Gender is getting more complex, and interesting, every year. Transsexuals used to be understood as “a man stuck in a woman’s body” or vice versa. Happily, that understanding of transsexuality and transgenderism is being replaced in practice by an understanding infinitely richer and more interesting.<\/p>\n
Jasperboi <\/a>– a transgendered writer who recently came out as a “female-bodied man” – suggests the following componants of gender:<\/p>\n So for Jasper it lines up like this:<\/p>\n Mine is a great deal less interesting than Jasper’s; but if I’m honest with myself, I can see there’s more complexity there than I might have imagined:<\/p>\n I love Jasper’s list – it’s a good tool for reminding us how gender is a collaboration between our selves and how the world sees us, and how for some folks it’s a good deal more complex than male and female.<\/p>\n To Jasper’s list, I might add a catogory for expressing how strongly<\/i> connected to my sex I feel. I remember, years ago, reading a pro-transsexual essays asking non-transsexuals to imagine waking up and your body was suddenly the other sex. “Wouldn’t that feel horribly wrong?,” the essay asked, assuming my answer would be “yes.” But my answer actually was, “I don’t think it would matter.”<\/p>\n Of course, I can’t know without trying – but having searched my feelings, I’m pretty sure that my body’s sex just isn’t an important part of my self-identity. When I hear some transsexuals talk about how important it is for them to have a particular sexed body, I’m sympathetic, but I’m also bewildered; I can’t imagine caring<\/i> so much about something so (to me) irrelevant.<\/p>\n Actually, I’ve often fantasized that the world might be better if people now and then randomly woke up the opposite sex. It would sort a lot of silly problems right <\/i>out. (Of course, if I did wake up female, I’d regret the pay cut. :-p )<\/p>\n Jasper goes on to say:<\/p>\n I reject that paradigm, which isn’t as easy to do as just saying “I reject that paradigm,” believe me! It is a constant, sometimes daily struggle against the current of the mainstream. Rather than saying I am a man trapped in a woman’s body, I say I am a female-bodied man. It is a small, but crucial difference. In my version, “female” is part of what I am, not something I wish to escape. And the odd thing is, I have found people find it harder to accept as plausible than the “trapped” scenario, which they are used to by now, thanks to the media. “But don’t you want a REAL male body?” Well even if I did, and even if I had the money and inclination to buy the best SRS a person can get, I’ll never have a “real” male body with a prostate and XY chromosomes. So why bother wanting it? Why not just accept myself not as a contradiction in terms, but as a complex being with varied facets?<\/p><\/div>\n There’s lots more – read the whole post here<\/a>..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gender is getting more complex, and interesting, every year. Transsexuals used to be understood as “a man stuck in a woman’s body” or vice versa. Happily, that understanding of transsexuality and transgenderism is being replaced in practice by an understanding … Continue reading \n
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