Gender

So, I have been thinking about gender and transgender lately. Reading about it and watching a movie. Granted, I was brought to the movie by my new life partner, Lee Pace of Wonderfalls..... pause a moment for a sigh. And moving on.... He plays Calpernia Addams in the movie A Solider's Girl, which is based on a true story. Calpernia is a transgender woman who falls in love with Barry Winchell, a solider in the Army. Barry is tormented at the base and killed there brutally. The military is a whole other beast which I cannot even begin to comprehend in issues like this. Don't ask, don't tell just perpetuates the discrimination and hate even more. But, that is another beast, and not what I want to write about. The book, She's Not There, is written by Jennifer Finney Boylan, a transgender woman. She writes of her transition and how it affected her life, family, work, etc. It is a very good read, she describes the experience very tactfully, without turning her life or her body into a freak show, no matter how alienated she may feel. I think there is this hidden interest in finding out all the nitty gritty to what goes on physiologically and a neglect to the identity issues. There is a local flare I like, it is set in Maine, she works at Colby College, and I am able to locate many of the places she talks about.

Gender (a person's identity) and sex (physical biology) do not always align. Not only could some one's gender not match their given sex, it is more fluid than just man and woman. I find it amazing and refreshing and admittedly a bit confusing to think of gender as fluid, not a binary. It takes us out of the proverbial box (perhaps poor choice of words there...) and gives us the opportunity for expression. I don't even think I could to begin to understand what it would be like to have been born in a male's body. Would it feel more comfortable? Or would I feel trapped? I identify as a woman, but not in the stereotypical ways. It frustrates me when people think that you are what you are born with: male=man, female=woman, and those who try to think differently are being trendy, or are trying to make being gay easier, etc... I would like the people who think that to spend one month in the body of the other gender they consider themselves in. It's ridiculous to think that it is a whim.... what transgender people do to transform their bodies and lives to become what they have been on the inside to the outside world. It is not an easy life.

I know this sounds preachy... but I am just churning the constructs of gender in my mind. Thinking about what the world will be like, will evolve to in many years . And what gender will mean in the future. What gender means now. It is a lot to handle and process and observe. And that is just me, a woman lucky enough to be born in a female's body.


http://www.calpernia.com/

http://www.colby.edu/personal/j/jfboylan/