The subtle process of transformation

[SandraJane]

INDY WEEK. COM



The subtle process of transformation


by Eva Hayward @hayeva | September 05, 2012


http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/the-subtle-process-of-transformation/Content?oid=3140976


Summer has begun its ebb. Do you feel it? Not quite perceptible, the start of autumn is like smelling a change in temperature. It's still hot and humid, yet we register a difference at the overlapping edge of our senses. Perhaps change usually has this character because it resides just beyond the human scale of things, like the climate or evolution. We cannot see the mountainside erode, but somehow we sense it nonetheless.

Change seems constantly on my mind: political change, climate change. And tucked away, sex change. It's my experience, after all.

Like a storm's energy before its bright beaks of lightning and fisted thunder, sex's transformation starts imperceptibly. In general, we pretend sex is obvious, some reductive algebra of chromosomes and physiology, but as we've slowly come to realize, sex is many processes that include X and Y chromosomes, hormones, gonads, internal sex structures and external genitalia, as well as history, culture, environment and other variables still to be named.