Self-Organizing Man

I begin today’s post on Deborah Rudiacille’s book, The Riddle of Gender: Science, Activism and Transgender Rights by way of a comment posted by Susan Nunes to this blog.  She wrote:

Many feminists reject transsexualism because to them it is a blatant instance of self-hatred. Not only that, but it’s not particularly ethical for doctors to make a killing mutilating bodies because somebody thinks they really are the other sex, which they can NEVER really be.

Nunes goes on to write that she agrees with this position.  But what, precisely, does Nunes mean by “other sex” and “NEVER”?

Child Physiology offers an animated graphic that describes how chromosomal and gonadal and genital sex arises in fetuses.  The website also describes how chromosomal variations create intersex babies.

But I doubt a discussion of human physiology will dissuade Ms. Nunes.  First, intersexuality is seen in our popular imagination as an innate condition.  Transsexuality is a chosen one in this framing of gender variance; one that Ms. Nunes and her pals believe is a consequence of “self hating.”

I further doubt that Ms. Nunes will be dissuaded by Deborah Rudacille’s book.  I will go into depth later this week on Deborah’s excellent book.  For now, let me whet the appetites of kindred souls by writing that Rudacille offers a compelling case that sex is in many ways determined at birth (”Victory!” I hear Ms. Nunes chiming) and is potentially being altered by the buildup of man made chemicals in our environments.

Rudacille argues that endrocrine disrupting chemicals (EDC):

(have) begun to produce the same kind of effects on human sexual differentiation that have already been observed in wildlife and laboratory animals.  In this view, a previously rare collection of endocrine-mediated anomalies is becoming more common as a result of the bioaccumulation of these chemicals, many of which are stored in fat and transmitted to the developing fetus through the placenta of pregnancy.

Who knows how Ms. Nunes will respond to this information?  Corporations should stop dumping chemicals and transsexual should get into therapy since I can NEVER be the opposite sex?

Perhaps. 

But I can’t help thinking of Shakespeare’s line from Macbeth. “Methinks the Lady doth protest too much.”  What does Ms. Nunes get out of maintaining the frame through which she conceives of transsexuality?  What does she, and others like her, profit by telling me that I’m simply misguided by my extreme self-loathing?  What does Ms. Nunes’ lens say about her gender?  And why is she and others like her compelled to project that view onto me and my kind?  What does she get out of that?

After ten years on hormones, two major surgeries and months and months and months of asking permission from the State to do what I have done, the riddle is not about gender. 

The riddle is why people like Nunes are just so damn afraid about what I’ve done with my body.