GENDER : BEYOND APPEARANCES

I hesitated a while before tackling the subject I'm going to debate, because even though it is familiar to me as a personal way of functioning, I nevertheless suppose it is somehow odd.

But why not? After all, couldn't this open a path of reflection for us?

I shall explain myself, instead of going around in obscure circles.

Gender...masculine or feminine... is something that we perceive with our eyes, our ears, our senses. And something that we deduce with our reason, our intellect. I see this person with his strong build, I hear his deep voice, I immediately deduce that it is a man. I've had in front of me a physical and tangible phenomenon.

Let's take the problem in a different manner. I will no longer say: "I see, I hear, I deduce, I think", but: "I perceive, I feel (within limits), I imagine, I sense (a psychic phenomenon)". It becomes blurred; I no longer use my reason, but my intuition, my feeling, shall we say. I put another pedal of my brain into action.

And then... I perceive that every being has his own personal and unique manner of being a man or a woman, and that femininity and virility are distributed in many varied ways, in men just as in women.

The palette of gender shades is a rainbow, delineated in a very subtle way, a way which is far more subtle than what square, bipolar thought would like us to believe, a thought which divides and separates categories in a strict manner. Of course, I think that the average "Mr. Everyman" would have very little access to my discourse.

But I invite you to try and perceive beings with the intuitive processes of your brain (and not just the intellectual processes) ..., without falling too much into the projection of personal fantasies, of course (a very difficult task indeed!). But this can open a whole field of discoveries.

Don't feel guilty about any difficulties. It's not a sign of slow-wittedness, it's only a lack of intuitive calisthenics.

As far as I am concerned, I have a rare capacity to sense beings beyond their appearance. Maybe this is due to my particular identity. I make sure I don't get too proud of it, otherwise my boots would no longer fit into my dancing shoes! Furthermore, you must always keep in mind that the compasses of intuition are extremely capricious.

But my memory holds some striking anecdotes on this matter:

Twenty years ago, I was introduced to someone who was to become an old friend. The youth I saw seemed cautious, classical, introverted, and, although nothing in his appearance would lead anyone to make any kind of suppositions, in an unexplained manner, I felt that there was a woman in his secret inner being, an ethereal and sensitive woman. My intuition was confirmed when I got to know him better; this homosexual, refined, romantic and shy boy carries in himself a "feminine" sensitivity, and knows very well that his heart leads him towards androgyny, even though he is fully aware that he cannot take that upon himself, neither physically nor socially, and refrains from living fully this part of his deep self.

Another example: one of my friends, TS FTM. At the time, when meeting him in the workplace, a long time before his transition, I first saw a girl looking quite boyish, and, very suddenly, I sensed "her" to be a boy. This was obvious, inexplicably obvious.

The delicacy of her physique couldn't contradict my conviction, nor the feeling I had of her irrefutable masculinity, even as compared to those who were more "butch".

In fact, some girls who are described as "truck drivers" don't seem to be the same at all. One can be quite a masculine woman (isn't that so, Jameson Green?), and, why not, (yes, let's dare !), an effeminate FTM.

Difference, difference, when you get a hold on us! You certainly are not popular among the "psy" guardians of the moral and heterosexual order.

Another example: in a sociable Gay place, I one day took notice of a boy, who has now become a close friend. Like the flash of a slide, in a spontaneous and subconscious manner, another vision of this handsome boy with his sporting look imposed itself on my mind: just the same, but as a girl. The fact is that this person lives the androgyny of his mind through transvestism, sometimes dressed as a boy, sometimes as a woman. He feels fine in both genders, but periodically feels the need to dress as a woman (and not to seduce or excite himself, as one might believe).

In one of them, I sensed the shy woman, in the other one, the sensual and assertive woman. All this to say that when you listen to another person in an intuitive way, you "sense" him/her in his/her deep reality, beyond the dictates of an appearance one bears just from belonging to a certain kind of genetic group.

It's a way of sensing beings which is not taught to us, as we are used to registering boys in blue and little girls in pink. "Pampers for girls", "Pampers for boys"...It goes on and on! As if they wanted to pound biological reality into us with a great deal of help from the ideological sledgehammer.

Therefore, let's allow ourselves to see that a woman who appears very feminine in her ways and her accessories is capable of developing qualities of character and behavior generally attributed to men, in her chosen field.

As far as I am concerned, masculine and feminine come in different doses according to each person. Beyond the reality of masculine or feminine identities, it seems to me that offering only two categories in which to "classify" beings is very narrow and inadequate.

The audacities of my discourse are a necessary counterpoint to the ambient ideology which reigns supreme over brains and hearts cut apart, each one confined to its own place, in the solitary confinement enforced by our society.

Yes, we live in an "apartheid of gender".

It's up to us to free ourselves by setting up other ways to tackle our personal realities, first of all in our heads and then in our lives, and by taking our gender upon ourselves, in a true and personal way.