Sexual Diversity

Of the two chapters, I found the comments that Dr. Margaret Nichols, particularly the set of bullets highlighting her affirmative stance on the subject, to be the most helpful. I have long been sensitive to challenges faced by LGBTQ people and found this set of points to be the most on-point and concise I've read. I fully believe that sex and gender are different concepts and that they are expressed in so many different ways, which is powerfully influenced by culture in its expression and the degree to which it is expressed. I fully believe that the fluidity of gender has existed across cultures and time and have been fascinated learning about Two Spirits in Native American culture. This is one of the examples of how culture influences gender and sex expression. If the notion that some cultures actually revere the people possessing aspects of both genders instead of marginalize them is as fascinating to you as it is to me, I encourage you to look into it more. By contrast, Dr. Nichols spoke at the SSTAR conference about natal women who later dressed and lived as men, only having their physical sex identified by society upon their death. This was in our society in the early 1900s, when there was no option for having both male and female attributes.