Apparently, CocoRosie discovered Antony Hegarty long before I did. Besides possessing a unique and powerful voice, Hegarty is widely known for being transgender. This term, in itself, is rather confusing. In Hegarty’s case, he’s biologically male and seems to have no intention of changing that but many people (or at least that’s my impression) who consider themselves transgender have a desire to change their biological sex. This has always been odd to me but not due to the reasons people tend to find it odd (disgust, mainly) but because it’s difficult for me to understand why someone who doesn’t believe in the confines of gender labels would have such strong feelings about what their genitalia looks like.
The basic idea, for those who don’t have friends steeped in human sexuality studies, is that sex is what you’re biologically born with, meaning which genitalia you have, but gender is defined by your culture and, I suppose, the role you play when interacting with others in your culture. For instance, maybe you’re born with a female genitalia but all your interests and mannerisms fit into the mold of the prototypical male in your culture. Your sex may be female, but your gender could then be considered male.
This is exactly what’s interesting to me about sex changes, though. If the hypothetical person I’m speaking of feels their gender is male, they may choose to make their sex match their gender. Why make such an extreme change when gender is simply an ephemeral quality anyway? This sounds strange, to me, because you could become part of a different culture and find that your gender suddenly matches your sex without physically changing anything. For instance, Conrad Phillip Kottak claims that in Brazil transsexuals (at least, biological males who live as females) are seen essentially the same as biological females that identify as female (Anthropology, 13th ed.). In fact, I recently had a conversation with a guy whose part Brazilian (close enough that he visits occasionally and speaks Portuguese) and he claimed that cheap « female » prostitutes in Brazil are often biologically male and yet their clients are often heterosexual males (in gender and biology) that simply don’t care about the genitalia of the prostitute. It seems that someone from my culture in the US, for instance, who is born with the sex of a female but identifies as male would be completely accepted as is in Brazil. Maybe this has something to do with why Hegarty doesn’t feel a need to change his sex either, because he may have become involved in a subculture that accepts his sex/gender combination as perfectly normal.
I guess, in a way, this is a discrepancy in definition. It’s actually difficult to write about this topic because I feel like I have to constantly specify if I’m talking about sex or gender because we link these two so closely that there aren’t separate words for male sex and male gender, etc (that I know of). It’s so confusing to me that I don’t even know what someone means when they say they feel as if they were born as a male in a female’s body, a description I’ve read a lot when learning about sex changes. Does this really mean anything when talking about such a transient idea? It’s like there’s some sort of psuedo-Whorfian thing going on here where even transgender people end up with confused ideas because of the terminology available to them. If your culture uses the same terms when speaking about gender and sex, are you more likely to want a sex change when your sex and gender don’t match up with cultural expectations? I bet there are studies on this that I will never have enough time to read so anyone in the know should comment and clear the matter up.
Update: Coincidentally, today my Japanese professor asked us what gender/sex we’d want to be reincarnated as. We’re gonna have a discussion next week; maybe I’ll post about it.
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What about wanting to experience sex as a female? If one identifies as a gendered female in thoughts and hobbies, surely there would be some temptation to have the full sexual experience. I suppose it’s a matter of personal opinion, though, and your cultural argument is thought provoking, but you want want to talk to those who have gone through the surgery. I have an English friend going through a gender change and thinking about making it a physical one, I could ask her opinion for another cultures pov?
The sexual experience thing is a good point but it seems only vaguely attached to the idea of gender (just my feeling). Like, if you feel like a member of the female gender while being of the male sex, does that automatically say something about your sexual orientation? If it does, would it say that you’re gay or straight or bi or pansexual? Those words don’t even seem to have meaning in this context. I wish I knew some post operation people that I could safely ask about this stuff. I’d love to get the perspective of your friend, though.
I’ve wondered why an individual who identifies as a different gender than they were born, would choose a partner to be intimate with that is of the same sex as their birth sex permits them. For example, a man that changes to female (non-surgically), but enjoys the company of women. Essentially, making him a lesbian in gender association, but heterosexual in sexual association. If he were to have his genitalia altered, he would, gender-wise, become a lesbian again. I could only guess possible reasons for these gender issues, but it could have something to do with idolizing an individual of the opposite sex to the point that they either want to be them, be like them, or change their gender so they can have them, or someone that possesses the qualities that attracted them to that individual, gender, or sex.
I also agree that some of them likely feel a need to experience sex as the gender they associate with, but they also probably do it to be accepted more completely. I imagine that if you feel and act as the opposite sex, and you look down and see a big white elephant, it’s going to hurt your self-image. But, if you look down and everything matches what you feel, even if it doesn’t work, you probably have a better chance of being happy with yourself.
Looking down and having your self-image hurt only matters if you’re assuming gender is static and should always match your sex. If you see gender as a malleable thing that’s culturally derived, then why should your penis or lack of be a source of unhappiness? Maybe, if it is, the cultural influences are simply so strong that they affect people in that situation?
Interestingly, there was a transsexual (male to female) who used to come to my store all the time who was obsessed with Marilyn Monroe and seems to go out of her way to create a similar appearance. I dunno what that means, if anything, but it correlates with what you’re saying.