/english-news/article2536539/Tradition-of-sworn-virgins-dying-out-in-Albania.html.
“One anthropologist suggests” Salvatore Cucchiari, “The Gender Revolution and the Transition from the Bisexual Horde to the Patrilocal Band: The Origins of Gender Hierarchy,” in Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality, eds. Sherry B. Ortner and Harriet Whitehead (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
“Part of these” James G. Peoples, “The Cultural Construction of Gender and Manhood,” in Men and Masculinity: A Text Reader, ed. Theodore F. Cohen (Stanford, CT: Wadsworth, 2001).
“In the first” Emily Anthes, “Stretch Marks for Dad,” Slate, June 14, 2007, http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2007/06/stretch_marks_for_dads.html.
“She lived as” Anne Fausto-Sterling, “The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough,” The Sciences, March–April 1993.
“You’ll probably find” Janell Ross, “How Easy Is It to Change the Sex on Your Birth Certificate?” The Washington Post, May 18, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/18/the-next-frontier-in-the-bathroom-law-debate-changing-birth-certificates/?utm_term=.f4c303469dde.
“The rules for” Lambda Legal, FAQ about Identity Documents, Lambda Legal, accessed March 28, 2018, https://www.lambdalegal.org/know-your-rights/article/trans-identity-document-faq.
“The word homosexual” David Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality: And Other Essays on Greek Love (New York: Routledge Press, 1990), 15.
“Like many ideas” Michael S. Kimmel, “Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame, and Silence on the Construction of Gender Identity,” in The Social Construction of Difference and Inequality: Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality, ed. Tracy E. Ore (New York: McGraw Hill, 2009).
“Make a lot” Kimmel, “Masculinity as Homophobia.”
“According to the” Gender Inequality Index: Table 5, United Nations Development Programme, accessed March 21, 2018, http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/GII.
“…and on the” Global Gender Gap Report, World Economic Forum, accessed March 21, 2018, http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2016/rankings/?doing_wp_cron=1519573231.2539539337158203125000.
“In Syria, women” Gender Inequality Index.
“Fortunately, Ruqayya and” United Nations Population Fund, “I Thought I Might Die: Pregnant Women Struggle to Access Care in Embattled Syria,” July 26, 2017, http://www.unfpa.org/news/i-thought-i-might-die-pregnant-women-struggle-access-care-embattled-syria.
“Some of the” Gender Inequality Index.
“But even in” Gender Inequality Index.
“Reports suggest that” “Child Marriage and the Syrian Conflict: 7 Things You Need to Know,” Girls Not Brides, June 20, 2017, https://www.girlsnotbrides.org/child-marriage-and-the-syrian-conflict-7-things-you-need-to-know/.
“Only 12 percent” Gender Inequality Index.
“According to the” Gender Inequality Index.
“…while on the” Global Gender Gap Report.
“Unlike other countries” Nina Martin and Renee Montagne, “U.S. Has the Worst Rate of Maternal Deaths in the Developed World,” NPR, May 12, 2017, http://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/528098789/u-s-has-the-worst-rate-of-maternal-deaths-in-the-developed-world.
“There are lots” Martin and Montagne, “U.S. Has the Worst Rate of Maternal Deaths.”
“As far as” Gender Inequality Index.
“The United States” Women in National Parliaments, Inter-Parliamentary Union, accessed March 21, 2018, http://archive.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm.
“As of this” “Women in the U.S. House of Representatives 2018,” Rutgers, accessed March 21, 2018, http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/women-us-house-representatives-2018.
“Some of these” Gender Inequality Index.
“You’ve also achieved” Gender Inequality Index.
�
�Your country is” Global Gender Gap Report.
“Your ranking according” Gender Inequality Index.
“Looking just at” Women in National Parliaments.
“Educational attainment is” Gender Inequality Index.
“Although both women” Hanna Rosin, “Read the Transcript,” Invisibilia, NPR, July 29, 2016, https://www.npr.org/2016/07/29/487807747/read-the-transcript.
“Women in Rwanda” Gender Inequality Index.
“Women in your” Rosin, “Transcript.”
“They changed marriage” Danielle Paquette, “Rwanda Is Beating the United States in Gender Equality,” The Washington Post, November 20, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/20/rwanda-is-beating-the-united-states-in-gender-equality/?utm_term=.af816327e599.
“Women like this” Rosin, “Transcript.”
“There are thirteen” Siobhan Fenton, “LGBT Relationships Are Illegal in 74 Countries, Research Finds,” Independent, May 17, 2016, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/gay-lesbian-bisexual-relationships-illegal-in-74-countries-a7033666.html.
“Across the globe” Dan Barry, “Realizing It’s a Small, Terrifying World After All,” New York Times, June 20, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/us/orlando-shooting-america.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2F2016-orlando-shooting&action=click&contentCollection=us®ion=rank&module=package&version =highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection.
“For example, one” Kirsten Schilt, Just One of the Guys: Transgender Men and the Persistence of Gender Inequality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).