There is a movement afoot to reject the gender binary. One facet of this movement is an acknowledgement that the gender binary, may be flawed. What is a male, and what is a female? This determination is needed for traditional marriage, and traditional post gold medal investigations at the Olympics. The athletic world where the perils of this common sense distinction have been well established, has taken to avoiding the issue where possible. Wikipedia: Gender_verification_in_sports The problems of answering this question in the case of marriage, are discussed in a very informative blog: Intersex Roadshow. Being raised catholic, I have looked at that perspective, and written in detail about it, on my new alternate blog, the one where I am pretentious and boring, (Ok, more pretentious and boring): The Other Side of That Life I've Been Living.
All these problems. Why not just chuck the whole thing. Recently a friend had an exchange with some young people on Fetlife. My friend was interested in creating coalition and bonding across the generations for transgender people, perceiving a split between TOG and TNG. The young people, most of whom descrribed themselves as Queer, or Gender Queer, seemed uninterested, because the older generation of transgender people in their opinion was poisoned by indoctrination in the gender binary. A clear example would be folks who described themselves as transexuals, and went into a doctors care, establishing their "femaleness" to said doctors satisfaction as per legal requirements, and then were permitted sex re-assignment to the other side of the binary. "Hooey" my young friends would have said if they know any such quaint phrases. Secondly, they didn't regard being trans and being so very important that it needed to be worked on. This was one of their identities, woman, lesbian, queer being others. They were not by their own descriptions hung up on the gender labels.
So relax Grandma....(Grandpa?)
My instincts finely honed on the generational conflicts of the 60's is to give these folks a virtual hug and a right on sister. Not that I don't believe that there will continue to be a gender binary centered around love and family etc. , but only that the ascendancy of this binary to relationships of power, dress, interests, car you drive, cigarette you smoke etc etc.. ad nauseum...is oppresive to everyone, not just those who straddle the gender fence.
That being said, I am clearly a creature of a culture for which the empire of gender was big, even as it was crumbling. I femulate, and I masculinizie myself when that is required at work or with family. In that framework, I fret and fret. Am I looking weird at the mall. Am I looking weird at the family re-union. I seek help. The philosophers provide guidance. Free your mind. The rest will follow.
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