Questioning the Gender Divide

Sam asked the doctor for a minute so that she could make up her mind about what her body had already agreed to. It was no small decision; the consequences of her action would be irreversible. She was recovering from the shock of words cast at her by her friends. Unfortunately, she couldn’t find a sensible thing any of them had said about her dilemma. She cleared away her worries like marbles off a chess board and raised her eyes to the skies. The hills were a nuisance, she wanted to see God clearly so she looked beyond the hills where her help wasn’t coming from. Then she screamed, “God, am I a man or a woman?” In a world of conflicting standards and contradicting concepts, Sam’s fate is tied to our capricious standards of qualification for participation in our community. For a second, I forgot I was watching the reading of Nick Mwaluko’s new off-off-Broadway piece, “Are Women Human?”, which will be opening at the South Oxford Space in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

It’s interesting to observe and reflect on how our understanding of trans-genderism reflects our old thinking of the binary distinction between male and female. Aristotle asserted that “the female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities.” It was probably too much for him to acknowledge, accept, or believe the impact of the women who shaped the community he was raised in. Perhaps Aristotle was conceived by a man and was raised by gentlemen. His definition of women belies the wisdom associated with him.

So are women human? What is human? And who gets to decide it? “The anatomy of difference” between man and woman has become so significant that the idea has become a determining factor in the destinies of women. Gustave Le Bon’s description of women as “the most inferior form of human evolution—closer to children” was a waste of thought and reason. Unfortunately, this type of ideas have served as a foundation for the education of generations, a mishap that the liberties of free speech haven’t quite corrected or realigned. Using men as the standard for defining a human doesn’t make sense. Aren’t the temperaments, the insights, the intelligence, and the personalities of men borne and nurtured by women? Do males cease to be men because they were raised by women? Aren’t men simply women living in male bodies? Why gender is viewed in a dichotomy with men viewed as the standard against which other forms of gender are judged still baffles me.

Our society tends to treat women as though they are not human enough. It seems women have to be a little more ‘something’ to pass the test. How come our double standards fail to accept their essence, and they are the most common victims of social injustice? We claim they are not human enough, yet they are the ones who have to learn skills to keep our homes fed; not human enough yet we cannot do without them from birth to death; not human enough yet without them there is no magic. Not human enough yet women are the most victimized in times of war and peace, in times of celebration or meditation, in times of rising and falling. So are women human?

Beauty magazines, fashion moguls, playboy houses, and music videos are fanning gender flames and turning women, wives, mothers and daughters into caricatures—mere pawns of the human game. Maybe it’s time to confront our definition of ‘human’ and investigate our feelings behind the false standards our community has set for women. We, regardless of our gender, should start finding alternative sources to find relief inand confront, or try to understand, our feelings of weakness and indifference. What are we telling women? Is it that a woman must be more than enough before she can be enough?

So when the doctor lifted the syringe before spilling its hormones into her body to begin the change into manhood, Sam was dealing with all the questions, standards, doubts, and counter mindsets she faced as a transgender person. Until we accept the making of the woman as the making of completion, face doubts of ourselves as men or women, and stop trying to fit genders into roles, our community will continue to be divided and unsettled. We must understand that the making of the woman is the making of us.