X,Y, ... Z?

Though born a biological male with X and Y chromosomes, actress Jamie Lee Curtis (who allegedly possesses XY chromosomes) no doubt considers herself a woman. So may Maria Martinez Patino, the Spanish athlete who in 1985 was initially disqualified as a female competitor in the World Student Games because of her XY chromosomes (Taylor, 63). (She was later reinstated.) Although the concept of multiple genders may seem alien to some cultures that lack the linguistic capacity to describe them, in many societies this is not the case.

But are gender categories even necessary? Why must one become a fa'afafine in order to perform "women's work"? What is "women's work"? "Men's work"? Are words such as transgender, transsexual, transvestite, hermaphrodite and berdache accurate descriptions of who we are? Or are they just convenient (or in some cases, derogatory) categories for containing the unknown? Philosopher Judith Butler asks a few more questions:

Is there 'a' gender which persons are said to have, or is it an essential attribute that a person is said to be, as implied in the question 'What gender are you?'? [...] If gender is constructed, could it be constructed differently, or does its constructedness imply some form of social determinism, foreclosing the possibility of agency and transformation? Does 'construction' suggest that certain laws generate gender differences along universal axes of sexual difference? How and where does the construction of gender take place? [...] When the relevant 'culture' that 'constructs' gender is understood in terms of such a law or set of laws, then it seems that gender is as determined and fixed as it was under the biology-is-destiny formulation. In such a case, not biology, but culture, becomes destiny. (7-8.)

It's not how we're born, but what we become, that makes us who we are.

Bibliography

-Baizerman, Suzanne. "The Jewish Kippa Sugra and the Social Construction of Gender in Israel." In Dress and Gender: Making and Meaning, 2nd ed., edited by Ruth Barnes and Joanne B. Eicher. New York: Berg Publishers, 1997.
-de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.
-Binder, Pearl. Magic Symbols of the World. New York: The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited, 1972.
-Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.
-El Guindi, Fadwa. Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance. New York: Berg Publishers, 1999.
-Roscoe, Will. The Zuni Man-Woman. Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 1991.
-Taylor, Timothy. The Prehistory of Sex. New York: Bantam Books, 1996.
-Young, Antonia. Women Who Become Men: Albanian Sworn Virgins. New York: Berg Publishers, 2000.