Self-fulfilling cultural beliefs in the gender dichotomy

While reading through Elizabeth Reis's Impossible Hermaphrodites: Intersex in America I found myself thinking more and more about the sheer number of recorded intersex cases throughout the ages. Despite awareness of these cases in the medical and religious community, and a large increase in sexual assignment surgery in the past century, sexual dichotomy remained largely unchallenged in the medical community. I sincerely doubt that any significant part of the medical community was aware of the hypocrisy of a binary system- rather, like patriarchy, they merely assumed what they had been told was true, and went along with it. Generations grew up believing in binary sex and gender roles not because they had a stake in ensuring the dominance of said roles, but because that was what they had been taught, both consciously and unconsciously.

These beliefs of course do not spring fully formed into our minds- rather, they are created and reinforced by years and years of observation and interaction. While sex and gender are certainly not binaries, until recently we as a society or a culture did not acknowledge that this was not the case. As a result, practically every generation has grown up assuming that the gender binary is as fundamental a truth as gravity or water being wet. This belief is, in other words, the norm for our culture, and we are shown little evidence to the contrary in either education or popular culture. It is so prevalent that, for the past several hundred years, when presented with individuals who obviously render such a binary null and void, we have labeled these cases as outliers, freaks, or genetically aberrant.

While we culturally enshrine the concepts of advancement and change, we also maintain that there are universal truths to both our physical and social worlds, most of which are based on previously existing systems of belief. As a result, we as individuals, and as a culture, are highly resistant to reexamining what we believe to be these “universal” truths and norms. In the case of Impossible Hermaphrodites, this belief in the reality of our beliefs lead to the insistence of medical professionals that that Betty and E.C. were outliers to what the medical community believed to be “normal”.