More on Privacy
January 4, 2006 – 10:27 amAfter yesterday’s post, the following thoughts popped into my head this morning:
As a socially constructed identity (as opposed to what one actually does with one’s body in the world), transsexuality does not have a component of privacy. Therefore, claiming one’s transsexual body/life in a public way means we move into a persona where the expectation is entirely public. This privacy is not something transsexuals have lost, then must regain. It has never existed in the first place.
Transsexuality = Public. Why?
Without a component of privacy imbedded into the fabric of the social identity, how else are non-trans folks going to make sense of their own gender? After all, aren’t the hounding questions in part driven by a need on the part of the asker to feel okay about _their_ gender?
The questions do nothing for us, right? They don’t for me, anyway. As Maria commented yesterday:
Have you had the surgey?
Were you born this way?
Do you use the men’s room?
Is it your choice?
Aren’t you really a woman!I feel tired. And those questions aren’t even directed at me.
Oh, but these ones are:
Has he had the surgey?
Was he born this way?
Does he use the men’s room?
Is it his choice?
Isn’t he really a woman!Yep, I need a nap.
So if the questions aren’t for us, they must, I concluded this morning on the way to work, be about the person asking the questions. My disclosure rocks their world, sends them into gender panic and absolves them of the behaviorial dictates privacy suggests in our very middle class public society. The relentless nature of the questions tires us because the purpose of the questions is not to seek answers but to reduce panic and discomfort. Making others feel better about themselves, day after day after month after year, gets really fucking tiring.
And all this before my second cup of coffee!
3 Responses to “More on Privacy”
Wow, and I always thought I asked questions because I was curious. (Kidding!!!) But it does seem that (ill-mannered) folks tend to revert to childlike behavior when their dearly-held (and for the most part extremely rigid) ideas about how the world works suddenly turn out to be based more on a presumption of “sameness” than anything more substantive.
Again, something us Bs and Ts can bond around: asinine questions designed to reassure strangers that they are normal, and we are not.
By Jennifer Gee on Jan 4, 2006
“You think there’s only two sexes, and that there’s nothing else to it. But what if I told you that there’s more than two combinations of sex hormones? What if I told you that so-called hermaphroditism is far more common than you believe? What if I told you that nobody really understands what makes a man a man, or a woman a woman? What if I told you that your presumptions were totally wrong? …Oh, sorry, I just did tell you. Here, let me scoop up your exploded brains, you poor dear….”
Feh. If my gender identity is public, that’s only because most presume everyone’s gender is public. The truth is not quite as public, however.
By Lilith von Fraumench on Jan 4, 2006