GENDER IDENTITY

The severity and intensity of same-sex attraction is not the same for every person. For some, their sexual attraction is exclusively toward those of the same-sex and for others, their attraction is for both men and women. Alfred Kinsey observed that there is such a continuum, and the pro-gay community also acknowledges this fact. The acronym GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered) demonstrates the reality of this fluidity of same-sex attraction. This reality challenges the assumption that people are innately and exclusively gay and can have no sexual feelings for the opposite gender.

The reason for this fluidity lies in a child’s experience of identifying and emotionally connecting with his or her gender. This identification happens at a very early age. For this reason, we hear people who have struggled with same-sex attraction admit to having known they were gay as a child, and we hear of transgendered men and women pronouncing they always felt as if they were born in the wrong body. What these men and women are really describing is that at an early age, when they were supposed to have identified with their own sex, they didn’t.

This inability to identify with one’s own gender has less to do with genetics and more to do with relationships. Amazingly, there has been no scientific support that would lead to the conclusion that a boy or girl is born gay or transgendered, despite emphatic insistence from our pro-gay culture that this is so. However, simply talking to someone who struggles in this area and asking him questions about his past will reveal that there were developmental and relational reasons which led a child to detach from his or her own gender and identify with the opposite gender. This detachment occurs in varying degrees from bisexuality all the way to gender reassignment.

Masculinity for a boy must be imparted to him by another man—preferably his father. This doesn’t mean that if a father plays ball with his son his son will become masculine. Not all fathers are athletic. Men who dance, cook, decorate, act, and design are no less masculine than a corporate executive or professional athlete. Masculinity is imparted to a son when a father lets his son know that he approves of him, that he is proud of him, that he loves him, and he wants to spend time with him. A boy will want to be a boy when he knows that he is accepted by the most important male role model in his life: his father.

Overwhelmingly, men with same-sex attraction consistently report not being athletic or not liking sports as a kid. Many feel that they were not able to measure up to their more athletic brothers or peers. Consequently, many were labeled “fag” or “sissy.” Many gay men have had fathers who love sports and who may have expressed disapproval for their son’s lack of interest or ability, or they simply ignored their son’s interest in other activities. For example, a father, who was shocked when his son told him that he was gay, confesses: In recalling my son’s childhood and adolescence, I can look back and see the void that was always there. I never realized it or even thought about it before. My son did not have the same interests as me, and after about age ten, I aborted efforts to direct him to areas of my interests. I realize now how much in error this was. That was the time I should have done whatever was necessary to enhance my relationship with him. I abdicated his rearing to his mother, while I spent more time and effort with his younger brother.

What also happens in cases like this is that the son will defensively detach from the father (who he has perceived to have rejected him) and he will sometimes attach himself to his mother or his mother will become over involved with her son. As he spends time with her, is protected by her, and cultivates the same interests as her, he gender identifies with the feminine. For many gay men, the world of the feminine is safe; they feel more comfortable around girls and have girl friends rather than boy friends because for them the heterosexual masculine world is a threat. It is a world in which they do not excel or in which they have not been accepted, and so they reject it. The stereotypical feminine behavior and the identification and understanding of the world of women doesn’t just happen; it is formed early in life.

However, this is not the case for all men who experience same-sex attraction. Not all men with same-sex attraction are overtly effeminate. Some are very masculine and some are average guys. Some relate to and understand women and some resent women and are misogynists. In the case of the latter, these men have not found the world of women safe or appealing at all. They often have had mothers who were disinterested, controlling or manipulative, and who may not have taken responsibility for their actions, and so they do not trust women and, therefore, in most cases, have not gender-identified with the feminine. What they do share in common with their more effeminate peers (with whom they may have relationships) is their craving for emotional bonding and intimate connection with men. Likewise, girls identify with the feminine through their mothers. If their mothers are downtrodden, passive, abused or abandoned by their fathers, their daughters may perceive femininity as an undesirable liability. If their mothers are dominating, controlling, angry, manipulative, or narcissistic, a girl may perceive femininity as unattractive and threatening. In each case, the girl may not want to embrace her own femininity because she does not want to be like her mother.

A daughter may empathize with her mother and love her; she may even experience a very close (almost best friend) kind of relationship with her mother, but the reality is that the girl is not being mothered but is mothering. At the same time, the daughter has begun the process of disparaging her own emerging femininity through the negative experience and emotions of the most important feminine role-model in her life. In addition, mothers who are highly insecure, who disapprove of themselves—their attractiveness, desirability, position in life, and value as a person— may project this negativity onto their daughter. The mother may love her daughter deeply but be critical ofher in the same way she is critical of herself. Often, the mother doesn’t realize the damage she is doing not only to her daughter’s identity and self-worth but to her own. A mother writes: My greatest failure…was not listening, really listening, to my daughter. I knew so little about nurturing, and practically nothing about connection or communication. My way of parenting was to talk “at her,” not “to her.” It wasn’t long before all I could hear was my own voice. I now know that I was so needy myself, I had little left over for anyone else.

Also, mothers who are successful, driven, and perfectionist may demand perfection from their daughters. Some daughters can live up to their mother’s expectations and others can’t. It is usually the daughter that can’t measure up who defensively detaches from her mother because of this undue pressure to perform and perhaps compete with a “golden” sister or brother. What usually happens when a girl defensively detaches from her mother, is that she will attempt to go to her dad for approval and nurture. If the father connects with her emotionally and approves of her, then the daughter begins to gender-identify with her father and will sometimes take on masculine behavior and appearance. If she is already more masculine, the father may approve of her desire to be like him and engage in sports, and he may treat her like a son. This may seem harmless to the dad, but it only reinforces her unhealthy desire to detach from the unsafe world of women in which she can not measure up and which she generally resents.

On the other hand, some women who have developed masculine characteristics and behaviors do so as a defense against sexual abuse and rape. These women have found that the world of men is not safe and accommodating, but threatening. Therefore, they have developed a false masculinity as protection against further abuse. Also, many lesbians identify with the radical feminist movement because of the hurt and emotional abandonment they have experienced from men.

Just as not all gay men are effeminate, not all lesbian women are masculine. Just as boys can detach from their fathers and attach to their mothers, so girls can defensively detach from their mothers and go to their dads. However, some girls who go to their dads for approval and connection find that their fathers are indifferent or emotionally detached. In this case, the daughter may not gender- identify with her dad, but she may not necessarily gender-identify with her mother, either. Sometimes girls in this situation can develop a “third sex mentality” where “she knows she isn’t a man, but she doesn’t feel like a woman either.” Many women in this state suffer negative body image and low self-worth.

According to Nicolosi, “Gender—our sense of maleness and femaleness—is not merely an arbitrary social construct. It is, rather, a basic and essential way in which we humans participate in society and express ourselves within the real world.” It is not about wearing dresses and catching footballs so much as it is being comfortable and confident in the gender God has assigned to us.

Embracing our gender glorifies God. In the first chapter of Genesis it says, “And God created mankind in his image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.” All that God created, he pronounced “good,” so it would follow that being female is good and being male is good. To discard our femininity or masculinity—to reject it—is to reject a part of the image of God in us and who he made us to be.