speaking in terms of gender...

I don’t know about you, but sometimes it feels challenging to even keep up with the new gender identity labels and overall gender terminology!

In my past post, we perhaps got a bit ahead of ourselves by launching into the term gender dysphoria, without first giving a broad brush explanation. This week we will take that broad brush and spend some time reasoning around specific definitions.

Why should we spend this effort , you ask? 

I’ll tell you why- because each week in our neighborhoods, schools, grocery stores, and coffee shops, there are people with questions about their gender. Image bearers. Preteens, teens, twenty-somethings, many with significant questions. The world offers a ready answer, but the church is often just silent.

We’ve spent weeks laying the groundwork for our biblical understanding of gender. We started with a charge from ML King Jr. to have tough minds and tender hearts- love well and think well. Then we looked at creation and it’s specific implications for gender, same with the fall in Genesis 3. Finally, we drew some conclusions about created as image bearing, gendered beings. 

We don’t lay this foundation to just accumulate knowledge- we spend the time and the effort because all around us are people created in the image of God who don’t understand that image. And we want to be able to walk alongside and love well, with sound doctrine.

This week, it’s terms and discussion! Buckle up and let’s go.

Gender: The psychological, social, and cultural aspects of being male or female. In contrast to the simply physical aspects of one’s biological sex. (For years, the terms sex and gender were used interchangeably, now, they are separated. Biological sex is about anatomy, chromosomes, hormones, etc…)

Biological sex: Physical characteristics of being male or female (typically with reference to chromosome, gonads, sex hormones, reproductive anatomy and external genitalia). About 0.1% of people are born with indistinct physical sex characteristics and are considered intersex. 

Gender Identity: How you experience yourself (or think of yourself) as male or female, including how masculine or feminine a person feels. Think of your brain.

Gender expression: is a behavioral dimension of gender, that is, how one expresses one’s identity through appearance and behavior. Think of your external self: clothes, hairstyle, etc...

Cisgender: Someone whose mental gender identity aligns with their birth sex. For example, I was born female (sex organs, chromosomes, hormones…) and mentally I experience myself as female.

Transgender: An umbrella term for the many ways that people might experience and/or present and express their gender identities differently from people whose gender identity is congruent with their birth sex.  Someone who does not identify physical sex they were born with. For example, my friend was born female, but has always “felt” or experienced herself as male. Can be someone of any sexual orientation (just because someone has gender identity questions, or identifies as trangender tells you nothing about who they are attracted to).

Under this umbrella could be terms like: transsexual, male-to-female (transwoman), female-to-male (transman), and intersex.

Transsexual: those we seek to change or who have changed their primary or secondary sex characteristics through medical intervention (hormones and surgery). Typically adopt a full time cross-gender identity. Many American transgender people consider this word distasteful.

Transwoman (trans woman, male-to-female, M2F): A biological male who identifies as female.

Transman (trans man, female-to-male, F2M): A biological female who identifies as male.

Intersex:  individuals born with any of several variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies". Though the range of atypical sex characteristics may be obvious from birth through the presence of physically ambiguous genitalia, in other instances, these atypical characteristics may go unnoticed, presenting as ambiguous internal reproductive organs or atypical chromosomes that may remain unknown to an individual all of their life.

Non-binary: an umbrella term for someone who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that is neither entirely male or entirely female.

Under this umbrella could be terms like: Gender queer; Gender nonconforming, Agender, Gender fluid, and Androgenous.

Gender fluid: someone whose gender identity changes over time, is fluid, or shifting. They may identify or present in various ways.

Gender nonconforming: Describes someone who does not adhere to societal expectations for gender expression or models of masculinity or femininity.

Agender: When a person’s internal sense of gender identity is not gendered or when a person does not have a felt sense of a particular gender identity.

Genderqueer: A person whose gender identity is not of a man or of a woman, who exists on a continuum between genders, or who is a combination of various genders.

That’s quite a mind filling list of terms, isn’t it! And I’m sure there are some that I missed.

But we can’t let the terminology prevent us from seeing people. There are people, increasing numbers especially of teens and young adults, people that need to experience the love of their heavenly Father. Often this happens through experiencing the love of a person in front of them.

We want to be those people in front of them. 

Walking alongside.

 Loving for the long haul. 

Doing our own study and not making them a project. 

Praying and allowing the Holy Spirit to be the change agent.

Will you join me in learning and loving?

PS- so much of my learning has come through the research and study of Mark Yarhouse. His two books: Understanding Gender Dysphoria and Emerging Gender Identities are incredible information for us in the church. He is a believer who handles the topic with respect.sex

Mark Yarhouse: Gender Identity & Christian Faith [Biola University Chapel] - YouTube