This is the first of a multiple part series about the term gender. Conservative religious organizations and ex-gay organizations use the term gender — and variants on the term gender — to group together GLB & T people in a manner that GLB & T people don’t group themselves together. This series will explore groupings around gender, and the term’s variants. –Autumn
Ex-gay, formerly identified as gay, formerly identified as homosexual — we know what these statements mean when we read them.
Here is some ex-gay terminology you may not have heard or heard often:
– ex-transsexual
– ex-transgender
– ex-cross-dresser
– former __________ (Where one can fill in the blank with transgender, transsexual, cross-dresser, etc).
These terms have been used by ministries and groups promoting freedom from homosexuality and/or the healing of sexual brokenness. Reality Resources (an Exodus International affiliated ministry), Pure Passion, Another Way Out, Stonewall Revisited, Leadership U, and Mastering Life Ministries. Exodus International covers cross-dressing here.
To define ex-transgender terms, one has to define the transgender terms from which ex-transgender terms are derived. So, below is a glossary of some terms my XGW peers and I may be using on XGW in the future that we may not have used much previously. I’ve added some supplemental comments in itallics that hopefully will give some additional clarification of the defined terms.
transgender: The most bare bones of definition of a transgender would be in its use as an “umbrella term” — it describes people who don’t fit into a binary of just male and female. For example, the term can encompass the non-binary identities of drag queens, cross-dressers, transsexuals, genderqueers, and intersexed people. However, transgender is in large part a self-definition term, just as gay is a self-definition term — everyone who may fit a definition of gay doesn’t identify as gay (such as a person may instead identify as queer instead of gay), everyone who may fit into this definition of transgender doesn’t identify as transgender.
drag queen: A male who presents as female, exaggerating certain characteristics for comic, dramatic or satirical effect. The term usually refers to people who dress in drag for the purpose of performing, whether it’s singing, lip-syncing, or dancing.
cross-dresser (or crossdresser): Men who occasionally wear clothes traditionally associated with people of the other sex. Cross-dressers are usually comfortable with the sex they were assigned at birth and do not wish to change it. The term cross-dresser should NOT be used to describe someone who has transitioned to live full-time as the other sex, or who intends to do so in the future. Cross-dressing is a form of gender expression and is not necessarily tied to erotic activity, but sometimes is. Importantly, cross-dressing is not indicative of sexual orientation.
It’s often difficult to distinguish a cross-dresser from a drag-queen, but the difference is often found in their presentation and “goal.” Drag queens often aim for over-the-top imitations entertainment icons or feminity in general; cross-dressers often aim for emulation of females, or an emulation of their idealized vision of females. In other words, drag queens will more often dress to look like a diva ( i.e. Celine Dion or Diana Ross) or perform in a “camp” way (i.e. Nuclia Waste or Lady Bunny), where a cross-dresser will wear clothing one would expect to see on a high school girl or a librarian.
Drag queens and cross-dressers are by definition “part-timers.” A part-timer’s core gender identity is within the parameters of what society has determined his/her gender to be. Part-timers do not wish to totally or permanently change their full-time gender presentation. Rather, they are more comfortable living within a wider range of variance. In other words, they are gender variant. (reference #101 here)
transsexual: An individual whose natal sex (what’s “between the legs” at birth) and gender (what’s “between the ears”) don’t match; he or she identifies as a member acquires the physical characteristics of the opposite sex through various means (i.e. hormones, surgery, etc.).
A transsexual can be of any sexual orientation found in society as a whole, and transsexuals identify their sexuality in terms of their “target sex.” For example, there are some male-to-female (abbreviated F2M or FTM) transsexals who identify as heterosexual, others who identify as bisexual, still others who identify as lesbian, and still others who identify as asexual.
genderqueer: A person who identifies their gender as neither male nor female, both male or female, or somewhere on a continuum between male and female.
intersex: A person whose biological sex is ambiguous (i.e. a child has ambiguous genitalia at birth; a person doesn’t have the common XX or XY chromosomal pattern, etc.). There are many genetic, hormonal or anatomical variations which make a person’s sex ambiguous (i.e., Klinefelter Syndrome, Adrenal Hyperplasia, etc.).
For children born with ambiguous genitalia, parents and medical professionals usually assign intersex infants a sex and perform surgical operations to conform the infant’s body to that assignment. This practice has become increasingly controversial as intersex adults are speaking out against the practice, accusing doctors of genital mutilation.
gender identity: An individual’s emotional and psychological sense of gender. A gender identity usually is the same as an individual’s natal sex, but this isn’t necessarily the case when discussing transsexual, intersexed, genderqueer, or other gender variant people.
***
How and where gender identity becomes significant to ministries and groups promoting freedom from homosexuality or the healing of sexual brokenness is summarized fairly well in the Exodus International’s Gender Identity; What Does This Have To Do With Homosexuality? Here’s an excerpt from the piece:
Transgenderism’s roots have many parallels with homosexuality, but it is not entirely the same. Both are defensive responses which people develop — quite unconsciously — to shield themselves from pain and rejection. Where it differs goes back to a person’s perception of what’s true and the beliefs they develop about themselves, others, and the world around them.
Next Sunday: Part 2.
Trans And Gay: The GID Diagnoses And “Gender Confusion”
Autumn: “Ex-gay, formerly identified as gay, formerly identified as homosexual — we know what these statements mean when we read them.”
I don’t entirely agree. I really don’t know what these mean. I see them used a lot but they are never defined. One exgay posted that “exgay means whatever the person using it wants it to mean.”
It will be interesting to see how folks define the terms related to gender. At the first EXODUS conference in 1976, I met a person who called himself an ex-transexual. He was born male, cross dressed for years, worked as a female impersonator in New Orleans, had the surgeries, lived as a woman, got saved, and then “realized he had made a big mistake” and began living and dressing as a male again. His name was Perry Desmond. Here’s his story.
https://www.leaderu.com/stonewall/pages/perry_d.html
Hmm Micheal. Just thinking out loud for a sec, I know Fathers For Life has a glossary that has definitions I don’t agree with at all, and Anything But Straight has a section What Does Ex-Gay Actually Mean? that references discrepancies used to define the term ex-gay.
Maybe we need a glossary of terms here on XGW to explain what contributing authors mean when we use GLBT and ex-GLBT terms.
Personally, I don’t use “formerly identified” as anything unless quoting someone else. As for ex-gay, their is a decent and detailed explanation of that on Wikipedia.
Autumn, I am so glad you are doing this series. I find that among many former ex-gays (ex-ex-gays, whatevers) that we were forced to become more gender-normative. Some have found comfort in their newer more gender-normative expression while others of us have gone back to explore our genderqueerness or gender differences.
But, among many mainstream gays (as in white bio male gay), I have seen loads of prejudice towards trans folk and anyone who transgresses gender as we have been taught it.
Just like in the ex-gay world, we were taught and forced to conform to gender norms, I find that a similar insistence exists in the “gay world”.
While many ex-ex-gays have grown to embrace their orientation, many have yet to open up to embrace non-gender normative expressions for themselves or others.
The oppressed can so easily become the oppressors.
I think it’s important to emphasize that it is not our purpose to redefine gender as a mental construct nor to detach the concept from biology. Autumn has organized some terminology as a basis for a series that seeks to show how the separate issues of gender and sexual orientation are lumped together by ex-gay ministries in a way that ignores the distinctiveness and significance of both. This tendency belies a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of those who should know better.
I don’t happen to like how lesbian, gay and bisexual people are grouped together with transsexuals. It feeds into the myth that homosexuality and transgenderism are somehow related. They are not. One may as well lump Christian Scientists in with gay people.
Yes, I do understand the political reasons for this, but I think gay organizations were wrong to let transgendered people hitch their wagons with them. Let the transgendered have their own seperate advocacy groups.
A lot of the public is confused about homosexuality as it is, and they only get further confused when the transgendered are lumped in with gays and lesbians.
I have nothing in common with a biological male who wishes to be a woman or has been transformed into a woman.
Autumn, thank you so much for this. I see that I have been blessed to know someone, if not several people in all the categories you list here.
I’m beginning to wonder why gender is so important. And who it really matters to.
I suppose I would like to think that we know each other by who is decent and who is not. Who is compassionate and who is not.
Not what one looks like as an individual or part of a collective.
Each of us cannot, never did, nor was ever born exactly alike.
One’s gender isn’t at the heart of how talented or intelligent a person is.
But gender plays a huge part in whether or not a person is TREATED decently.
As I say often, women are brutalized in societies that require the strictest of gender norms.
Whatever the hell ‘gender norm’ is supposed to mean in a free society.