Attempting to Conceptualize the Idea of "Crossing Gender Boundaries"

This picture really says it all. There is still so much hate and fear directed towards Transgenders, and it is ending in murder and destruction. 

We read two excerpts for class last week. They were segments from Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein and Transgender History by Susan Stryker. Bornstein talked about her own personal struggles as a transgender; she eloquently points out areas of oppression that I imagine I would normally have overlooked. Her wit and character are charming on paper, and yet she delivers her message with stinging accuracy. It is because of these two readings and our detailed in-class discussion about gender neutral bathrooms that I was able to write this post and fill it with my own personal sentiments and questions. I am trying to be straightforward today by saying right off the bat that there are things that I do not understand about being Transgender and Transsexual…and hopefully that is OK.

Imagine existing in a world where you feel like you are neither a man nor a woman. You are not a man who feels like a woman, you are not a lesbian, you are not gay or bisexual; you just don’t fit in. At times you feel like you are trapped in a body that does not belong to you, and this doesn't feel right. You have lived your life in secret and in misery and you have come to terms with your “abnormal” behaviors. It is at this point, the lowest point, that you contemplate doing the unspoken; you want to cross some gender boundaries. However the path to freedom is not one paved with support, it is lined with “gender defenders”, as so put by Bornstein, and these people will do everything in their power to normalize you once and for all. Like we said in class, one of the weirdest and yet largest problem is the where to go to the bathroom. It is those two signs, the one with the man and the one with the bald woman in a dress that determine who you are as a person...and yet some people still don't fit in.Those two plastic signs of those two doors discriminate everyday and people rarely give it a second thought. I think it is important to recognize one thing: we don’t have to understand everything about Transgender and Transsexual in order to accept it and try and change the conditions they have to suffer through.

                In the 1970s even feminists were not super accepting of Transgenders/sexual. They saw them as women who were trying to cheat the system by turning into men. I find it hard, at the same time, to understand why a man would want to turn into a woman; to me that seems like winning the lottery and then giving it back. Although this sentiment did not last, the concept still remains. Some of the fear and loathing that is directed at Transgenders stems from the idea that these are people who are “cheating the system” and that just isn't fair. Transgender Feminism is now a part of the “Third Wave of Feminism”, according to Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History. Third wave feminism fights oppression without, “passing moral judgment on people who feel the need to change their birth-assigned gender” (Stryker, 3). I think it is pretty safe to say that third wave feminism attempts to combat gender defenders in this current day and age. As so put by Bornstein, “This culture attacks people on the basis of being or not being correctly gendered” (Bornstein, 79). Eventually, the gender system lets everyone down. We are all so afraid of not being a “real man” or a “real woman”, and everyone is eventually criticized and ridiculed for not acting “manly” and not being “lady-like”. It is this rigid gender system that leads to anger and hatred and fear. There is no room to breathe here in this gender cage so everybody just tends to freak out and attack each other.

                I think another thing that confuses people is when gay/lesbian and bisexual tendencies are added into the Trans definition. For example, a lesbian transsexual is a man who has changed into a woman, but still likes women. I don’t know about anyone else, but that is super confusing. Unlike gay and lesbian, Transsexual and Transgender are identity conflicts that go way deeper than who you are attracted to sexually. Perhaps that is the scariest part: not only does this determine who you want to sleep with, but it affects who you want to be as a human being. So the question is, if you don’t want to be who were you born to be, then was there a mistake made? And if there was a mistake made, then there must not be a higher power because I thought God was supposed to be perfect? So if there is no God then who is there to believe in and what happens when we die? Those questions are much too scary, so the only explanation is that these people are corrupted and ought to be shunned. Thus welcome to the cycle of gender oppression: these are just a few small reasons why these things are never talked about at Thanksgiving with the family.

                The only solution is learning to communicate. We tend to forget that we are all human, and it is this tendency that creates turmoil. The cold truth is that Gender “Outlaws” are still attacked and oppressed, and this is because people are scared. The reason people are scared is because sexual deviants are not talked about in our society. They are kept a secret, and so they are transformed into a phenomenon. I like to think about it through an analogical lens: if unicorns still existed but were never seen or talked about, no one would understand them. Then if unicorns decided they were tired of being ignored by the rest of the animal kingdom and decided to come out of hiding, unicorn hunting season would be huge. Eventually if hunting season was not controlled or shut down, the unicorn would probably go extinct. If something is different, we try to control it: that is the REAL rat race.