S/R 1

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Synthesis: By attempting to force the vast spectrum of sex and gender into a dichotomy, society neglects to make room for the many that don't fit within those harsh boundaries. This can be seen in the "clarifying" surgeries performed on infants that are clearly not intended to be physically male or female, and in the reluctance of (primarily American) society to embrace the idea of individuals drifting between genders, or being gender-less.

Response:

My interpretation of many of the messages I received from the readings are reflected in this diagram (it's cut off on one side, but I think you get the picture). As I read the articles this week I was consistently struck with how society's current idea of a clear Man and Woman, in both the biological and societal sense, simply do not begin to encompass everyone. Furthermore, by adhering to such definitions, those that "color out side the lines" are left feeling ashamed and confused about their identity. It was frustrating for me to become more aware of the societal need to force people into these categories, especially when I was reading about the surgeries performed on intersexual infants. I thought that that was a very physical manifestation of society's tendency to stare someone like "Alex" in the drawing above and say "Oh, she's female" while her very existence renders the male/female dichotomy moot. This was also evident to me in the article in which people looked at Billy who had facial hair and was nine months pregnant, and that he was just a "fat" man. Reading about the failed cases of gender assignments of intersex infants illustrated to me how not only is the societal gender/sex dichotomy inadequate, but destructive.

On another note relative to the articles:

A couple days ago, I was sitting outside reading a rather complex reading for this class (Halberstrom, I believe) when a friend walked by and asked what I was reading. I told him that it was about Transgender butch lesbians compared to FTM people, but that it was so over my head with a lot of 'big words' that I wasn't really understanding it. My friend replied that he didn't know people wrote anything with 'big words' about 'that stuff'. His comment made me think about how little people know about the field of women and gender studies, especially the field of transgenderism and transsexualism (including myself)! I feel like this could be a major part of way there is such a strong societal tendency to polarize male/female... the majority of people have never thought about it. I think that spreading awareness of how important an issue this is is definitely an important first step!
(Maybe not the most innovative concept, but something I've been thinking about...)