The Grey Areas of Culture and Gender

Culture is a complex ideology and one that is never clearly defined. There are exceptions to the concrete concept of culture which play out with cross-cultural encounters. I have learned from my investigation into the experiences of transsexuals/transgenders that culture is a malleable notion, that it is hardly definable in the same way in every context. Just like gender, culture exists in many forms. In fact, I must acknowledge that many anthropologists would argue that my examination, the change from woman to man or vice versa, is not cultural. This may be true in some contexts, but I have found that the transsexual/transgender community is subject to a very unique self-defining experience that warps and molds the boundaries of understanding gender norms. There are no rules for defining what can be culture or a cross-cultural experience to what can't be culture or a cross-cultural experience. Therefore, my study is arguably adjacent to investigations into crossing borders and culture shock, what some may deem as true cross-cultural experiences.

Max Wolf Valerio, who I mentioned earlier in my last blog entry, not only acknowledges the excitement of becoming a man, but the tensions he experiences as he enters another sphere of gender identity:

Now that I'm a man, I find that an invisible coating of protection, a soothing, sweet barrier, has fallen from around me. I hadn't even been aware of its presence. Women ask me, sometimes with a resentful tone, "So are you more safe on the streets now?" It's not that simple. It's true, I no longer worry about sexual harassment on the streets, about intrusive ogling, or rape. That's a huge relief. I don't make light of it. However, there's another side to violence that women aren't exposed to. The competitive angst and edge of man-on-man violence. The pecking order, the daily drills of masculine testiness. I no longer have any slack cut for me; men threaten me with their fists if I give them the finger or tell them to fuck off and die; I have to watch where I am in relation to their boundaries with greater care. Bumping into the wrong guy at the wrong time can be a prelude to a confrontation. It's a drag. One I wasn't prepared for. Everything in my feminist background informed me that I would be safer as a man, more secure walking the streets, being in crowds, going about my life out in the world. So when I actually begin to experience more violence being out in the world, I'm startled. I've been mugged, punched in the face, and threatened on more than a few occasions. I've had to learn a new code of conduct, to decipher a fresh set of signals. I'm not complaining, but I can't say this is my favorite part of being a man. (Valerio, 2006: 272).

Social norms are called into question when one is faced with a newly defined set of values permiating from a newly experienced culture. Valerio successfully demonstrates the change in "conduct" which results out of the interactions with new people based on the new identity of his self. Like an American in any foreign country who is judged on a stereotypical basis and must struggle with new cultural organization, a transsexual/transgender is enveloped in changing values that must be dealt with in order to move forward. If we chose to ignore these new social relationships (whether during a sex change or a borders change), we would be stuck in limbo. We would get no where, and our relationships with other people would fail.

I never imagined that culture was so complex, that it has no concrete characteristics. Even aspects of culture differences, such as language, are arguably unstable; might two cultures exist in the same country and use the same language system? It is interesting to me that my study has led me to a union of concepts: across borders, culture is practically undefinable and gender has no set explanation. There is no black and white of gender, and culture will indefinitely be grey.

~ Katherine Niemczyk

Sources -
Valerio, Max Wolf.
2006, The Testosterone Files: My Hormonal and Social Transformation from Female to Male. Emeryville, CA: Seal Press.