By JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN
Published: August 3, 2008
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QuoteSo what makes someone female then? If it's not chromosomes, or a uterus, or the ability to get pregnant, or femininity, or being attracted to men, then what is it, and how can you possibly test for it?
The only dependable test for gender is the truth of a person's life, the lives we live each day. Surely the best judge of a person's gender is not a degrading, questionable examination. The best judge of a person's gender is what lies within her, or his, heart.
How do we test for the gender of the heart, then? How do we avoid out-and-out frauds, like Hermann Ratjen, who said he was forced by the Nazis to compete as "Dora" in the 1936 high jump? (He lost, finishing fourth.)
Would more folk could simply hear what Jenny says and find it within ourselves. Seems to me that my sense of myself has simply got to encompass more than my own way of thinking and behaving. I cannot survive without others, and they cannot survive without others as well. If we could just embody that, pretty soon, we might be able to discover that there's something to appreciate in humanity, rather than simply finding others that "aren't like me."
Nichole