Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
Squaring Off and Circling
Posted on May 13, 2003 in Crosstalk Sexuality
From a comment at Tammy’s blog, concerning her sigh that she wishes that she were a guy instead of a girl. Another chatter, woodstock, wrote:
….one of the easiest ways to get by as a lesbian in this world, especially if you work in a tech profession, is to get the boys to accept you as “one of the guys.” Part of the price you pay IS having to listen to the locker room quality talk. The other part of the price is that while you largely don’t get hassled you also don’t get the priviledges men get.
I responded:
The whole “choose what gender you are” charade is such a load of bullshit, (not necessarily yours) woodstock, but so few people ever manage to figure out that it is.
Once I took a test which was supposed to show my “gender identification”. After I handed in the results, the test maker told me that I was gay. I blinked my eyes and laughed to my heels because I was banging my girlfriend every night at the time. Sexual interest in men? I just didn’t have it. I still don’t have it.
Every day of my life, I’ve fought to be the man that I am. I have “feminine” qualities. So what? Who said they were feminine in the first place? Must we try to square ourselves to fit in holes drilled by marketing professionals and paper-churning psychologists?
When I think back to that day and to the obstinancy of the test-giver on the issue of my sexuality — like she knew better than I did what I was all about — the corners of my jaw swell with the rush of blood to my cheeks. What right did she have to declare what I was? What made her think that she was so god-blessed that she had the truth nailed?
This is one of the reasons why I am sympathetic to the cause of those who do feel attraction to members of their own sex, interestingly enough. I read Tammy’s declaration and I thought “What Tammy wants is to be herself, on her terms, defined not by her breasts or her clitoris, but by what she feels as a person.”
I will be honest: I have mixed feelings about undergoing surgical procedures to change your sexuality. On one hand, what other options can such a person see? What else do we offer people who think it alllies in adding or removing a penis to their anatomy? There isn’t much, I will admit.
On the other hand, I want to promote the idea that there are other ROLES than ones offered in the classic male/female dichotomy and that those are worth fighting to have. The locker room talk and being one of the days bores the life out of me. I’m not giving up women. I’m not gay. I am who I am. And no one else has a right to define me otherwise. I do my own thinking on the matter.
Parting thought: Fight for it.
Damn it is hard to live in this world. I sympathize with those who seek drastic solutions to their sense of being “wrong”. But is believing that maybe you were made the wrong sex the answer? When it comes down to it, I won’t answer the question for any other person. I know that for myself, however, that “feminine” though I am by certain tests, I am a man and I’m happy being the man that I am.
It appears to boil down to issues of power. As a man, I do “enjoy” a “superior status” to many women. Women of my own class are often seen as my social inferiors. I can’t fault them for wanting to jump up. Men who want to become women, however, throw a different slant on the whole affair: they’re asking to be made into one of these social inferiors. So is the issue about power after all?
I keep coming back to the thought that began my reaction to woodstock: that in this body I shall live. And I shall struggle and speak out for the right to be the male that I am, that I shall not attempt to change my biology and my sexuality just to fit in more comfortably with exterior pressures and conceptions of what I should be.
It’s my decision and only mine. I wonder, though, if there are others –women who register “masculine” or men who register “feminine” — who don’t feel a need to change their bodies and/or who aren’t the attracted to their own sex yet fighting the fight to be themselves against all preconceptions out there?
I’m not saying that transsexuals are wrong. I’m seeking recognition for another point of view, another way to challenge the problem of feelings that society says aren’t appropriate to your sex.
Demented Kitty got all excited about the whole gender issue. Her thoughts are worth taking into your knowledge base about these philosophical problems.
I suspect that the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association would create a new category for people like me. My, my. The lengths to which bigots will go to remain employed.
