volver a hablando sobre genero en nueva york

On Friday, after sushi, the first 2 rounds of flaming absinthe shots, and a couple swigs off the recession special, I ended up at a bar just off atlantic ave in blkyn. It was there that scamz & I met up with tits & curly. Curly is doing a reading of his play (screenplay?) there and was checking it out. scamz was describing my travel companion as Ricardo Montalbán and a discussion ensued in which he was contrasted with my previous new york travel companion. So, of course, the infamous greenwich village argument came up. along the recounting to tits and curly, tits mentioned he used to live with 2 trans guys. he had an interesting perspective on the situation, not so unlike scamz's original reaction. the 3 cisgendered men agreed that there is a physical anatomical difference between men and women. Trying to negotiate a space for discussion i didn't disagree (though i would have changed the wording to male and female rather than men and women, despite the fact that butler would shake her head and remind us all that male and female are just the names given to particular anatomy based on socially conceived difference). Tits suggested that you can't say gender is all in your mind, when there is something between your legs. I responded that while there are differences in genetalia (leaving aside the fact that ambiguous sex anatomy is far from rare), genetalia doesn't necessarily correspond to modes of expression and identity that make people comfortable or happy. This led back to a discussion of fluidity and the fact that many transpeople wish to be men, rather than just not-women (or vice versa-clearly indicating adherence to the binary). In fact, a number of scholars have been criticized for suggesting that transpeople are in some ways responsible for destroying our notions of gender, embracing fluidity, and pretty much problemetizing the current sex/gender system. But the truth is (and this is only in my experience-which is admittedly limited, but probably more extensive than the average experience) certainly not all, but most transpeople living in the North Atlantic do still abide by the society's ideas of what being a "man" or "woman" is. Leaving aside the complex ideas around the bodily parts conceptualized as being inherently gendered, most transgendered people, like most cisgendered people wear clothing, engage in activities and adopt techniques of the body (M. Mauss, "Techniques of the Body," Economy and Society 2(1973 [1934]):70-88) that generally fall within spectrums that are socially intelligible as gendered. That is the point at which I spoke up and pointed out the ways in which our associations between genetalia and its social meaning are totally arbitrary and in no way inherent. this seemed to sit well with the guys. At that point tits brought up the recent npr story about trans children

and this all brings up the strange notion of why we think of penises as men's etc. if we're denying the connection between that and being a man, why the surgery?

Bjork Puppet feels constrained by what's under her skirt