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Started by Hazumu, March 11, 2009, 08:29:12 PM
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QuoteBut as whenever we talk about what it means to "feel" like one gender or the other, the article ends up giving credence to conventional gender stereotypes and binaries along the way. It opens, for example, like this: "On her third birthday, Sarah Barnett tore open a package from her grandmother that would delight most girls her age. Gently folded on a pillow of tissue paper lay a frilly, ruffled dress." Sigh. Is it mixing my issues to wish that transgender awareness could manage not to rest on ideas like "girls inherently like frilly dresses?" Isn't the point that cross-dressing isn't enough?The point of that anecdote, of course, is that her response was not (as my happy-to-be-a-woman childhood self's would have been) "Ew. I hate dresses," but "Why don't you tell Grandma I'm a boy?" Still, it points up how hard it is to talk about this issue without the crutch of "what most girls/boys" would like/prefer.
