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“Defining gender as a condition determined strictly by a person’s genitals is based on a notion that doctors and scientists abandoned long ago as oversimplified and often medically meaningless.” —Denise Grady, “Anatomy Does Not Determine Gender, Experts Say,” NYT, October 22, 2018
I am a cisgender woman; I was born with female genitalia and raised within the gender expectations of my time. I don’t ever remember thinking or feeling that I was a boy in a girl’s body, nor have I wished to alter my external sexual characteristics to fit an internal image of maleness or masculinity.
So what does gender dysphoria have to do with me?
Until recently, I would have said nothing. When I became aware of the transgender movement, I could not get my mind around it; I couldn’t imagine wanting to transform the outward manifestations of my sex. The very thought of taking testosterone, binding or removing my breasts, or creating a penis in the place of my vagina made me shudder. It simply did not occur to me that anyone who felt this way had anything in common with me.
Yet, as a feminist educator and scholar who supported the Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual movements in academia and society, I resolved to keep my mind open—recalling how my world-view had changed when one of my colleagues revealed to me in the early 1970s that she was gay. I’d never known an out lesbian. Becoming friends with her fostered an entirely new awareness of the world I grew up in. I was drawn into the GLB movement on an intellectual basis, but it was my friend who made it real. I understood how the arbitrary definitions of maleness, femaleness, and sexuality affect us all in powerful and constricting ways. Back then, coming out in academia meant that you could lose your job. My friend took enormous risks in declaring who she was and how she viewed the world (including her teaching and scholarship) differently.
Knowing her made me think more deeply about my gender conforming attitudes and behavior. Had I ever felt comfortable with the gender identity I’d been assigned? With the exception of early childhood, I’d say no.
Here are some of my girlhood memories.
When my two-years-younger brother was born, I referred to him as “she” and “her.” My parents kept insisting that he was a boy; hence his family nickname “Boy-boy” and later “Ronny-boy,” as his given name was Ron. I had a three-years-older brother, who I knew was a boy; I must have assumed that babies were girls, like myself. I did not see myself as “other.” Rather, the world revolved around me.
I liked to wear dresses and played with every doll toy created for girls: baby dolls, paper dolls, and doll houses. But I also loved running games, which in my neighborhood involved boys and girls alike: Red Rover, Hide and Seek, and old-fashioned Tag. We also held wrestling matches on our front lawns.
I had ‘boyfriends’ in this motley group of kids and did not feel inferior because of my sex. I was not aware of any disadvantage in being a girl—until close to puberty.
One afternoon, my brothers and I had arranged a wrestling match on our front lawn that included a mixed group of friends. My mother, once she understood what was going on, rushed out of the house and dragged me indoors, reprimanding me severely. This was not proper behavior, she said, for a girl, and I must never do it again. My punishment was to be confined to my room for several hours. I couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve years old at the time and felt humiliated, as I was not aware of doing anything wrong. The lesson, however, was clear. Things that my brothers were permitted to do I was not.
As the years passed, the list of things I was not allowed to do expanded. I could not be out of the house past a certain hour. I could not venture into certain parts of the city by myself. I had to ask permission for virtually everything I did on my own. Looking back, I’d say that my parents were concerned for my safety, but I could see how much more freedom they accorded my brothers. One summer, when I was sixteen and my older brother eighteen, he went to Denver, Colorado for the summer, where he got a job driving an ice-cream truck to support himself. No one questioned his decision. The only way I would be allowed to leave home, I understood by then, was to go away to college, where college administrators would be expected to fulfill the role of parental oversight.
Once I started to menstruate, I perceived another advantage of being male. You didn’t have to deal with monthly blood: disposing of it, concealing its odor, and curtailing your physical activities (like swimming, which I loved). In the pre-tampon era, coping with one’s period was a drag.
And once I understood the mechanics of intercourse, I realized how guys had it all. They just had to insert their penis into you and rub themselves against your insides until they achieved orgasm. For women, the route to climax was more complicated and (in an era that discouraged such discussion) far less likely to occur.
Did I develop “penis-envy” in those years? Of course. But not for the reasons Sigmund Freud (the reigning expert in the psycho-dynamics of gender relations at the time) proclaimed. Men, as I began to understand, had enormous physical and social advantages over women. Who would not envy that kind of freedom and power?
Part II covers my young adult years, shock at encountering sexism in the workplace, discovery of second wave feminism, and the transgender movement.
