The Nouveau Femme (Update November 07, 2006)
Email This ArticleThe only thing funnier than people saying to me: “I bet you minored in Women’s Studies at Douglas to pick up the chicks” is people saying to me “Well it makes sense you took Women Studies, seeing that you are a transgendered person.” The truth is that my reasons were completely removed from either of the given ones. The former is presumptuous, and the latter patronizes the whole notion that human beings are incapable of developing empathy until it hits their backyards. I took Women’s Studies because the syllabus for an English Bachelor of the Arts consisted mostly of dead white males. Had I wanted half an education, I would have been satisfied with yawning over T.S. Eliot’s anglophilic verse. This doesn’t address the magic in thrice-removed readings of translated works from other cultures into the English pantheon.
I think it’s logical for someone to want surgery and hormone therapy to align physical self-image with mental self-image, but I’ve never been convinced that a transgendered person can, in any way, acquire the authentic feminine experience. We have a flood of the new transgendered generation, eagerly bleating outside the gates of acceptance with online handles like “normalgurl,” “puregirl,” or “110% woman powered by NASCARâ„¢ officially approved estrogen.” At Yahoo, without a profile picture. You know what I mean. I’ve never been convinced that a bit of redecorating and a few syringes of hormones will enable a person, overnight, to develop glass ceiling self-doubt, frustrations over secondary pay status, the double jeopardy of girl etiquette in saying yes vs. saying no, objectification, the hassles of genetic body cycles, media manipulation, and downright prejudism. Of course, that’s before we even begin to touch upon the greatest power that aligns women to the godhead: The ability to create and give life. (Before you think I am worshipping at the altar, let me say that I think this ability, can be viewed in many ways as a shortcoming in womanhood. It makes a sex overly secure in the knowledge that they possess the divine power of creativity over men. Men, on the other hand, developed a manic drive to fill their inability to the organic gift by resorting to a multitude of variations in the creative act. They have to prove themselves, and that’s where great magnificent cities rise and all the fun lies.)
As it is, the Nouveau-Femme can, at best, only attain the surface glamour of what it means to be a woman. And for most, that is enough. I think a day may come when a group of people will realize that the moment they stop trying to be what they are not, they will immediately begin to create. However, if they chose to assimilate, they should be satisfied in the notion that assimilation is, unto itself an act of creation. Like the traveler who is able to point out to natives all the wonderful things they have taken for granted and ignored, the trans individual exotifies and interprets on romantic notions.
Personally I’ve always believed that the creative act surpasses the need to belong and to be accepted. Sure, it’s wonderful if people don’t glare and kids don’t snicker, but that’s a small price to pay when you can climb into bed at the end of the day and tell yourself, “I am successfully giving life to an organic creative act. Instead of doing a cover of someone else’s song, I am singing a clean new song that even lavish exotic birds at dawn will stop their tune and look up from what they were doing, and listen in wonder.”