as in "let young people choose their own gender identity and expression" then, sure. And all that rightwing fulmination about restrooms strikes me as deliberate shit-stirring. I spent many years in countries where restrooms in smaller spaces are not marked by gender -- there is just a sign on the door that says "WC" or a picture of a toilet. As you point out, the root of the problem is that the West has not, since Constantine, made any provision for a "third gender" (boys who don't want to grow up to be men or girls who are not interested in the "wife and mother" destination.) (Fascinating to look at the one really big exception -- the way the castrati of the Baroque opera dominated the culture of the 17th and early 18th centuries.) But being told we have to accept transmen as "men" and transwomen as "women" strikes me as a perpetuation of this binary Western obsession -- or perhaps I should say a reworking that has as its underlying, if unspoken objective, the destruction of the role of gender in what makes us human beings. I know that sounds contradictory, why I'm having trouble with this whole issue. But I see it being used to destroy all-male spaces and that makes me very, very upset and worried. SR |