Deciding Which Box to Check: Understanding the Transgender Issue

When filling out official paperwork - whether it be an application for employment or a U.S. Census survey - whenever there is a need for identifying ethnicity, social status, employment, or other non-gender related statuses, there is always an "other" box for the options not available. So why is there not an "other" box for gender? In our modern times of political correctness and tolerance, why is it so hard for our society to grasp the idea that humans are sexually dimorphic? After all, it is now socially acceptable in our society to be ethnically, culturally, racially, and structurally dimorphic; so, when does gender get its turn?

Anne Fausto-Sterling helps to expand this idea by stating "...the two sex system embedded in our society is not adequate to encompass the full spectrum of human sexuality." Within today's society, those who do not fall under the bilateral confines of male or female gender roles are shunned. This is mostly due to religion's, popular culture's, and the media's negative portrayal of the transgender as being freakish, unstable, untrustworthy, immoral, evil, and so on. This paper is going to discuss and help understand the social constructs of bilateral gender roles and the way these constructs help to exclude and disenfranchise an ample amount of the population as a whole.