Or the other opposite sex this applies strong and

or the other “opposite” sex. This applies strong, and sometimes oppressive, social pressure to those
who do not conform to either identity. The flip side of that social pressure is a fascination with
those who live outside the usual boundaries of sex and gender. In fact, paying inordinate attention
to extremely unusual cases is one way that people reinforce their own feeling of being “normal.”

One recipient of such attention was Thomas Beatie, who was born female but had a male sexual
identity; he was transsexual. He took male hormones, had surgery to deconstruct his breasts, and—
after being legally recognized as male—married a woman. Then, when he and his wife wanted to
have children but she could not become pregnant, they decided to impregnate him with donated
sperm. That was still possible because of his female reproductive anatomy (and he stopped taking
male hormones). He thus earned notoriety as the “pregnant man” and eventually gave birth twice,
becoming the father to his children (Beatie 2008). Needless to say, the media were agog with the
story. The most famous person to make a transgender transition is now probably Caitlyn Jenner,
who transitioned from her male identity as Bruce Jenner, an Olympic gold medal–winning athlete
(Yahr 2015). Her popularity coincided with the rise of hit TV shows with transgender characters,
such as Orange Is the New Black and the family drama Transparent. The protagonist
in Transparent, like Jenner, transitioned from male to female in late adulthood. In
fact, transgender transitions have become more common at older ages, often among people
who are divorced or widowed, after their children have grown, or they have retired—reducing the
difficulty of upending intimate relationships that often accompanies this change (Bernstein 2015).
Jenner’s public transition helped bring transgender issues into the public spotlight.
Despite a shift toward accepting sexual diversity, however, transgender identities still present a
problem for our strictly two-gender system (see Changing Culture, “Raising Androgyny”).
Recent estimates suggest only about 1 out of every 200 American adults consider
themselves transgender (Crissman et al. 2016). But in the last few years, the issue has exploded
into the debate over public bathrooms (Schilt and Westbrook 2015). While some schools and
local governments have embraced a new approach that permits people to use the bathroom that
matches their gender identity, a backlash among conservatives has demanded that people be
required to use the bathroom of the gender on their birth certificate. The legal and political
debate over this question shows no sign of dying down (Human Rights Watch 2016). There are
many examples of cultural adaptations to transgender identity. In the Americas, many indigenous
tribes once recognized a role for male-bodied people who occupied women’s social positions
(Trexler 2002). They dressed in both men’s and women’s clothes and participated in cultural
rituals as women, and sometimes they married men. (Less often, female-bodied people acted as
men in a similar way.) These people were essentially considered a third gender. Anthropologists