There’s a show in the tradition of The Simpsons, Family Guy and American Dad that used to play on FOX during primetime. Now, it’s been relegated to Cartoon Network where reruns of the show are still popular during Adult Swim hours. It’s called The Oblongs. It has the Seth MacFarlane-esque humor reminiscent of The Simpsons and Family Guy but more dysfunctional. There’s the bald wife with a husband who has missing extremities; a pair of conjoined twins; a son who may be a bit mentally slow; and, a daughter with a half-formed penis sticking out of her head—a birth defect. Because of their unorthodox appearance, the father can’t get a decent job; without one, he can’t afford to live where the “normal” people live, which they call “The Hills.” Instead, they could only afford “The Valley” prices where all the so-called social outcasts live.

It’s not to say the transgendered population are social outcasts. But considering that about 90 percent of the world’s population identify themselves as heterosexual, and out of the 10 percent that’s delegated to the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered (GLBT) community, not all of them associate themselves as being transgendered, you can imagine how small that particular population rounds out to be. To examine this phenomenon further, let’s consider someone who happens to be transgendered. On special occasions, he might shave his legs, slip on a hot red number, make up his face, tuck in his penis and slide his masculine feet into a woman’s size 12 sandals. Incidentally, he also came out of the closet as a gay man. So, wouldn’t that feminine getup make him a drag queen? Then what are transvestites and how does cross dressing fit into the picture? What are transsexuals, and am I missing something with she-males?

To start, the common definition of transgender is used to describe someone who has been born, or assigned, a gender based on their genitalia but feel this is a wrong representation of who they are. In order to align them with what they feel is the rightful gender such a person might undergo sex reassignment surgery. There are two forms of surgery available: female to male and male to female. There has been speculation that the latter has been more common than the former; whether it’s due to the sheer number of people who simply don’t identify with their male genitalia or surgeons who generally refuse the female-to-male operation due to liability reasons is unknown. Those who decide to go under the knife are known as transsexuals. But, not all transgendered people are transsexuals. Those who decide such an operation is unnecessary may display manifestations of their proper gender by cross dressing. You might also hear cross dressing used interchangeably with transvestism, though the latter term signifies more than donning on the clothes of the opposite sex.

She-male is a term used to describe male-to-female transgendered people, or transsexuals, who have not undergone genital reassignment surgery but have developed mammary glands either through hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or by getting breast implants as well as developing other female characteristics. It’s almost a half-transformation, or partial surgery, though the genitalia are remained intact. She-males may also elect to have facial feminization surgery (FFS), which entails operating on the face and trachea (wind pipe) so that it looks “less masculine” and “more feminine.”

Though it only comprises a small percentage of the transgendered community, there are males and females who are born with genetic abnormalities that range from having an extra X (also called Klinefelter’s syndrome) or Y chromosome or only one X chromosome (otherwise known as Turner syndrome). Such genetic dispositions may manifest themselves in the form of underdeveloped sex characteristics or the presence of two sets of genitalia. In the latter case, there is usually one dominant sex organ with underdeveloped, or half-developed, genitalia of the opposite sex. Sometimes, you may hear such people referred to as hermaphrodites.

It’s important to note that being transgendered has little to do with one’s sexual orientation or preference. When orientation is thrown in, new labels and terms come into play. The two may seem interchangeable because transgendered is basically the umbrella term for transsexualism, cross dressing and transvestism. When sexual orientation comes into play, the umbrella term for that subsection of transgender is transvestism. To break it down even further, gay men who dress up as women are known as drag queens; similarly, lesbians who dress up as men are called drag kings. They are not transsexuals because they have neither undergone sex reassignment therapy and/or HRT nor will they ever feel the need to. Their identity is not necessarily dictated by their assigned sex organs, or lack thereof. They are gay or lesbians because they’re attracted to the same sex. Whether they were born that way or it was a preference they made early in life (according to the psychologist Carl Jung), it still remains to be seen with tried-and-true scientific data.

Whichever way you spin or turn it transgender, in essence, defies currently accepted gender roles. The term transgendered, or T, is usually grouped with GLB, or the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual communities. Though gays, lesbians and bisexuals strictly deal with sexual orientation and/or preference, and transgendered don’t necessarily only deal with sexual preferences, they’re all lumped into one big category as GLBT, or the “other gender.” If the U.S. is struggling to legalize gay marriages, imagine what the transgendered community goes through in such a dichotomized society where men and women have strict gender roles, are allotted such roles since they were children and are expected to enact them as adults to breed more babies who they’re supposed to impress upon what they’ve learned in childhood. It’s a ceaseless cycle. Then one might pose a question similar to the one about the chicken and the egg. Which came first? Humans or social constructs that formed gender roles? Well, humans created the rules but was it solely our doing or does evolutionary biology dictate our orientation? It can’t just be evolutionary biology because then the GLBT community shouldn’t exist at all. But, here they are.

The truth of the matter is majority of people worldwide consider themselves as heterosexuals whether by birth or by choice. If all humans were born with two sets of genitalia, maybe a variety of coupling apart from the male-female pair would be widely acceptable. If men and women both shared the burden of giving birth, maybe different sets of gender roles would have emerged.