Blurring the Lines

    This weekend I had the privilege of attending a conference at Hamilton college centered around LGBTQ issues, particularly that of transgenderism. The keynote speaker was Laverne Cox, who is an african american male to female transgendered individual. A lot of the themes of her presentation tied in very closely with the reading that we had to do for today. She spoke of the difficulties of desiring to fill a gender role that did not match her biological sex, and the process by which she embodied her true womanhood. 

    I really agree with what Elly said regarding the world's fear to allow people to deviate from choosing one gender. After having attended the conference this weekend, I am very much hyperaware right now of the dangers of simple gender dichotomies. I met so many amazing people who don't really identify as one specific gender, and indeed blur the lines between the two. Then, yesterday in Olin when I was going to use the bathroom, it really affected me to visually see that there were two bathrooms clearly marked "men" and "women". This is something that I have not questioned for my entire life, something that I was taught was an inherent part of being human: You are either male or female. This deeply ingrained social maxim explains why achieving equality for transgendered individuals moves so slowly. To create laws to accommodate them is to debunk the social assumption that they don't exist, which, as Elly said, is something that creates a large amount of fear. 

    Now, let's discuss the whole "homosexuality is a social invention" idea. I do of course believe that the attraction that people feel towards the same sex is naturally ingrained into their biology. The extent to which I do agree with the statement that homosexuality is a social invention is that I do believe the way those attractions are perceived is very much culturally constructed. I had the same exact thought as Elly regarding The Gebusi, which I also had to read last semester. The Gebusi people found a way to manifest homosexuality into their society that neither brought harm to nor alienated anyone. Similarly, in Samoa, there are what are called fa'afafines. Fa'afafines are biologically male individuals who act more stereotypically feminine and are more inclined to fill traditionally feminine roles. Rather than stigmatize this, the people of Samoa celebrate their fa'afafine children as necessary members of the family, who contribute highly to the functioning of the household. This is yet another example of how atypical methods of gender expression can be interpreted differently from culture to culture, showing again how gender expression/sexuality can easily be culturally molded. 

    So, I do agree that acts of homosexuality may have been perceived vastly different ancient Greece, or in the Gebusi people, but I think that the homosexual tendencies themselves were still inherent and were not culturally imposed. However, the fact that they engaged in acts of homosexuality and still had wives suggests that ancient Greeks were very much able to blur the lines between sexualities. Fausto-Sterling pointed out the inadequacies of the simple categories of homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual, and the manifestation of homosexuality in ancient Greece suggests that these categories not only didn't exist, but weren't important. To the Greeks, categorization was not required. This is where gender and sexuality would do well to go here in America, eventually reaching a point where the lines between their categories are indeed blurred.