Boy, lady, female, and male, woman, and man- each and every one of us is assigned a gender at birth. Within seconds of a child being born, the doctor or midwife announces 'It's a boy' or 'it's a girl, and your gender identity is set for the remainder of your life. Theoretically, from that moment on until you die, you will be put either in the blue group or the pink group.
And for most of us, this is a non-issue, as we never have a need to question our gender identity. We are conditioned from infancy, as we lay in our blue or pink world, to assimilate and socialize into our gender. We go from girl babies to little girls, to young women to women, without giving our gender identity a thought.
As women, our social feminization is deep-rooted and instinctive. which states that 'Sex differences in empathy emerge in infancy and persist throughout development, however, the gap between adult women and men is bigger than between ladies and boys. ' Gender socialization is the more focused form of socialization; it is how children of different sexes are socialized into their gender roles (source: Socialization and Gender Roles within the Family: A study on adolescents and their parents in Great Britain.
There are thousands of babies, who are born biologically male or biologically female, but as they grow up, it gradually becomes evident that the birth announcement 'it's a boy' should have been 'it's a girl or vice versa. Gender identity disorder or gender dysphoria is a conflict between a person's actual physical gender and the gender that person identifies himself or herself as (source: US National Library of Medicine. PUBMED Health. February 18, 2010. ). It is not known what causes transgenderism or whether it is physical or biological, mental, emotional, or social.
Today female hormones and gender reassignment surgery are more accessible and a bit more readily available. Thus consistently a large number of Male to Female (MTF) transwomen give up their masculinity and undergo extreme surgery to remove their male parts. It is understandable, that for the duration of the transition, for these ladies it is about achieving the female physical appearance so that they can take their place in society as a woman. We live, after all, in a society where physical appearance is crucial to acceptance.
Throughout the long term, the transsexual political movement has taken huge steps forward and they have battled long and hard to ensure human and civil liberties for Transgenders. It is only right that their human rights to health care, employment, and housing are not only recognized but respected and enforced. Nobody ought to need to live in fear for their lives and be subjected to harassment and persecution, basically because of who they are. If we all accept that while 'the world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings' (source: Martin Buber), we can make the world a much nicer place for every one of us.
Having lived through the process of an MTF transition, I appreciate what a Herculean effort it takes to transition from male energy to a feminine one. I witnessed and empathized with the overwhelming need to be true to oneself; the constant struggle and fight for the basic right to exist and live. I admire and respect their courage, flexibility, and determination, and the strong belief in oneself that they have.
I am also intrigued by the similarities and disparities between women and Trans women and the political and social variances, particularly in the context of the empowerment of women.
I as of late went to a course named 'Awakening Feminine Power' which is about harnessing the creative energies of life and bringing balance to the feminine and masculine aspects of life. So it is interesting to note that there is a group of Trans women who have lived all their lives as white, middle-class male, typically got married and had children, and usually worked in a very male-dominated industry. Around middle age, they decide they want to go through a Male to Female transition. Yet pre, post and during transition, they continue to operate within the male paradigm utilizing their male traits and characteristics, (possibly because they have already successfully proven themselves as men and feel most comfortable there). Although it also perpetuates the dogma that business is based on male energy since the male business model is the only one that is in existence, it seems to me we can learn from these women!
Life for a woman is not easy even when you are born a girl. It is after all, according to Katherine Woodward Thomas, author of The One, 'only in the last 50 or 60 years since women, en masse for the first time actually began to awaken with an impulse to actualize their potentials beyond being wives and mothers'.
While we have come a long way in the last 100 years and the glass ceilings are showing definite cracks, we are as yet living in a 5000-year-old patriarchal society, and still far from achieving gender equality socially, economically. The success of the empowerment of women, professionally, politically, socially, and personally relies heavily on women supporting women.
It follows that the empowerment of the women's movement has to be inclusive of all women - irrespective of how we became ladies, through birth or transition and regardless of sexual orientation, economics, age, nationality, culture, or religion. We are all, after all, women.
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment