After thinking about how my blog will be coming to a close in the next few days, I wanted to find a last comparison between culture and the gender switch before I move on to the differences between cross-cultural encounters and the sex change and to my conclusion, in which I will discuss how anthropologists may find this informtion useful and how I believe transsexuals and transgendered peoples will possibly react to my blog. Therefore, I spent some time reading from Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity, edited by Matt Berstein Sycamore a.k.a. Mattilda (mentioned in the previous blog). "Conformity," a term used in the title, references the tendency of Americans to desire similarities to their peers. Therefore, it is not surprising that our society favors unflexible identities; that is, there is little room for diversity. America has a history of struggling with diversity, from Suffrage to the Civil Rights movement. Fortunately, more and more "minorities" are establishing themselves on the national level: even gays and lesbians have achieved some recognition in the news in the past few years. Unfortunately, there is little discussion of transsexuals. Americans are in denial of the complex array of sexual identities that exist almost every form of life.
Of great interest to me in Sycamore's book was an essay written by Logan Gutierrez-Mock, "F2mestizo":
"I never would have guessed." That's the response I usually get when I tell people I'm biracial. I guess that's a reasonable answer to give a person with white skin privilege. But every time it cuts me. It erases my heritage, my experiences, everything I grew up with. When people use female pronouns with me it doesn't hurt like this. I get annoyed, frustrated, check what I did "wrong" in the mirror when I get home, but this discomfort doesn't separate me from my male identity. The people who read me as only white never ask me to prove that I'm trans. However, they constantly express their suspicions that I'm not actually biracial, and sometimes I feel like I need to carry pictures of my family in my wallet so that people will believe me. (Sycamore, 2006: 228-229)
As I have discussed in earlier blog entries, identity is complex. Most of us have layers of ethnicities, races, and sexualities that we identify with. These layers together make up an individual who must utilize these identities as s/he navigates through their own culture. Imagine the dilemmas that arise from a cross-cultural encounter. Imagine the confusion that comes with a sex change, relearning how to act with the introduction of new social relationships. I have made my point in my earlier blogs that these experiences are not unlike one another. Now that I have engaged you in your thought processes, I hope that you will begin to think through these different identities, compare them to your own, and separate cross-cultural encounters from the sex change experience to better understand them both.
~ Katherine Niemczyk
Sources -
Sycamore, Matt Bernstein a.k.a. Mattilda
2006, Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity. Emeryville, CA: Seal Press.
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2 comments:
Identity plays a major role in everyone’s life. Erik Erikson, a famous psychologist was actually the first to use the term ‘identity’ extensively in psychological references. He believed that an identity crisis was an important point in development where one defines a sense of his or her self. Everyone confronts an identity crisis at some point in his or her life, which can be a very difficult time. I cannot even begin to imagine how much more intense it is for a person who transitions from a male to female or vice versa.
I have always been confused on the topic of transsexuals. I thought that transsexuals and transvestites were interchangeable words, but as Katherine displays through her research, transsexuals and transvestites are different and often confused with homosexual cross dressers. Transsexuals identify as a gender different to the sex of their birth, while transvestites are merely cross dressers.
I find the idea of Psychopathia Sexualis very interesting. As Katherine stated, it is the feeling of being a woman in a man’s body. It is amazing that a man can experience molimina (the feeling of being impregnated). Katherine said, “only by similar experiences, can we begin to understand those around us.” And that makes sense. I would not be able to relate to this patient, because I have not had the experiences he has. I would only be able to relate to him as a woman and from my woman experiences.
Katherine’s entry on Aleshia Brevard was very informative. I liked how Katherine approached the topic, making it easier to understand transsexual men and women. She said that transsexuals are born a gender, but a ‘defect’ creates an obstacle allowing them to claim their “certain identity in our culture.” Aleshia Brevard even refers to her transformation as a “birth defect.”
Hormone treatments appear to be very crucial for transsexuals. I have never realized what a strong role testosterone played in males; I just assumed they were pigs! The fact that men contain more testosterone, which leads to their stronger sex drive, makes a lot of sense. Learning about transsexuals has broadened my knowledge of the opposite sex (being male.)
It is interesting to realize how big of a role culture plays in society. Having the opportunity to travel, I have noticed how all cultures differ from one another. It is difficult at times to suspend one’s judgment to learn about another culture, but it is crucial. The idea of a man being strong and the breadwinner is a popular perception in the United States, but that does not mean it is necessarily the correct perception. There is no correct idea, because culture is constantly changing. We can even see that throughout American History.
In the end, transsexuals are just like everybody else. They deal with identity confusion and one way they solve their confusion is by changing their gender. As I said earlier, everyone experiences identity crisis and identity confusion. People just need to accept that each person experiences something different and no one has the right to judge.
-Caralina O'Connell
As I was reading your blog I was thinking about myself, sitting in my high school, with a transgender person. I was the leader of the school’s Gay Strait Alliance and we had brought in a guest speaker to educate the club on trans issues. In my experience as a gay rights activist it seems that all too often there are separations between trans rights and gay rights, not to mention the separation between gay rights and human rights. I feel like you’re blog presents a view of trans people that is often talked about but never understood. You tackle possible one of the most difficult topics in transgender issues. Identity is an incredible issue because it is impossible for people to define. When you say, “As I have discussed in earlier blog entries, identity is complex. Most of us have layers of ethnicities, races, and sexualities that we identify with. These layers together make up an individual who must utilize these identities as s/he navigates through their own culture.” It is obvious that you understand the complexity of this issue. Sitting in that room in my high school I remember being board. That is not easy to say because I feel like I should be highly interested in the topic. What made me so uninterested at the time was the speaker’s constant talking about identity. It was only after reflection, years later, that I realized how important identity is to people. It seems like your blog is both able to understand the transgender identity as a whole while, at the same time, understanding that individuals have their own identities beyond the stereotype.
-Benner
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