Sexual identity is static, but the definitions of gender are not, so when a popular performer announced that their former name of Ellen Page would now be Elliot Page after going public as transgender, confusion reigned and opinions were quite polarized. I’m confused as well.
Lately it seems the noun is seen as an enemy of the people. One is not allowed to define anything of human nature lately (unless you are an obvious woman in a snit fit, in which case you are called a term I don’t particularly like because I know lots of nice people named Karen). Commercials for a certain prescription medication indicate it may not be for people “assigned female at birth.” The thinker in me went into overdrive at that note. Imagine a primary care physician having to ask a patient to reveal whether they have had gender reassignment surgery before writing a prescription; imagine if physicians are no longer allowed to find out if their patient is, in medical fact, male or female? Sometimes the most basic issues come down to dropping trou. Take that away, and you might be one of the only people in the crowd around you who knows who they are. Scary a bit, isn’t it?
What are “man” and “woman?” Most human beings hold to the basic definition that a human being with, to put it family terms, a frank and beans, is male, and those with “everything under the hood” is female. The actions one takes during life to define themselves as male or female have changed dramatically over the years, and a skirt or suit no longer sets the tone. However, one thing is irrevocably clear:
You can’t circumvent natural law.
Sure, nature takes a U-turn on occasion, and some infants have challenges which may affect their gender identity from the start. Usually the physician and parents make a decision, and the baby becomes Bill or Belle. However, humans are the only sentient creatures on this planet who go into the realm of totally becoming the other sex. Don’t even let me go into people who think themselves extraterrestrials or whatnot.
I have trouble imagining that it’s a one hundred percent changeover, though. Physically and biologically speaking, no matter which gender one tries to become, the original one started there, always will be there, and ends there. I wondered, upon reading about the “new guy” on the Hollywood roster, what will happen 70 or 80 years down the road, when this person leaves mortality and approaches the pearly gates; how will God greet this person? Of course it is the same person, and yet not; still, God will know whom He is addressing, but it would be interesting to be by the gate when it happens.
So people don’t want to be themselves, or they want to be themselves and what they think is better, or who they feel they were meant to be. I look in the mirror and just sigh.
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