Episode 5: Introducing the Gender Bread Person
In this episode we walk through the different parts of us that make up our gender, sex, and sexuality with the help of the Gender Bread Person!
The Gender Bread Person Worksheet:
https://www.itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/downloads/Genderbread%20Person%20v4%20ALL.pdf
Video
Podcast
Click Here for Gender Bread Person Worksheet
Script
Hello and welcome to Valentine’s Voice, the show for and by transgender people hosted by me, Valentine Valcourt. Today we have a different kind of episode, and not just because my wife bought me a green screen. We won’t be diving into the life of a historical transgender figure, or examining an ancient transgender community. Today we are going to begin a series that hopefully people will be able to refer to when they have a friend, associate, or new partner who is working on educating themselves about transgender topics. Like all series, we will be starting at the beginning. If this is stuff that you already know, that’s fine. Just remember that this is here anytime you need it.
With all of that out of the way, we will dive right in. Many years ago, when I was taking an introduction to logic course, we were taught to begin by defining terms to avoid confusion, so that is where we will begin. Contrary to popular belief, neither trans nhor cis are insults or words that we use specifically for gender. I actually knew about the Latin words trans and cis long before I knew anything about transgender topics. Right around the time I took that intro to logic course, there was also an intro to Latin course. So my introduction to cis and trans as terms was in reference to the Italian Alps. For the Romans there was Cisalpine Gaul (Gaul on this side of the Alps) and Transalpine Gaul (Gaul on the other side of the Alps). For a lot of people, the first time they hear trans is in the word translate. Taking a word from one language and telling you the word in this one. Reaching across the language barrier as it were. So the literal translation of cis is ‘this side’ and trans is ‘the other side’. At no point in history that I’ve been able to find have the Latin words cis or trans been used as an insult. I’ve never been able to find cis used as an insult in any language. Someone please tell Elon, he seems confused about this one. So when we’re talking about gender, all cis means is that you are staying with the gender you were assigned at birth. All trans means is that you are a gender other than the one assigned at birth. There isn’t an nefarious meaning hidden there. Lastly, if you’re wondering why we’re using Latin words, it’s because that is the language of medicine. Every bone in your body and all the muscles that make them move have Latin names.
Before we dig into this any further, I’m going to scoot over here, and put up a graphic of The Gender Bread Person. All credit to Sam Killermann over at itspronouncedmetrosexual.com. He made this years ago and has been revising it ever since to make it more accurate and easier to use. I stumbled across it when I was doing a SafeZone training for a company I was working at. We’re going to work through this together, and at the end I’ll fill it out using my information as an example.
So step one, and the one that decides more than it probably should, is sex. So here we’re talking about what sexual hormone your body is running on at the start. It’s also what the hospital uses to fill out your birth certificate, and how your parents decide what color to paint your room. In the short term it decides if your parents put you in dresses or football jerseys and whether you go to dance class or try out for the aforementioned football team. Once you hit puberty it’s how your body decides which set of physical characteristics to turn on and which one to leave turned off, because shocker, it knows how to do both in all of us. For cisgender people, that is the whole story. However you decide to express yourself, your body continues running with that plan for the rest of your life.
But, and here we begin step two, somewhere between one and two percent of the population is born with a mental identity that does not match their physical characteristics. For people in this population, hitting puberty can be a rough time. Instead of puberty signaling a fun new angsty exciting time, it can feel like watching your body warp into something from a carnival fun house mirror. That experience of feeling like your body doesn’t match your identity is called gender dysphoria. Transgender people experience it in different ways, some transgender people don’t experience gender dysphoria but do know that there is something that doesn’t match. The most effective way to treat this for most people is to transition, medically and socially. Transitioning means doing what we can to match physical characteristics and expression to match our identities. This can mean going from male to female, female to male, or from male or female to a gender that doesn’t fit our society’s gender binary. Before you start thinking that’s weird, there are a legion of cultures throughout history that have had more than two genders. The main thing to understand here, is that even through sexual characteristics and gender identity match for most of the population, they are two separate things and for a small percentage of the population they don’t match. For people who don’t match, the best solution we’ve found is transitioning. We can use this information to answer a really common ‘gotcha’ question: “What is a woman?” or “What is a man?”. A woman is someone whose mental identity is female. A man is someone who’s mental identity is male. A non-binary person is someone who’s mental identity is neither male nor female. Finally, it is also here we can pause and dispose of the term ‘transgenderism’. The implication is that being transgender is some kind of philosophy, like Stoicism or Existentialism, or religion, like Catholicism or Buddhism. Since being transgender is neither a philosophy or a religion, transgenderism is at best an inaccurate term, and at worst a bigoted dog whistle.
We briefly referenced step three a second ago, and that is expression. Expression is how we show ourselves to the world. This is things like the clothes we wear, whether we choose to wear makeup, how we cut and style our hair, how we talk, even how we walk. Again, the main point to understand is that how we express ourselves doesn’t have to match our sexual characteristics or our gender identities. Think drag queens and drag kings, masc women, or someone who might wear a dress one day or a suit the next.
Step four is attraction, and it’s kind of a double step. There are two kinds of attraction, sexual and romantic. Some people don’t feel sexual attraction (which is called being asexual), other people don’t feel romantic attraction (which is called being aromantic). Some feel one and not the other. Some people feel attraction towards people of the same gender as them, some people feel attraction to people of the opposite gender. Some people feel attraction to more than one gender, or all genders. These attractions can be sexual or romantic.
Again, the main point is that none of these parts of us decide the other parts. So for example, I am a transgender woman, so I was assigned male at birth but that did not match my identity. I have been transitioning for awhile and have mostly female characteristics, but not entirely because I love my voice and refuse to change it. My gender expression is mostly feminine, and I am attracted to lots of genders. The only part of this that I actually chose is how I express myself. The rest of it is part of who I am, and it is sacred and immutable. It is what makes me, me.
Just to hammer this point home, physical sex is not gender, gender does not influence sexual attraction, which does not have anything to do with how we express ourselves. These are all separate and independent parts of each of us, even the most cisgender straight person in the world is has all of these parts of themself.
I will be including a link to the Gender Bread Person worksheet. I would encourage you to go through it yourself and fill it out. You might even find something out about yourself. Next week we will be digging into what it means to transition and the different steps that transgender people take in transitioning. Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you next week!
