Never one to eschew the obvious, so here's a picture of a horse. Sort of.Thinking about a comment made on Chris' blog about relationships that survive a transitioning partner. Here's a poem I like, even if I'm not quite sure I agree with it.
HORSE
I've never seen a soul detached from its gender,
but I'd like to. I'd like to see my own that way,
free of its female tethers. Maybe it would be like
riding a horse. The rider's the human one,
but everyone looks at the horse.
Chase Twitchell
You know, I do agree with this poem. I have always felt there to be something deeper even that gender. I knew that for some reason I'd ended up with a male physiology, and I increasingly understood that inside and below that was a person who felt herself, knew herself, to be female. Or knew that the female version of self was and is the way I wanted to be in this world. But below that...there's just...me...
ReplyDeleteIn my dreams a horse symbolises my physical body... when I was very ill with M.E. I'd dream about me carrying my horse into the house!
ReplyDeleteSaw the post on Crooked Timber which I read regularly and comment infrequently. I am also TS and have a flickr account along with some drawings there also.
ReplyDeleteOf course one's gender identity goes deeper than your social identity but not quite as deep as one's core. Who we are, our core, our being, is probably genderless. Or maybe not. Maybe this is just true for those of us for whom changing genders feels like the right thing to do. Who know? I don't think anyone does.
I would propose a distinction here between gender, which I think is the social expression of ourselves, and sex, which is what we are hard-wired as in our heads. It's a model that works for me, anyway.
ReplyDeleteSo if you lived all alone on an island and never met, not had ever met, anyone else, then gender becomes irrelevant, but you would either be indifferent to your body (if cisgendered) or uncomfortable with it (if transgendered).
And then there's the engineering solution; "if it works, don't mess with it". Which could probably be used as an argument by both sides...
I am now visualising you carrying that horse, Caroline :-)
Hi, Brenda. Argumentative lot over on Crooked, ain't they?