Hi my name is Joan Roughgarden. I am a retired biology professor. I used to be in the biology department at Stanford University, and now I live in Hawaii. The course organizers have asked me to speak about gender and sexuality nature, as well as to reflect on the current situation for transgender people in the United States. And may have added a personal touch here and there. Now, I've written a book called Evolution's Rainbow, that surveys gender and sexuality in the plant and animal kingdoms, primarily the animal kingdom. And it also looks at the expression of gender and sexuality in different societies, as well as the medicalization of gender and sexuality. And the key points are these. That the gender binary that we've grown up as assuming is fundamentally biological really, doesn't find much support in biology. The only generalization that occurs is a rather subtle one, concerning the size of gametes. In almost the whole species, the gametes sizes come as two sizes, one tiny and one big. So the gametes are the cells that have diffused to make an embryo. And the egg and the sperm are the typical names for the gametes. But in any case, there are no species in which there are three sizes of gametes, or a spectrum of gametes from small and to big, with a couple of exceedingly rare exceptions. So that it's effectively a universal generalization, that all species have gametes that sort into two distinct sizes. On the other hand, when it comes to the whole body, the whole organism that's making the gametes, well the, we don't have a binary anymore. There are many species in which the individuals make both eggs and sperm at either the same time or different times. And so, to be defined as a male in biology means you make sperm. To be defined as a female means you make eggs. And there are many species, including a majority of the plants and also a majority of the marine invertebrates, in which the individuals make both eggs and sperm. So they're both male and female at the same time, or potentially at the same time. In many of the marine species, the timing however, of being male and female differs. So that individuals, like fish that were originally female turned into males or conversely. They're originally males and then turned into females. Now, so the whole idea of the gender binary across biology as a whole is simply a myth, and should be discarded as a quaint throwback to an earlier conceptualization. And it turns out that's also true among people. So, if you look at the expression of gender and sexuality in different cultures. It has varied, the names for how it's expressed vary a lot. But in almost all societies, there are individuals who are born assigned if you will, to one sex, and who live as a member of the other sex. And, in the Western society, this is usually a highly medicalized phenomenon. But the role of medicine in today's society is itself a cultural form. Now, in many other societies, such as the Native Americans, other early Native American societies, and in the combination societie. Individuals who cross from one gender to another are considered to be expressions of a kind of deity. They are individuals who merge the spirits or the properties of two different sexes. And sometimes they have very important social roles in mediation. On the other hand, there' still other societies in which people crossing into different genders are marginalized. And this would be true in India for example, where there is a whole cast if you will, of people called the Hitra, who are born male or born intersex and live as females. And they don't have a position of great status. But nonetheless, there are a huge number of these people. And given the huge size within this population the frequency of about 1% or so of population adds up to a huge number of people. And here in the west, transgender people also occur and have occurred throughout history. And, in today's society we place a lot of emphasis on the stature and authority of medicine and of science. Less so of science in recent years due to the controversies about global change and evolution. But nonetheless, at its core, people do trust science a lot, and they especially trust medicine. And so, the explanation such as it is for transgender people in western society winds up being the burden if you will as a medical profession. And they struggle with it, and primarily because most people who are in this including psychiatrists, but not psychologists so much, were inculcated in the view that there is a natural gender binary. So deviation from a gender binary somehow I thought, pathological it needs to be explained. But that's unfortunate. In any case, the universal occurrence of what we're terming as transgender people. That is people who start out in one gender, live in another, are found even in the bible. And this is particularly important because, as some people know, the bible makes very scared mention of sexuality. Eventhough sometimes the Bible refused to, as a grounds for persecuting gay and lesbian people, there's actually very little mentioned of gay and especially lesbian sexual behavior in the Bible. In contrast, there's a category of people in the Bible that are translated as eunuchs. And these are very widely mentioned in the Bible, including by Jesus himself and in terms of large parables. Both in Isiah and in Philip the Evangelist in the New Testament. And all of the reference to eunuchs in the Bible is positive and affirming. And so even though today, the status, if you will, of transgender people in the US has been taken over by right wing conservative Christians as something that is opposed In the bible. Actually, the Bible is quite positive about transgender people. And the contention, of course, is whether or not the term eunuchs can apply to transgender people. But there's been a lot of study about just who the eunuchs were. And I think it's exceedingly clear that they're an ancient counterpart of transgender people. And similarly India today, the Hedra were translated into the name was translated into English as eunuchs. So there's this tendency to disown the reality of transgender expression throughout society. Now, in terms of my own opinion, if you will, about the status of transgender people today. Its a mixed bag. On the one hand, there is as you know more visibility to transgender people than in the past, than in the recent past at least. But part of the problem if you will or at least my reservations about the expression transgender people in the general public. Is that it's usually done for glamorous terms. So we're getting glam all the time and high fashion. And as we know most women are not glamour models, are not fashion models, obviously. And the same is with transgender people. Most of us are working professionals. And we're not decking ourselves out for appearance on a fashion runway on a regular basis, if ever. And so that's what's a bit misleading about it is it doesn't give a cross section of what transgender people are actually like. Any case, I have prepared a lot of resources, which I hope you can take advantage of. I lecture quite often on gender and sexuality. And I've posted my lectures on YouTube. And furthermore, my most recent lecture about gender and sexuality, which was given in Frankfurt, Germany this last summer, is one in which I posted online the slides themselves. And they're annotated, and you can download the whole annotated Powerpoint presentation, if you wish. And so I urge you to take advantage of these resources, I think you'll find them very helpful in your explorations. And thank you so much for your interest. And I hope these remarks find you're helpful in some regard. Take care, bye bye.
