Multiplicities of Manhood

Our sex, sexual orientation, gender identification, and personality traits define who we are in ways we hardly understand, and consequently, our relationships, our possibilities, and our futures. It is a source of human security and the fuel behind life-changing pursuits. It is the locale of many of our desires and addictions, crises and traumas. It is also the key to contentment and closure. Gender is the most basic component of our humanity. Because it is not fixed, there is a life-long process of self-definition and self-revision in response to new experiences and challenges, as well as new knowledge about ourselves that arise from new experiences. While sexual orientation may be more fixed than one¿s sex, personality traits and gender identification are not. In an attempt to gain some stability, it maintains a gender system that helps people adapt more synergistically to changes that, I posit, are more organic in us - as a search for that which is most genuine to our nature - than artificial or influenced by foreign cultures or environments.