Here’s a question to “Alas” readers:
Suppose that you could change your physical sex just by wishing it so. Changing sex is painless and easy, and you could change back to your original physical sex whenever you wanted.
Would you like to have this ability? If you had this ability, would you use it?
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Yes to both questions! I’m curious as to what it’s like. Furthermore, I think I might become a more empathetic person by being able to see things from both sides of the fence, if not in the long-term sense of knowing what it’s like to be socialized and grow up as a woman, at least be able to understand the basics, like “what does a woman go through when she has a period?”
Good god, yes.
I would love, love, LOVE to be able to expand my understanding in a more solidly concrete way. There’s only so much knowledge that you can absorb second-hand, and even just as a matter of sociological interest, it would be fascinating to see how people treated me differently as a woman.
Plus, as a polyamorous guy married to a polyamorous bisexual woman and dating a polyamorous bisexual couple, it would help to further complicate my love life, and goodness knows, that’s to be encouraged.
—Myca
I’d jump at the chance–especially since I could change back. (I’d enjoy knowing what it’s like to have a guy’s body, but I’m used to what I have!) My first thought was the physical aspects of being a guy, which I think would be *cough* fascinating to explore, but it would also be interesting to see how differently I would be treated.
I’m not sure what would keep someone from wanting this ability, since it would only be a temporary change. Fear of losing one’s masculinity/femininity? Utter lack of curiosity?
Only if I would be better looking than I am as a guy.
yes. in a heartbeat.
but then, i also would jump at the chance to grow wings, a tail, webbed fingers, & any number of other bodily wonders extant in the world.
again, as in the thread off which this has spun, i wonder as to what might happen to my sense of self & identity with such extraordinary & profound biological changes…. this particular thought experiment still has that assumed divide going on between mind (identity) & body, that it’d be like changing hats
voici: le chat en la chapeau – poof! – el gato en el sombrero!
Oh my yes. So would my wife.
If just I could, or if everybody could?
I’d take that either way, but I’m not sure I’d use the ability in any meaningful way. If everyone had that ability, though, it’d drastically change society (cf. Left Hand of Darkness, or a Neil Gaiman story whose title escapes me).
Yep, and I wouldn’t even ask to switch back.
No, b/c I could just “pack” in public and *act* like a guy and no one would know the difference.
:)
Yep. And I’d certainly use it.
You know, if you can change back, I really question whether or not you could get a better understanding of what it was like to really live as a member of the opposite sex. Since you could go back, your range of options in response to how you where treated is not constrained by the fact that you will have to live as that sex forever. I think that is a signifigant difference, signifigant enough to make the expiriment mostly empty.
I would proably do it once out of curiosity, bit I don’t think I would actually learn much real out of the expirience.
This comment’s largely in reference to the “should anonymous egg and sperm donation be legal” thread, but I felt it made more sense to put it here. In some ways I’m no longer so sure that this is the appropriate place for this post- the discussion about changing bodies temporarily and perfectly doesn’t have a lot to do with what it would be like to wake up one day with a permanently altered body, but I’ve typed it now so I may as well post it.
What I found frustrating in the egg&sperm donation post was how blithely the issue of having a body that is other-gendered was treated: my impression of your position was something like “those trans people, so worked up about their bodies and gender, if I suddenly changed I’d be fine.’ Pretty much the only impression I took (and still take) from that paragraph is that you don’t understand what’s involved. That impression was helped along by the use of transsexual as a noun- although many transpeople use it because of the perceived medical legitimacy it confers, its use in that context felt in many ways a bit like someone saying ‘those inverts, if I woke up a Kinsey 6 it wouldn’t make a bit of difference to me.’
Transpeople and IS people are pretty much the only groups who actually get the full experience of feeling their bodies are incongruent and mis-gendered (although obviously the intensity and nature of that experience varies a great deal,) and it’s a bit irritating when people who haven’t approached that experience start pronouncing on what it would be like. Now it’s possible that I’m projecting my own experiences onto you, but frankly your post felt like a failure on your part to take the experiences and testimony of other people very seriously. I hate trying to find analogies for this and the only ones I can think of are a bit dubious, but if I were to start having disability fantasies and began telling people that if I were disabled it wouldn’t make a whit of difference to how I thought of myself and my life and then marched around simply ignoring the testimony of disabled people that their disabilities have made their lives and experiences differ in significant ways from my own I hope that they’d be pissed off and call me on my ignorance.
I’m aware that questions around transition, or disability for that matter, are inevitably caught between issues of the body and issues of social prejudice, and that a lot of trans narratives are very problematic (‘man trapped in a woman’s body’ particularly irritates me,) but it’s not like there are no groups or information out there discussing just how difficult it is to have a body that you don’t feel fits. One of the most personally affecting articles I’ve seen recently on the whole body\transition issue is http://www.butchdykeboy.com/bdb/oneshot.htm
Obviously it’s your privilege to choose not to take my testimony very seriously (and even to choose to characterise it as projection) but from my perspective it’s insulting and trivialising. You have the privilege of having a gendered body that works sufficiently well for you as to slide into invisibility (when it fits, it’s like it isn’t there,) I don’t.
I chose not to personalise my previous responses because I think you’ve confused ‘being female’ with ‘having a female body-‘ my opinion is that there’s a good deal more crossover between gender roles than gets acknowledged, and most people can probably find a place within either of the binary gender categories that will work for them. Similarly there are probably a whole lot more people who’d choose to transition if it wasn’t so tiring and such an imperfect process. I can’t speak to how many people might fall within those two categories (nor, obviously, characterise your own relationship to your body, Amp) but it seems more likely to me that the reason you think you’d have no problem waking up female-bodied is that the importance of your body isn’t immediately obvious rather than that you’re possessed of tremendous sang froid about waking up different.
People tend not to think seriously about the congruence between their body and gender identity unless they don’t fit. Again, they’re imperfect analogies, and I don’t want to imply any equivalence, but it’s similar to the way that white isn’t really seen as a race and male isn’t seen as a gender; both white and male have been naturalised to the extent where they aren’t thought of anymore. The relationship between your gendered body and gender ID is even more potently naturalised- for years and years your gendered body has behaved in the way that you expect, to the extent that it’s not something that’s thought about. Instead, the fact that you have a gender ID and that your body behaves in a way that reinforces that sense of yourself simply falls out of awareness: you don’t think ‘I am a male identified person with an erection and this confirms my sense of myself as male,’ you think (if you think of it at all) ‘I’m having an erection.’ The fact that there is a relationship between body and gender identity gets routinized to the extent of concealment. It’s only when you’re body doesn’t fit and its gendered characteristics feel alien and disturbing that the fact of that relationship gets made clear. I take the fact that I can see for granted- I don’t mentally comment on my ceiling every time I wake up- but were I to wake up blind one day I’m not naïve enough to believe that my only concern and issue would be anti-blind prejudice. Sight isn’t gender of course, but gender is fundamental to our experience of our bodies and to expect it to resolve along the lines of ‘oh gosh, I’ve got a pimple’ is pretty questionable.
Anyway, I’m trans and that experience may have compromised my ability to think about this clearly, but on the other hand I’m probably the only person here with the experience of transition and altering the gendered characteristics of their body; I guess whether you see that experience as relevant depends on whether you see my views as projection or testimony.
“I chose not to personalise my previous responses because I think you’ve confused ‘being female’ with ‘having a female body-‘ my opinion is that there’s a good deal more crossover between gender roles than gets acknowledged, and most people can probably find a place within either of the binary gender categories that will work for them. ”
Having a female body is being female. Being a woman, perhaps, is what makes one part of the binary gender system — which is predicated on hierarchical power, not biological sex. The majority of females **do** cross over the gender roles assigned them, all over the place they do; however, they face social repurcussions for doing so, often in the forms of rape, battery, unemployment, etc.
“People tend not to think seriously about the congruence between their body and gender identity unless they don’t fit. ”
Feminists have been writing theory about this for a 1/2 century.
“The fact that there is a relationship between body and gender identity gets routinized to the extent of concealment.”
And feminists have written/theorized about the objectification of the female body for quite some time too. What you call the routinization of gender identity, we call sexism and patriarchy.
The irony being, women/female bodied people don’t capture the public eye/political eye in quite the way that trans does for exactly that reason: the routinization of an imposed gender identity. In fact, politics can now be written that Trans, as a movement, is opening the public eye to gender and gender identity! When feminists try to do this, they’re just labeled knee-jerk reactionaries! Go figure.
I’m glad you’ve come to the insights that you have; I just don’t like to see them assuming that the gendered identity of “woman” that is imposed on female bodies is one that is willingly chosen, and unproblematic.
Tarn, I appreciate your post and, although I think you’ve misunderstood me, I take your post very seriously and want to reply seriously. Unfortunately, I’m also currently preparing to leave Florida and fly to Oregon, so with one thing and another I won’t have the time or the mental space to respond to you as carefully as I’d like.
First of all, I apologize if I seemed to be saying “oh those silly transsexuals.” I really, honestly don’t believe anything like that. But I’m genuinely sorry and mortified that I gave you that impression.
Second of all, I think you’re assuming some things about my life which aren’t true. (Which is understandable, and I’m not criticizing you for it.)
I agree with you that as a general rule, many men (and white people) are allowed to grow up not having to think of themselves as having sex or race; we think of ourselves as the neutral, blank state, and as women and non-white people as the gendered or raced deviations from the norm. That was certainly my experience with race, and still is, although I try not to fall into those thought patterns. But that was not at all my experience with my sex; the fact that I was physically male but could not perform maleness acceptably was a central, painful, and maddening fact of my childhood and adolescence. In my formative years, I was never allowed to be unaware of being male.
At the same time, my experience – a disjoint between my physical male sex, and my inability to perform “masculinity” to my own or anyone else’s satisfaction – is not the same as the experiences I’ve read about in transexual narratives. I hated being male, but what I hated wasn’t my male body. As far as I can tell, I’m not a transsexual – although I can’t even be certain about that, since I’m well aware that many people who transitioned in their 40s and 50s would have said “I’m not a transsexual” if you asked them while they were in their 30s.
This is disjointed and incomplete – but it will have to do for now, because I’m losing computer access, and won’t have computer access again for many hours, after I’m back in Oregon. So forgive the incomplete and not-fully-thought-out reply; I’ll continue with another post later.
As to the original question, why would anyone say no?
But if you asked this, without the option to switch back, it would be a completely different question. I suspect that most people would say know just because they’ve had some decades to adapt to their current situation. But I would be intrigued by the discussion.
As formulated, this seems to be, as one other person said, mainly a meter for your level of natural curiosity. Have you wondered whether the physical differences (generic — strength, menstruating, peeing standing up, etc.) would be cool or a drag? Have you thought about how the other sex is treated in a bar, and how completely different that would be to experience than to discuss? Haven’t you been curious about what sex feels like for the opposite sex (both solo and with a partner)? I would think you’d need a stretch of time (a month or two, say) to really get a range of experiences and to get jolted out of enough of your habits and assumptions, but still, a cultural trip as broadening as a trip to another continent . . .
Like other posters here, I guess I’d like to try being male for a while for curiosity’s sake. But if there were no option for changing back, I would absolutely not be interested.
I don’t think my life or personality would change in any significant way if I were male instead of female. I’m sure this isn’t true for everyone.
Yes. So assholes will STOP guilt-tripping me whenever I say I don’t want to marry and don’t want to have children. And hell, it would be fun to have a penis and testicles. It would also be nice to be a member of a sex that’s not dismissed as “hysterical” and “irrational” whenever they voice their opinion and are critical of social structures.
But if I couldn’t change back, then hell no.
Q grrl: >>Having a female body is being female. >>
Female-bodied is female? Really? Because I’m female bodied and male, and will continue to have a body that is in some ways female for the rest of my life.
Q grrl: >>And feminists have written/theorized about the objectification of the female body for quite some time too. What you call the routinization of gender identity, we call sexism and patriarchy.>>
When trans people attempt to add their own experiences of gender, sex, and gender identity to the mix–never mind if they were weaned on Germaine Greer–they’re told that they’re just reinventing the wheel, as though every one of their insights should come with a Kate Millet cite. We know that women have been talking about sexism and gender roles for a long, long time. We are also aware that the gender binary is not terribly comfortable for anyone, and that it is least comfortable and most oppressive for women. Nine out of ten ftms are Mills alums, after all. And all ftms did live as women.
Tarn was not discussing the experience of a female-bodied, woman-identified woman because he was contributing to a discussion about changing sex as a transperson. He stuck to transpeople and still managed to write a page-long post. He wasn’t talking about transgressing gender roles, but about believing that one is the opposite gender and/or becoming the opposite gender. Mary Daly does the former, but has never either wanted to transition or actually changed sex.
This “What I’d do if I woke up as the opposite sex,” discussion amongst the non-transgendered makes me grumpy because it seems to assume that all of the discomfort we talk about is transsexual. Y’all talk about waking up in a new body as though it would be gaining skill with obligation–like, say, waking up one morning with the ability to speak a different language. The experience–and I’m speaking here of merely getting a different body, not of any of the medical or legal aspects of transition, nor even of the social implications of becoming a transsexual–is a lot more like waking up one morning in a foreign country with no money, no passport, and no map. Are you about to have a very interesting experience? Yes. Do you have the opportunity to learn a new language? Absolutely. Are you going to have much fun for the first few months? Probably not, even if you did always want to travel.
Each gender comes with a detailed set of rules that cover all aspects of appearance, behavior, and personal interaction. Some transpeople manage to socialize themselves into those rules from a very young age, and most manage to do some homework beforehand. Many can’t. I didn’t believe in the differences myself, but here I am sticking out like a sore thumb–and it’s gotten worse since I started passing. Now that people think I’m a boy, the things I do make no sense to them. My voice is all wrong. My stance is all wrong. My walk is all wrong. I’m clearly foreign. As I spend more time as a boy, I’m acclimating, even unconsciously. But it is and was incredibly uncomfortable. Even though I don’t identify as uncomplicatedly male, and even though I’m glad I’m different, it’s not fun to be painfully aware of how strange you seem to other people.
It’s irritating to see non-transgendered people so ignorant of this process of re-acculturation. It seems to promote the classic Pre-Transsexual narrative that assumes that all transsexuals are their chosen gender deep down. And it’s part of a larger inability of society to acknowledge how very stressful transition is. The mood swings aren’t all hormonal.
I’d try being female although I’d prefer to be permanently converted into one person with two bodies and the ability to dual-task. Not only would that reduce the risk of not gaining enough from the experience, as a techno-pessimist, it would worry me less because my brain/brains and body/bodies would only have to be massively altered once.
There’s also the fact that, given consciously-controlled gender-swapping, I know a lot of people of both birth genders who would just go male when their period came around. (Unless the transformation paused the menstrual cycle in which case it would probably limit the user to pre-planned swap times and durations for reasons of convenience)
“It seems to promote the classic Pre-Transsexual narrative that assumes that all transsexuals are their chosen gender deep down. ”
Well, I didn’t say that I disagreed. The above sentence also presupposes that all women are their chosen gender deep down too, no? [and men also]
“It’s irritating to see non-transgendered people so ignorant of this process of re-acculturation. ”
To be honest, maybe I’m just a little squicked by the above, as if only trans faces and addresses this process of re-acculturation. If you read my first post above, I mention that if I went out in public “packing”, I would pass as a man. I can, and have, actively pass/ed as a man. Not as a male, but as a man. It doesn’t take much effort on my part — often I’m not even trying. And that is just part of my being female. My masculine appearance is part of my femaleness, and because I can pass (and have) there is no question of whether I would switch to the opposite sex, because that seems fairly meaningless from my personal perspective.
True enough. I’m sorry if I got shirty; I just get tired of being constantly told that feminism got there first. It’s absolutely true that feminist thought covered, you know, sexism. It’s also true that transpeople have their own insights to add, and that transpeople sometimes are talking about slightly different things. And it’s problematic to constantly bring up feminism and feminist thought whenever transpeople talk about their experiences of gender; many pioneering feminist thinkers have been vicious towards transpeople.
And no, it doesn’t. Since it denies that transpeople are necessarily their chosen gender deep down, or more naturally fit into their chosen gender role, a more likely reading would be that it denies the idea that non-transpeople are their birth gender deep down: the gist of my post was about gender role as socialization.
Of course I don’t believe that all non-transgendered men and women act according to reductive stereotypes or feel more comfortable having to do so; I was referring to a viewpoint that does. The Pre-transsexual Narrative presupposes that each gender comes with a gender role, that there is only one way for men and women to act and feel. I didn’t feel I had to point out that part. The Pre-transsexual Narrative takes that sexist assumption and tacks on a sexist trans-specific corrollary: if you are transsexual, you must conform in all ways to the gender role for your inner gender. From birth. If you don’t, you aren’t really a transsexual man or woman, you’re just…a freak. Of course, this can be traced back again to non-transpeople: if you don’t conform in all ways to the gender role for your birth gender, you’re not really a man or woman, you’re a freak.
That occurred to me as I was writing; I didn’t want to seem overly defensive. I was a frequently-passing dyke for awhile; I do know what that’s like. And I do know that people other than transpeople have to deal with acculturation.
EMMV, but I seem to be getting many more WTF?! reactions from people than I ever did before. And they seem to be about more than homophobia or homophobic misogyny.
Would you see changing sex–getting a male body–as about nothing other than passing? That is, as no different from what you experience when you pass? That’s interesting to me.
And when you packed and passed in public, were people confused by your appearance vs. your presentation?
I would certainly love to switch back and forth at will. The two main reasons I would not do it permanently are:
1. My wife is straight, and prefers me to be male.
2. I am fat, and fat discrimination is FAR worse for women than for men.
I doubt being a woman would affecct my carreer much, but that is primarily because I am in a specific professional specialty that is in the process of becoming female dominated.
“Would you see changing sex”“getting a male body”“as about nothing other than passing? That is, as no different from what you experience when you pass? That’s interesting to me.
And when you packed and passed in public, were people confused by your appearance vs. your presentation?”
To the first question, yes. I wouldn’t see any difference experientially. Probably the only two things that I can think of that I would wonder about are more tactile experiences: the feeling of urine passing through a penis, and the tactile experience of an erection. But both of those are approximate to what I experience “as is.” I have experienced other people believing that I am male from a very young age (3 years old or so — in fact the day I was born, the resident got it wrong despite the anatomy!!). When I was younger, I played exclusively with boys and many knew me for years before they grasped that I wasn’t a boy also. It wasn’t usually revealed until someone wanted to do a group piss/bonding/contest etc, and I of course couldn’t “play along.” :-)
As to the second question: I haven’t ever packed in public. But I have passed. I’m sure if I packed and also bound my breasts, I could pass 100% of the time. And I don’t think I’m all that masculine — it’s just a certain, eh, I dunno. I come across as a man — more specifically as a young male.
So I guess there’s really no mystery there for me. No need to switch sexes b/c I don’t think, if I remain who I am at the core, my personal experience would differ greatly from what I have already experienced.
Piny: also thanks for expanding things in post #21
What if I ETA’d to, “Non-transgendered people _who are_ so ignorant of this process of reacculturation”? I’m not talking about passing women, or gendervariant non-transgendered people. Just about people who talk about making the change with no real consciousness of the enforced borders: their lack of awareness in the hypothetical translates to a lack of awareness of other people’s actual problems. That is, I think, our shared issue. I’m pissed off because no one seems to understand the distance between the two states, and you’re pissed off because no one seems to see that some people already suffer because they either have some form of dual citizenship or refuse to acknowledge either state’s authority.
I’m not sure that undergoing this kind of thought experiment, even if truly possible, would teach you very much of value, and the lessons would be very superficial and misleading. A “tourist” experience (where you can “switch back”) is always and intrinsically different from a “native” one (where you are presumably stuck as you are). In fact, even if a few people have their insight expanded, just as many will come away with, well, that was different, but not that different. Where are we doing lunch?
“Tourist” experiences in all kinds of similar things are relatively common. At one point, city leaders in my old town were dared to try to get around in a wheelchair for a day, just to see what the problems are. Well, some of them probably learned a few things, but when you’re getting around on two legs the next day, it’s easy to forget, and indeed miss the whole context of what it means to be disabled, which is not just your difficulty in getting over a snowy curb cut in the wheelchair you borrowed for that day.
Or about church youth groups, that decide to fast for the day so they will understand what hunger is like. Yea, you’ll know what a gnawing stomach is like, but nothing else that goes with a lifetime of being poor and hungry.
Conceivably, with the right body build, haircut, attitude and makeup (if need be), you might be able to pass as the opposite sex for the day. You might learn a few things. But you might come away with a serious misunderstanding of the differences between being brought up as a girl or boy and all that implies within the family, the schools, and society, vs. reactions to your physical appearance for the day.
A “fat suit” might tell you some about society’s loathing for the overweight, but not much about internal self-hatred, the constant struggle over diet, the never ending domination of weight over your self image.
Somthing similar may be said of dark or light makeup and a wig to appear white or black. Or the difference between dressing “punk” or “prep” and how people react to you.
“I’m pissed off because no one seems to understand the distance between the two states, and you’re pissed off because no one seems to see that some people already suffer because they either have some form of dual citizenship or refuse to acknowledge either state’s authority. ”
DING. DING. DING. !!
I see the question as mostly a “What magic powers would you have?” question myself. And yeah, I’d love it if I could go back. There’s a lot of stuff that happens in the body of the opposite sex that we don’t even know about, since most people don’t think it’s worth talking about. That would be cool.
And I’d want to settle the argument of who has better orgasms once and for all, though I think the prevailing opinion is that women do.
kevin, acm, piny, qgrrl, others:
“opposite”?
? I don’t understand your question.
Are male and female “opposite sexes”? I know it’s a figure of speech, but it seems an inappropriate one. Like calling Caucasian and Negro “opposite races”, or the United States and Russia “opposite countries”.
Males and females have many similarities and many differences. I do not think, however, that they are in any meaningful way “opposites”.
Why are you asking me? or the other people you called out?
I mean, it is a turn of phrase, so I guess I don’t see what your point is on calling posters out on it, especially if you read what is in the context of those posts… we’re pretty much talking about there not being an opposite.
Opposite genders, yes.
“Opposite genders, yes.”
That’s what I’m saying. They are not opposite genders, or sexes, or opposite anything. They are different, but saying “opposite” implies an natural “opposition” that is intrinsic, rather than artificial. The fact that there happen to be two, and that they are different, does not set up any opposition other than the opposition we place there.
“Dominant” is the opposite of “submissive”.
“Strong” is the opposite of “weak.”
But “male” (or “masculine”) is not the opposite of “female” (or “feminine”).
Woman is the opposite of man in an imposed gendered hierarchy. You said it yourself:
“Dominant”? is the opposite of “submissive”.
In answer to the original question – maybe once a month, for about 5 to 6 days? [j/k]
Honestly? No.
Qgrrl, I’m gonna hold off until tonight on answering your comments for time reasons. Interesting stuff. And last post this afternoon, I swear:
And re: Richard: Oh, look, another incarnation of the “Tenacious and significant political categories…” vs. “…based on a steaming pile of bull-crap,” debate.
“Male” and “female” sort human characteristics into a bunch of oppositional categories, like aggressive/docile, atavistic/nurturing, intellectual/emotional, subject/object, and strong/weak to name just a few of the multitude. We don’t yet know whether any of these dichotomies are “natural,” or whether they would exist to any degree without the healthy encouragement of culture. Since I know of so many exceptions to the rules, since many of the rules are themselves contradictory, and since the rules frequently shift, I tend towards bull-crap.
But they do _exist_, as dicta if not always as response, and they do affect people. Acknowledging their existence and the profound separation they create by no means equates to asserting their permanence or justice.* We went through that with Larry Summers.**
*Take ME, for example.
**i.e., with the “feminists refuse to admit that there are any differences between men and women” meme.
I’m trying to think of a relevant quote, but I can’t remember one. Anyway, I’ve occasionally run into the idea, in discussions of dialectics, that dialectical oppositions in society tend to be more focused than dialectical oppositions in the natural world, basically because humans tend to go looking for dialectical oppositions, and then exaggerate them when they find them. So genders are defined as “opposites,” precisely because they are arbitrary social constructions.
Something that keeps coming up in discussions of online roleplaying games is that many men will choose to roleplay characters who are women. It’s less common for women to choose to roleplay men. The former gets discussed much more than the latter; the usual reasons given by men for choosing to play as women are sexist reasons, but I suspect there’s more going on then most involved will admit. I think a lot of men actually hate being men, but don’t see a way out of it.
I’ve been curious about the sort of thing Amanda was getting at: what’s the actual physical experience of having another sex? The experiences of sexuality are the obvious thing to wonder about, but I sometimes wonder if there are other, more mundane experiences that just go unexamined.
RB
Aside from the excellent points about current societal structures others have already made, I think you are reading too much into the word opposite. Opposite can — and often does — mean just “other”. As in my opposite in the programmer community at our biggest client. There is no sense of antagonism in that statement. Opposite sex, I think, fits into the same category.
And you didn’t answer the question — would you?
I don’t really want to be a man. I’m happy to be a woman despite all the crap.
“I’ve been curious about the sort of thing Amanda was getting at: what’s the actual physical experience of having another sex? The experiences of sexuality are the obvious thing to wonder about, but I sometimes wonder if there are other, more mundane experiences that just go unexamined.”
I’d have to agree with that. That’s one of the reasons I’d wish for two bodies rather than consciously-controlled transformation. I wouldn’t want to risk missing something and not even knowing it.
“Male”? and “female”? sort human characteristics into a bunch of oppositional categories, like aggressive/docile, atavistic/nurturing, intellectual/emotional, subject/object, and strong/weak to name just a few of the multitude.
Even to the extent this is true, this does not make “male” and “female” opposite sexes or genders. Not that this is the best primary source for gender roles — actually it might not be a bad one — but Mrs. Bellamy recently purchased the complete First Season DVD of “Wonder Woman,” the mid-1970s Lynda Carter version set in World War II, and we’ve been watching an episode every few days. Wonder Woman is frequently described as the “ideal woman,” as she is strong and smart, but also just and compassionate. Her partner in crime-fighting is Major Trevor, whose “positive masculinity”(strong but sensitive) is contrasted with the “masculinity-gone-wrong” of the Nazis (strong and insensitive). The recurring message seems to be that sexual equality will be reached if women could work to be stronger like Wonder Woman, and men could work to be more sensitive like Steve Trevor — that the man becomes more manly by taking on “feminine” traits and vice versa.
Just because “black” and “white” are opposite colors, doesn’t mean that “vanilla” and “chocolate” are opposite flavors.
And you didn’t answer the question ““ would you?
Suddenly, I don’t know what the question means any more. Am I having a “mind transplant” like in that Star Trek episode where the evil-woman-scientist switches minds with Captain Kirk so she can run the ship? Or am I giving up my intellect and strength, in exchange for weak docility?
Either way, I guess so, for a while, if only for dirty-old-manish reasons.
Another issue, from what I understand, is that your experience of gender is not only structured by certain complex differences of brain structure that are genetic, but how brain structure is literally sculpted by experience over time. In that sense, it is hard to imagine you could have an “I” that would truly be the same while switching physical bodies. Or your “I” might in some sense be still “male” or “female” that you were before, even in your new “opposite sex” body. So how would that filter your experience of sexuality? Interesting to speculate, but it still might not be the same as a “native” experience.
Some of this is coming around to the transexual issues. Actually, we know now from research over the last 10 years or so that it is certainly possible to be genetically female or male (XX or XY pattern) and still be born with genitalia that does not reflect this. So in a sense your brain will structure male or female, even as your body is suggesting the opposite, and people are reacting to you in accordance with your body. Or young children whose “ambigious” genitalia were surgically altered to fit their “assigned” gender with either no concern or knowledge of their preferred or genetic gender. So I suspect that a person with a genetic identity as, say, male, but genitalia that are or were altered to be “female” and is raised and treated as female, will certainly have unique insights into these issues.
I just don’t think that pretending that gender is simply a code or social norm inscribed on a blank slate is accurate anymore, and hasn’t been for a long time. This is not to say that biology is everything either. It is obviously a very complex , dialectical relationship.
I have no desire to try out a male body, even if I were sure I could change back. I’m not interested in temporarily wearing a male body and thinking that means I know anything about what it means to be a man. I’ve spent enough time “passing” as straight to know I might learn something about other men if I did the experiment, but that I am unlikely to learn anything much about myself. And based on what I have learned about straight people by being with them when they thought everyone present was heterosexual, I don’t imagine I would much like what I would learn about men if I could “pass” among them in a male-only group. I already know enough to resist sexism, so I don’t think I need any more object lessons.
I have the flu so right now I’d swop to anything, even a nutria or something, provided that it was healthy. But I have always wanted to see how the world would react to me if I was a man in its eyes. I’m more interested in that than in how it would feel to be another sex. For example, how would various stories in my life have been different if I had been seen as a man? What doors would have opened for me that were shut in reality? Would any have closed that opened for me?
Maybe I am just narrow-minded, but I have never felt especially female, though I don’t know what I could compare the way I feel to, so the external stuff is of more interest to me than any internally-felt differences there might be.
On the other hand, I once had a dream about being a dog, and in the dream I really felt the four legs and the ability to smell everything and the way running was like a religion. It was fun.
In response to Comment #44 by silverside…
There’s more to it than even that. As I understand it, there are at least three areas of gender differentiation: Physical, Genetic, and Mental.
As you pointed out, Physical and Genetic can disagree. One example would be someone with AIS (Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome) who would be physically female but genetically male. However, studies of people with AIS and other Genetic-Physical mismatches have helped to show that there is not necessarily a connection between any of the three areas.
As for the number of areas of gender differentiation, I say “at least” because Mental is a mixture of social and biological influences but I don’t think we have enough data to be drawing any lines yet.
You know where the Nyannichuan and Nannichuan are, Ampersand?
The inevitable Ranma reference made, I have to say yes, as long as I could control it. Even if it was only for… certain reasons…
But in any case, I’d much rather have a Super Robot…
Oh, there are tons of gender-change references. Even limiting it to manga and anime, I can think of one or two instances of short-term changes and even one that’s essentially Ranma with a different trigger.
The annoying thing is that most of the gender-bending stuff I find is Japanese in origin and the gender stereotypes in 90% of Japanese-sourced stuff forces me to take “lost interest” breaks every so often.
Well, you’re clearly a transsexual.
Kidding! I’m kidding.
It is interesting, though, how much more your experiences jibe with tradition than mine. I was never, ever mistaken for a boy. I never played with them. I never pretended I was one. I never told my mom I wanted to be one.
I think my concept of gender is more tied to the body; I didn’t spend as much time thinking about being perceived as male as having a male body, or rather, a transitioned one. I think that I would wonder more about tactile experiences than about perception, had I the option of switching out for a non-trans male body. I’m not broken up about having to go out and buy my penises, but I am curious as to what it would feel like to have one attached.
Would you be interested in seeing what it would be like to identify as male? That is, to have that body and that role and its associated responsibilities for the rest of your life? That was one of the questions I had to deal with in transition; it never occurred to me back when I was just passing. And it seems to be one of the what-ifs the thread has alluded to.
And as far as the gender-variance/transgender discussion….
I think that this is one reason that discussions between transpeople and feminists get so huffy on the trans side. I care deeply about both issues; I’m pissed off about the problems transsexuals have to deal with and the problems that people who “transgress all over gender” have to deal with. And there seem to be some misconceptions surrounding that.
When speaking to feminists about “trans,” I almost always encounter the assumption, spoken or unspoken, that transpeople do not personally have a stake in ending prejudice against gender-role nonconformity. Most of the transpeople I know are not only trans but queer and gender-variant in presentation, and outspoken on both fronts. And even those of us who no longer present as gender-weird do remember doing so. Being transsexual does not protect me from homophobia or hatred of gender-variance. Being gender-different doesn’t make people less inclined to hate me for being transsexual.
And virtually all transpeople, either pre- or post-transition, have been personally treated to misogyny qua misogyny. Most of us recognize it and understand the machinery behind it. I also see–constantly–the belief that transpeople don’t recognize or care about sexism, either because they’re desperately invested in gender roles, or because they’re too low-consciousness to understand how tragically the patriarchy is duping their patsy asses.
Not that you’re necessarily doing any of this.
I’d love to have that ability, and I think I’d use it constantly. At least for the first couple of weeks until the novelty wore off. *8) After that hard to predict of course. And the wife and kids might think it was sort of odd (although I’m pretty much assuming that they also have the ability and are also playing around with it).
What a great world that would be!
Like everyone I’d love the ability, as long as I could switch. Even if it is not the same as being transgendered. But if you are giving out magical powers, I’d much rather have the ability to wish away about 85 pounds of fat. And no need for it to be reversible..
This is the easiest question ever asked.
Sigh. Absolutely. It would enable me to fulfill the one desire I’ll never be able to fulfill – knowing what it’s like to have a penis as part of your body while having sex. Even better is the ability to switch back, since I’m very happy being female. Have you ever seen Strange Days? I’ve always wanted to use the total body sensory instrument from that movie to experience sex in different ways….
I’m much less interested in the sociological data you could obtain from observing the world as a different gender. I feel like I experience the male world everyday just fine without needing the “jewels.” Besides, as Q Grrl pointed out, you don’t need to change sex bits to cross gender identity lines…
How about a non-sexed population that goes “in kemmer” and takes on sex now and then, not always the same sex as they did last time, the Ursula LeGuin idea?
If a genie came along and offered me wishes, I can think of quite a few other (currently-) impossible things I’d choose first. But yes, I’d like to be able to change my sex, for at least a few years–long enough to get pregnant, give birth and nurse a child.
Well, if it were just a matter of handing out magic powers, I’d go for invisibility. Or the ability to stop time, like in that Nicholson Baker novel. Not to do anything wrong so much as to escape from eyes and expectations for awhile.
Given Q Grrl’s response I don’t think that I can have conveyed quite what I wanted to in my first post. I apologize for the length of the post below, but I really wanted to try and articulate the difference between how I see the issue and how Q Grrl’s response in particular makes me think other people understand what I’ve said.
I think Piny’s covered a lot of the sorts of things I was thinking of saying, particularly about gender being tied to the body. What I was thinking when I talked about things like ‘the routinization of gender ID & body” was meant as more idiosyncratic and personal than explicitly political. I was aiming to draw (an admittedly artificial) distinction between ‘social’ and ‘personal’ gender- the distinction between gender as it’s constructed and enforced in society and the kind of lived experience and relationship people have with their bodies (how you react to growing breasts or facial hair, menstruation or erection.)
The way I make most sense of it is to think about taste- someone can say to you, ‘oh, it tastes sweet,’ but that doesn’t match up or convey the actual experience of ice cream or chocolate. When I talked about the routinization of gender identity I was thinking more in terms of that kind of excess- the way in which taste and tasting overflows the category ‘sweet,’ just as the experience of a gendered body contains a kind of personal excess beyond categories like male or female. The relationship between gender ID and the body gets routinized insofar as your expectations come to conform to your results- you reach down to touch your chest and feel breasts or pecs, you get aroused and get hard or wet.
For me, that excess, the bodily experience, is one I don’t feel at home with- I expect salt and I get sweet or my sweet is too sweet or wrong-sweet- I have this kind of inchoate sense of how I should be and that doesn’t marry up with how I am. I appreciate that that sense of alienation from the body is not a uniquely trans experience and that women in particular suffer from tremendous pressure to restrain or alter their bodiliness and experience of the body- where I see it as differing however is in the difference between waking up everyday and thinking ‘I need a nose job and better teeth’ and waking up and wondering that that’s your face in the mirror.
I imagine societal gender norms as being a kind of external pressure, a way in which people’s bodies are made to conform to patriarchal expectations or other power dynamics. In contrast, my experience of a trans body is that in addition to those external pressures there’s this kind of internal pressure, a sense of inconstancy or disjointedness in my reactions to my gendered body. You can be gender disruptive and experience extreme social pressure to conform to gendered roles and still feel that internal sense of belonging within and owning your body. I’m aware that the internal\external distinction I’ve drawn is false or at least much more complicated than I’ve made it out, but I found it sort of helps me as a simplifying assumption to sketch out the contours of what I’m thinking.
When gender ID and body match up you’ll tend to acquire a comfort and a confidence that sweet tastes sweet, that the gendered body is in some sense right; your gendered reactions cease to be purely a thing you experience and become a property of a thing instead (‘this ice cream is sweet, this body is male’ as opposed to ‘I am experiencing sweetness, I am performing\being male.’) The gendered body becomes a reliable and familiar terrain (although one that can be made strange by many different experiences- rape and sexual abuse spring to mind,) and one that can be taken for granted. That routinization means that the gendered reactions of your body become something I do or have and not something that my body is doing and that feels strange; that congruence allows for a sense of possession or sameness between body and identity.
I’m struggling to describe the nature of the disjoint I feel, and particularly to try and lay out what I think is unique in the way that trans people (and some, but not all, intersexed people) experience that disjoint. It’s a little like being sick or in pain in a way- you don’t have any consciousness of your appendix until it starts to hurt, and you experience the insides of your teeth until you get toothache. The fact that they’re functioning and moving along in a way that works makes them transparent to perception. Where gender ID and body match up, the fact of the relationship becomes transparent; it’s like learning to catch a ball or ride a bike, you start out and things require calculation and mental presence to co-ordinate the catch or stay upright*, but after a while it sort of sets in your body and mind and the fact of the calculations and effort get submerged and transparent to conscious thought. For me, the gendered reactions of my body don’t reach that point of transparency, they feel sufficiently odd (like I’m trying to catch a cube when I expect a sphere) that they don’t settle but instead force an awareness and discomfort with my body and the way it works. The reason I find it frustrating to hear discussions about changing bodies is that I think it’s very hard for people to take that sense of familiarity and comfort seriously- I doubt I could unlearn how to ride a bike, and I find it extremely hard to think what’s involved when I do ride one. Similarly, I think it’s very hard to think that personal relationship with the body.
My impression of Q Grrl’s post was that she was assuming that I was talking about discomfort with social norms, which although an important part of trans issues, was not what I was trying to illuminate. I get that everyone can share that sense of feeling at odds with what gender role is required of them by society, but that simply wasn’t what I was talking about, and the fact that the immediate assumption was made that I was talking about social roles rather than that internal sense of the gendered body is perhaps rather telling in terms of how seriously people take that congruence. For me, the major impulse towards transition was bodily- it got to the stage where I was simply no longer able to deal with it. My social role and gender presentation have shifted, but not a great deal (from one side of androgynous to the other,) and although the space I’d found in my assigned gender was very limited in many ways I think I would have continued with it if the body issues hadn’t been such a problem. Where I think people really don’t get trans issues is when it comes to the body- I know that people can appreciate pressures on ‘social’ gender- but I really don’t know that people can appreciate that other impulse to transition, and it was the feeling that people don’t take seriously the extent to which their ‘personal’ gender fits and functions that annoyed me.
* I can’t remember the precise details of the study, but young children don’t acquire gender constancy immediately- there’s a period of time where gender signifiers (clothes particularly) are more important than the gendered body; in my schema, for children at this age gender hasn’t yet been made routine.
P.S. I should have made it clearer in my earlier post, but I’m a transgrrl- I chose to link to the BDB article primarily because I thought it illustrated the body issues around trans stuff really well, and conveyed a lot of how difficult needing your body to be different right now and having it always be what it shouldn’t can be. I also tend to find transguy narratives and experiences more illuminating than a lot of the trans woman stuff, which has a tendency to be dominated by rather frustrating conceptions of transition and femininity that I don’t feel are at all reflective of how I’ve done things.
“But yes, I’d like to be able to change my sex, for at least a few years”“long enough to get pregnant, give birth and nurse a child.”
A couple of years ago on a particular listserve, I can remember some fierce arguments about a lesbian couple where both parties had been planning surgery to change gender, but changed their minds because they wanted to have a baby, so they did that and then proceeded with their surgery. As open minded as I think I am most of the time, the whole thing struck me as a lot of chaos to impose on a kid.
Hmmmm…
Would I change sex, given the opportunity to switch back and forth at will? Like a few other folks here, I have already changed my sex. I am happy where I now reside (female) and I’m not terribly interested in going back…not even for a day. It would be way too painful/distasteful/depressing.
However, I do have some curiosity regarding how much life has changed for me since I was wearing a male body. I transitioned to female eleven years ago. My memories of “before” have become distorted by the passage of time. I’m aware that how I experience people, how I experience myself, and how they experience me is very different from that “before time.”? However, the details grow less accessible with time.
As Tarn said, my body and gender identity have been matched for long enough, that in may ways, gender has become transparent to me. Eleven years ago, when my body and identity/spirit were in conflict, gender was very much “in my face.” Each day was a trial of trying to reconcile the two. That is simply not the case, now. While I am still very much aware of my past, I no longer feel a great discontinuity between who I feel like I am, and who society sees me as.
In some ways, this discontinuity can come back into play once I come out to someone. I do run into people whose expectations of me subtly shift once I come out to them. I sense that my being a woman can become “suspect”? once the knowledge of my past comes to the fore. I also sense that it is difficult for people to push too hard against who I am, however. Since I look like a woman and present as a woman, a person’s cultural baggage regarding gender tends to be called into play, and sheer habit propels the individual along in spite of themselves. Those who can’t deal with the matter simply stop talking to me or do their best to avoid me. If they don’t talk to you, there’s not much of a chance to experience discontinuity, unless you include the quiet discomfort and hostility of others under the moniker of “discontinuity.”? I suppose that you could.
Most of the discontinuity that I feel these days is of the variety that a woman can face regardless of her birth sex. I am single, childless, and 36 years old. I have never been married (to a man or a woman) and have no desire to. I am happy being childless. However, I am left with the impression that this makes me a bit of an odd ball. To fit the mainstream’s ideal vision of womanhood, I suppose that I should be attached to someone and have kids. Everyone wants kids and no one wants to be alone, right?
Um, not everyone. Certainly not me.
Anyway, as for the original question: would you change sex, if it were a temporary change? I do find myself wondering from time to time, “How would this situation feel if I were still wearing a male body?”? As time passes, I have greater difficulty guessing the answer to that question. However, in spite of my curiosity coming into conflict with the haze of time, I’d rather not go back, even for a day.
Given the emotional cost involved, some knowledge is best left forgotten.
i used to fantasize about what i would do if i woke up one morning and had a female body.
but nowadays i stick pretty much to the vampire fantasy. flying, super strength, eternal life, sucking the blood out of your enemies, etc.
if you want to find out what it’s like to have a different body, just meditate a little and call up your past life memories.
If I had teh opportunity to sex my sex (and for the sake of arguement is was like the auther said wake up and you are in the opposite sex? Yes I would most definetly do it! with one change, to do so would mean you woudl have to stay that way for one year. I think it would take about that long to learn and truely experience what it would be like to be teh opposite sex. What an experience, and insight to see look feel touch both the benefits and limitations of the the otherside, how they relate and feel how they (women) think and feel for yourself. I would want to do this, who knows after the one year period you would either gain understanding and appreciate the sex other or you might just say hey I really like it this way and choose to stay!
Nope. Couldn’t do it. Not because I think boys are icky; I just have a very, very strong gender identity, and am glad it happens to match the body I’m in.
In 1996 I began my transition from male to female, I lived full time as a woman until 2004, I suspended my transition because I had no friends or parnter to support me, and my life had become intorerable. I was under great scrutiny where ever I went, and in great danger.The cumulative effects of all this(ok there is a bigger story, but I dont want to bore you),
was that I reached the decision to return to living as a male,simply to become invisible, and have respite from the pressure. Now, the thoughts and feelings Ive had since childhod still torment me. But living alone as a target of hate and ridicule, drawing negative attention, bringing the same upon any friend I might have, is not an acceptable way to live. But niether is living with the revulsion of being male. (no Im not going to do anything daft, though if I saidI hadnt thought about it in the past I’d be lying). Getting to the point of this discussion, which I have found very interesting,and helpful, I would change sex in an instant and never look back(yeah that was difficult to guess huh).
Lastly, my advice to anyone who may be experiencing thoughts/feelings of being another sex is, please please think very carfully, and get lots of help advice before setting out on this path, and never ever take friendship for granted. I made the utterly stupid mistake of believing that I was strong enough to do without friends, I was very very foolish and wrong.
thanks for your time.
Hey, Azure. I don’t know if you’ll see this–I haven’t seen you here before–but I wanted to say hi. I’m an early-transition, early-twenties ftm. I’m sorry your journey has been so difficult. I wish you didn’t have to choose between safety and basic stability on the one hand and happiness on the other.
And you’re right: a great deal of the mundane stress that transpeople face is due to a lack or an abrupt loss of support through transition. I’ve been very lucky in my family and friends, but a lot of the transpeople I know no longer have them to depend on.
I don’t really have anything to add to what you’ve said; I just wanted to wave. I hope things get better.
azure, don’t give up–there are people out there who can be friends and who will stay friends if you transition.
I am very grateful to you both, Piny and Mythago, thankyou for your care, I wish you happiness and peace of mind. I just want to add, that today I got asked out by a woman I met while working, we spent today together, and I felt really happy, simply being close.I thought I’d share that positive note,because its really important to grow through positivity,and focus on healing, so they say, mind you “they” say alot of things.
God YES !!! Would love to find out if sex is as easy to get for a girl as I imagine it must be.
I assume I would at least be decent looking???
I would take the opportunity to become female for a while, especially if I had a trusted female (friend or lover) who would also do the switch to male, so that we could…experiment.
A) I think it would make me a better lover if I had first-hand knowledge of what things are like for women.
B) It would make writing female characters less fraught with uncertainty (althought that would take more time “switched”, with a lot of it not focused on sexual acts).