Yesterday, our local book group met to discuss, “Tall Annie: A Life in Two Genders”, with its author and her husband of 18 years. The book is about her often painful, very personal, story of growing up with gender dysphoria, a recognized condition now, but not then, in which a person is born with the genitalia, the physical features of their sex, in conflict with their own gender identity, how they see themselves. These are two separate qualities, one’s physical sex and one’s gender. I won’t get into how one’s physical sex can be intergraded, except to say that an individual, every individual, is born along a continuum between the two poles of being, female and male, some individuals born intersex, with neither male nor female fully formed genitalia, genitalia that may only be partially functional. We are each more or less male or female. Sex and gender are not a simple either/or questions.

[In the wider biological world many species, especially plants, possess a variety of sexual expressions. While less commonly occurring in animal species, animals too, while generally divisible by two, into male or female, individuals are not always fixed, one or the other. Most flowering plants have ‘perfect’ flowers, containing both male and female organs in one flower, their expression often separated in time over a single season. In some of these species the male organs debut first, in others the females doing so.. Others have ‘imperfect’ flowers their male organs, and female organs contained in separate flowers, while in others an individual plant will carry only male or female flowers. Other organisms may present as male one year and female in the following cycle. There is no superior strategy. The purpose of sexual reproduction assures that there is genetic mixing and, importantly, variation in individuals.

Some single celled organisms may behave collectively, individuals assembling into reproductive structures, entirely unlike their individual selves. The majority of single celled organisms dispense with sex altogether, simply growing, then dividing into clones of itself, identical copies. In them, such as within the countless bacteria, adaptive change is brought about by mutations, errors, and what biologists term horizontal gene transfer, a process in which surviving bacteria sometimes pass their unique genetic survival sequences directly to others. Single celled organisms have much shorter reproductive cycles so that survivors of changed environmental conditions, that may devastate the majority, can quickly reproduce with their tested and needed  survival characteristics, those without, dying off. We larger, far. more complex multi-celled organisms do the same over much longer time lines, the less ‘fit’. Fitness referring to individuals possessing those characteristics that allow them to survive in a dynamic and changing world. Not necessarily the biggest and strongest. Even some species of plants may dispense with the mixing of genes through sexual reproduction through cloning via a variety of pathways, offsetting or sprouting as suckers from a single expanding root system, or in some cases, being apomictic, producing viable seeds with a double set of chromosomes without the process of chromosomal division, duplication, fertilization and recombination through egg and sperm.

Human reproduction requires the mixing of our germ plasm, at the conception of each individual, but it does not require the social roles we impose on the two sexes. That is entirely separate. Biology doesn’t require monogamy or the heterogenous nuclear family and it most definitely does not require the rigid interpretation of binary genders and social roles, in which like shall never meet. The church, government legislation, policy and social conventions do this and in the process can destroy the diversity within individuals. This is not a necessity for life.  Such practice is a means of control absent across most biology. Understand that single celled organisms have been in existence for around 3.9 billion years, multi-celled organisms appearing around 1.9 billion years ago, while we highly self-regarded human organisms, Homo sapiens, are widely accepted to have been around for only the last 200,000 years. Prior to that we were understood to be several different but closely related species. Some would argue that ours is a ‘failing’ experiment evidenced by our reduction to a single remaining species. (Yes, some regard this as a sign of ‘success’, but in biology such success can be a product of a declining gene pool, a sign that a species may be on its way out in evolutionary terms. We seem to be working hard to further narrow the gene pool producing endless like copies while rooting out differences. This is not how biology works.

When one considers all of the myriad ways that living organisms reproduce, the ‘fluidity’ of sex itself over the long period of evolution, and then considers the brevity of the modern human era, a few hundred years, and our even more ‘brief slice’ of human western culture, with its narrow, gender specific roles of social behavior, one can more clearly understand that this enforced way of living is a fabrication, a vastly unfair way to divide and control people, people who would otherwise be able to share their unique complexity through living out their lives, able to fully explore their particular ‘gifts’ and thus enrich our collective lives. Instead we quash free, healthful expression. Force people into the molds insuring that they be unhappy and conflicted, their lives smaller. In doing this we create unhappy human beings who continue the cycle of denial of self, perpetuating beliefs in evil and sin when all that is needed is the simplicity of the ‘golden rule’, “Do unto others that which you would have them do unto you.” Ours is a ‘chosen’ path, not a biologically or socially necessary one. Far too many are forced into lives of constant denial. It is no wonder that we live in a world of so much violence and social ‘dis-ease’.]

Our society today teaches, enforces sex roles, drawing a sharper distinction between us than biology suggests. Exhibiting overly feminine behaviors as a male or more macho behaviors as a female, is thus limited pushing individual into much smaller behavioral boxes. Nonconforming behaviors are thus actively discouraged. We aren’t ‘born’ into these strictly defined roles. They are learned. We are ‘socialized’ in this way, indoctrinated into these roles, or as the author says, we are ‘groomed’ by family and society. In doing this we deny the child’s nature. Even cis born males and females are so shaped, individual tendencies discouraged, males pushed closer to the masculine, ‘macho’ male extreme while females are into the limited roles of submissive and supporting helpmate, personal aptitudes, tendencies and preferences subsumed. All are in this way limited. All of this, sex, gender and behavior are linked through biology. “Tall Annie” is the story of a male child, the author, who always identified as female. She lived as a conflicted individual for most of her first 46 years, while fulfilling her roles as a father and a successful engineer. 

There are an estimated 1.5 million transgender individuals in the US within a population of around 330 million, .45% of Americans. (These figures are gained through surveys and the results vary depending on which of multiple demographic groups you ask, such as the groups age and political affiliation.) These individuals didn’t ‘learn’ to be transgender. They didn’t ‘catch’ it form somebody else. They are born dysphoric, non-binary, somewhere else along the male-female continuum, and it can cause them intense ‘confusion’. As the author writes, no one chooses this. It simply is. The typical transgender child will face a degree of internal conflict far beyond that of a cis-gender children, as they learn to deny themselves as they age, their bodies maturing in a form that feels wrong to them. A cis person, whose gender identification corresponds with their physical sex, feels considerable stress as we undergo puberty, becoming something different from our less mature selves. Our bodies develop according to our genetics under the chemical ‘control’ of our own particular blend of hormones, beyond our ability to control. For the trans child, already suffering from the conflict of their inner self with the messaging and instruction of those round them, telling them that they are something they are not, this stress/conflict is even sharper. These children are being taught that there is something inherently ‘wrong’ with them. Add to this the conflicts they will be faced with as they suffer the ridicule, shaming and even physical attacks of the ignorant and prejudiced around them and one could hardly have a more difficult course through life, too often suffering the rejection of family, ‘friends’ and the community around them. Now laws are being passed intentionally to make their lives more difficult, giving further permission to others to demean them and violate them. That is the future they face when they are denied their own unique selfness, forced into a closeted life. Without reprieve or public support. One doesn’t choose this on a whim or a momentary ‘feeling’. It isn’t a ‘choice’ in that sense at all. Gender dysphoria creates a powerful and never ending internal conflict within those individuals who seek to suppress it. Living a life stunted by one’s self and society is individually destructive and diminishes one’s ability to contribute fully to a healthy society, diminishing society in the process.

American politics today is too often attempting to force individuals into a strictly binary mold. You are either male or female. Your sex, your gender, your sexual preferences determined at birth in denial of biology. No shading, no gray areas, no overlap allowed. Some societies have not been so limiting and have allowed other ways of being.  In biology, life is not either/or. Members of any species provide countless examples of variation within species. Individuals of any species vary from one to the other in almost every way. Taxonomists argue endlessly about what constitutes a species, how much variation is required before an individual might be classified as another species. As humans we are incredibly complex organic systems, as are all organisms especially multi-cellular organisms. Our survival depends on our ability to sense, communicate and regulate ourselves internally while remaining responsive to one’s environment. In biology and medicine we call this homeostasis, a term that connotes health, adaptability and dynamism. When these capacities are stymied the health of the individual is under threat. A healthy individual is able to minimize the conflicts and challenges that beset their health. Denying an individual this capacity is a condemnation. Each individual, each species, is unique with strengths and weaknesses. We are each unique. We each possess unique gifts. In the transgender person, in those considered ‘other’ those gifts are denied.

Sentience, consciousness, intelligence are argued over endlessly, many claiming these for humans alone, while other biologists and behaviorists of all types, argue that these qualities are not unique to humans, but are rather expressions of organic life itself, responses and necessities of complex organisms as they interact with their worlds and regulate their internal systems in ways that permit and enhance their survival. All of this exists along a continuum, environment and need continuously and endlessly shaping internal and external responses our complexity and lives dependent upon these. ‘Behaviors’ are a part of biological response. 

Just as every individual is different so are its relationships with the diverse world in which it finds itself. The denial of self works against this. Darwin’s concept of natural selection is just as necessary a part of our physical/biological evolution as it is for any organism’s sensory/psychological/behavioral  evolution. We, every individual, of every species, exist as a ‘whole’, in relationship with our community and environment. We are a part of the context within which we are enmeshed. All of this is a matter of both individual and species survival. Variation within the species ‘plan’ is a necessity for long term survival and evolution. Forcing people to fit a strictly limited mold, is a potential disaster for the individual and our species. At least not as we in our smallness might define it.Species survival is not just a matter of the reproduction of the strongest and the fittest. Darwin never argued this. This idea came later, promoted by those to serve their own social and political agendas. Life has been evolving on this planet for many millions of years. Rigidity, fixity, in a species is a sign of limitation and signals that changes to environment and community over time, may be too great for such a limited species. Diversity is a sign of a species and biological community’s health, vigor and vitality. Species go extinct periodically. We are not special. When we put ourselves above, outside, the world of nature, of biology and evolution, we invite extinction. Hubris is not a survival trait. We cannot know what our future as a species may be, but we do know that the limitation of a species’ opportunities reduces its ‘odds’ for survival. 

Denying the ways of nature is a literal dead end. All organisms exist somewhere within a statistical bell curve. Every time we attempt to segregate or define we find variation and that variation is consistently defined within a bell curve. Nature has never insisted that all individuals of a species must exist at the center line of the bell curve. In such a world change is often catastrophic, a world in which a species would have no alternative ‘forms’ from which to adapt. All or nothing are fatal strategies and nature has been developing and evolving life, in multiple forms for over 3 billion years. Species survival is not just about physical strength and reproductive capacity. All of the above factors have a role. We are not just our physical/ limited biological selves. We are our social selves, our creative selves, our problem solving selves. Our abilities to nurture and heal are a part of us. Sure, our ability to ‘compete’ is essential, but with out its companion piece of cooperation, compassion, conviviality, it can lead to destruction. Joint success depends on a shared vision for our collective future. If adaptability is an essential survival characteristic for our species and individual selves, how can we promote life with any hope for the future, that denies these qualities? When we reject others we truncate and limit our futures. If we cannot see beyond our own self-aggrandizement, if we seek only the survival of those within a shrinking circle, we will find ourselves, at some point, outside of that ‘circle’, outside of nature, without a future at all. This is the path of exclusion and prejudice, of hubris and denial.

Over the summer of ’22 I took on the challenge of reading the ten most banned books, of the previous year, that haters have been attempting to keep away from not just young readers, but from all of us. The themes of these books all revolved around issues of race, sex and gender. All of them are important reads given today’s politics and the right’s obsession with the genitalia of children, our sexual habits and the mistranslation of visible racial differences into a weapon to divide us and secure power for the powerful few. Theirs is a denial of the essential value of community, of the necessity for a functional, inclusive society. If we are to ever attain any degree of personal security, fairness, peace and contentment, as both individuals and a society, it will be when we follow a more open inclusive path. The denial of others erects impossible barriers to our success and even to those promises these haters make to the white/male ‘us’. Their goal is hidden in what they don’t say. By the time they can openly proclaim their ‘true’ goals, it will be too late for most us. That is the way of duplicity. Their path is a lie and its cruelty continues to unfold around us. 

Toward the end of our book group’s meeting, our discussion veered into the Republican’s recent passage of a bill in the US House that would limit federal Title IX monies from going to schools that allow transgender children to compete in sport, apparently at every level from elementary school through college. It is a law that will punish all as it allegedly ‘protects’ children and women competitors in sport from the ‘flood’ of transgender athletes that would otherwise deprive them of positions on teams and give their competitors a biological unfair advantage. Untrue.

Let me remind you that transgender people are only .5% to maybe 1.5% of the population, slightly less than one to maybe 3 out of every 200 people as a whole. There is not going to be some onslaught of male athletes transitioning into women so that they can dominate cis women in sport. It ain’t going to happen. It is important to note here that children of age, who have committed to hormone therapy, specifically boys transitioning to girls, which seem to be what most of the fuss is about, are not boys in ‘disguise’. They are assumed to have an unfair competitive advantage in strength and size.

‘Normally’, I hate using terms like that here, boys begin maturing later than girls. This means that girls of similar age are quite often bigger than their male classmates. When such ‘boys’ begin hormone therapy the lack of testosterone in their bodies quickly begins to limit their growth rates and their capacity to grow larger muscles. The differences then between a typical young cis girl competitor with a similarly aged trans girl is marginal, what differences there may be explainable by genetic variation of a population. There is a lot of overlap in size and strength within the overall male population, as there is also in the female population, and there is considerable overlap between the classical two sexes. The same proportion of trans to cis competitors appears to exist at collegiate level, around 1.6% being trans. This is a highly select population. Because gender dysphoria is more widely recognized today, and an increasing portion of parents are aware of it, children are more likely to be supported and begin the process of transitioning earlier, before they reach physical maturity, lessening any differences in the physical capacities between sexes and any advantage that may confer. There may be some smaller portion of trans women competitors that have an ‘unfair’ advantage, depending in part on individual genetics and at what growth stage hormone therapy was begun, but this does not warrant some kind of total ban on their participation.

It is also important to note that boys transitioning to girl, lack the testosterone that boys have, reducing, although not eliminating, their ‘macho’ competitiveness as well as their sex drive. Cis girls and women will always have far more to fear from hyper masculine cis males than from transitioning/transitioned persons. This so called transgender threat in both life and sport is a fear based creation of the right. A political strategy being pushed to an extreme. In reality it is not a problem, certainly not one that requires legislative restrictions. It is being used because the Republicans have found it to be highly effective in jacking people up. They have found it to be yet another ‘useful’ fabrication, a ‘hot button’ that has proven effective to further divide a nation and fire up the far right’s base! This is a non-issue, a ‘straw man’, or straw person, argument made up to forward their wanted reactionary legislative and policy changes. To say that, ‘These people are destroying America!’, is an absolute lie. It  would be laughable, but it ‘works’ at great cost to its victims. Its promoters remain intent on their destruction of whole minority classes.

This is a major step up in the reactionary right’s attempts to demonize ‘others’, an effort which potentially includes almost anyone other than the straight, white male, property owning population. This time they are focusing on transgender children and adults, while claiming they are defending the rights of women, whom, in almost every other instance, they are working continuously, and consistently, to limit into roles of housewife, helper, sexual surrogate and baby factory. 

Frank, Annie’s husband, offered that the most important books for us to read are those that others would ban. What is it that ‘they’ don’t want us to know, don’t want us to discuss and consider? This is how this ‘new’ world works. Demonizing and censoring. Excluding the ‘views’ of others, limiting public discussion while encouraging and permitting the attacks on ‘others’, the elimination of alternative sources of information along with the constant ‘drum beat’ of the message that ‘other’ is evil, unnatural, perverted. All of this does nothing but cause pain and weaken society, destroying individuals in the process, denying them even the opportunity to contribute and lead fulfilling lives. (If you really believe transgender folks,  and that other minority groups are ‘unnatural’ I refer you back to the paragraphs above discussing how ‘other’, constitutes variation, and is absolutely essential to the processes of evolution and how nature keeps species healthy and vital while the opposite positions a species for catastrophic failure and extinction. People seem to be conflating their own desires, their limited views with those of God. Talk about arrogance!) In following this ‘path’ more and more people will find themselves in the demonized role of an expanding ‘other’. When one’s ‘alleged’ well being and rights are predicated on the denial of the same to others, alarm bells should be going off. Such demands are morally wrong. Period. Open your eyes and minds America!

Below is a list of those books to which I would add Anne Graham’s, ‘Tall Annie’. This list comes from the American Library Association (ALA) and is updated every year, some books falling off, others being added. There are however, many more books, being challenged and banned in public and school libraries every year. The larger list climbs to 1,247 books/titles challenged in 2023. Each book listed, comes with ‘Reasons’ for its exclusion, shorthands for why these books are being challenged. Understand that these ‘reasons’ are from the challengers and their allegations are generally completely unfounded, unsupported. Books are regularly being challenged by adults/parents who have never read them, their challenges based on lists put together by political groups with their own agendas.

Check out what’s going on. Which books are being challenged and what the ALA is doing to protect American’s rights to learn. Here’s the list:

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe; Reasons: Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and because it was claimed to be sexually explicit

Lawn Boy, by Jonathan Evison; Reasons: Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and because it was considered to be sexually explicit

All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson; Reasons: Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and because it was claimed to be sexually explicit

Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez; Reasons: Banned, challenged, and restricted for depictions of abuse and because it was considered to be sexually explicit

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas; Reasons: Banned and challenged for profanity, violence, and because it was thought to promote an anti-police message and indoctrination of a social agenda

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie; Reasons: Banned and challenged for profanity, sexual references and use of a derogatory term

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews; Reasons: Banned and challenged because it was considered sexually explicit and degrading to women

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison; Reasons: Banned and challenged for depiction of sexual abuse, EDI (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion) content, and because it was claimed to be sexually explicit

This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson; Reasons: Banned, challenged, relocated, and restricted for providing sexual education and LGBTQIA+ content.

Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin; Reasons: Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and because it was considered to be sexually explicit.