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. Continue reading →