Mark Patro

Gender Identity

All of us have an identity and most of us do not question where it came from. It’s just something we grew into.  My bedroom was painted blue when I came home from the hospital. Yours may have been pink. I don’t know for sure, but this was pretty standard in the 1950’s when I was born. It still is for most of us, still. Some of us might have had a yellow or green bedroom because our parents, or most likely our mother had learned something of stereotypes. What does this have to do with identity you ask? My point is that we have different kinds of experiences. You know this because you read and you have had some life experiences of your own. You have met boys who turned out as if they grew up in a pink bedroom.

My three sisters and brother grew up in the standard identity that matched their bodies and their sexual orientation matched the expectations that society, school, church, family and peers placed on them.  As I grew up I realized that my sexual orientation was different than my siblings’.  My identity formed in a different way than the others in my family. I had a perspective that they could not comprehend.

When I was old enough to learn that some girls wore boy clothes and that some boys wore girls clothes I learned that there was a kind of identity that I didn’t understand.  Many folks have attempted to convince me or those like me that my orientation was actually a preference that I chose. It turned out they were wrong. And if anyone wishes to argue that point with me I will not discuss it. They will have to go find another to argue with. That opinion is just wrong.  And I’m over it.

So, even though I had my own personal experience with “being other” it was difficult for me to understand completely the need for someone to transition one’s gender.  I was, after all, “normalized” in a heterosexual-body-gender-matching society. Later, when I actually listened to the first transman I heard talk about his female-to-male journey, I still wasn’t sure I understood the scope of his experience—completely. I’m still not sure I do now. But if we are going to live in a multicultural society we are going to have to receive multiple perspectives as well as transmit our single perspective.

My attempt to understand transgender people was clouded by the existence of men who wore costumes on stage while lip-synching. And then there were other men who were married to women, but seemed to enjoy wearing feminine clothing to enhance their erotic experience during sex. I met other boyish-men who got off on wearing a skirt for the shock value. It seemed similar to me as the performance Syd Vicious perpetrated on our static western culture of the late 1970s. At that time I was not aware that people of one gender really wanted to physically change their bodies to match their gender until John Money famously was doing “sex change” surgeries at a local East Baltimore hospital in the early 1980’s. The journey those patients were on was not about clothing, costumes or performances—although some do both.  It was about aligning their physical being with their spiritual gender. 

So, of course there is controversy and confusion when it comes to people who transition. Some believe it’s about the clothing. Some believe one gender wears the clothing of the other gender in order to pass in the bathroom of the other gender. I find this argument ludicrous. It implies that all men are predators. Some are, I will acknowledge that. We all have our egos, and they are centered in various places. But centering your whole being on clothing sounds more like a costume queen (male or female) than is does about becoming who your psyche and spirit tell you who you ought to be.

So now we fight over whether we want to be possessive of our “private space” or share it. Who knows what the outcome will be. Some will fight tooth and nail to divide the community over “what we can get vs. we want all of it NOW!”  And still others will focus the argument with articulate skill on what the majority will lose instead of what the minority will gain. Weather this is fair doesn’t matter, its politics. We live in a political world. If gender were not defined in a binary fashion this would be less of an issue. We understand that orientation exists on a continuum. Why is it so difficult to understand this about gender?

Maybe the “solution” it to build all new restrooms with one seat and never allow two people into any restroom at the same time. (This suggestion will cause all sorts of other problem, I’m being sarcastic.)  To be fair, there is a physical aggression and/or violence issue with some men which must be stopped when it can be (I’m not saying IF it can be). It is often urgent to prevent violence where it can be prevented before it happens.  And if we are to be fair and nonsexist about the perpetration of violence in our society, we must acknowledge that violence comes from both genders toward both genders. The male toward female variety is often physical or sexual violence.  Female violence directed toward males is often emotional violence. One major thing we talk little about in this society is that the sexual and physical violence perpetrated on women by men frequently manifests reactionary behavior in women as emotional abuse directed toward their vulnerable male children. We’ve got more to talk about here than transwomen really being men using the women’s restroom.  And their attempt to do so as being described in the negative as: predatory behavior or “just about clothing”.  We as a community need to accept that men (and this goes for women transitioning the other way too) who find it necessary to transition are not men, they are woman and as such should have their right to use the women’s restroom and it should be codified in law.

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