Two thoughts...

Yesterday’s class was amazing. Kate Bornstein made me think of new issues that relate to the idea of gender, and I feel like my mind has been opened even more than it was before. Prior to listening to her speak, I had never heard of anyone who was born a male, had gender reassignment surgery to become a female, but was attracted to women the entire time. This makes complete sense though because as she explained, she never felt like she was in the “right” body. I thought it was interesting how she doesn’t relate herself to one particular gender and how she strongly believes that she is neither of the genders. When she said this, I was curious to know how she would classify herself in the sex portion of a test or survey, where you are only given two choices and you have to pick one — male or female. I know that Kate prefers people to use the pronoun “she” when they refer to her, so maybe this means she would classify herself as a female in one of those pick-and-choose scenarios.

Now on a completely different note…

In my sociology class, we have been talking about gender inequality and today the topic of female genital mutilation came up. A person began talking about how some (if not all) of these mutilations are done to prevent the female from experiencing any sort of sexual pleasure (e.g. clitoridectomy). My professor then brought up the point that this is normal in the cultures that practice it and that females who aren’t circumcised are viewed as dirty by the rest of their community/society. He then asked us if we thought there was any difference between female genital mutilation and various types of plastic surgery that is performed in the United States, such as breast enlargement. I thought that this was an interesting comparison and I don’t know that I would have ever thought to connect the two. Many females in the class said that the two are completely different because choice is involved in plastic surgery. My professor had a good comeback to that comment by saying that in our society, women often don’t have a choice because of the pressure that is placed on them to conform to the "ideal" body image. He also added that, much like genital mutilation, women who get breast enlargements then aren’t able to experience any feeling or pleasure in that part of their body.

How do you feel about these comments? I’m not sure which side of this debate I agree with because we are comparing two different cultural practices and I feel like I have a bias to say that one is worse than the other. Do you think that these two practices are in anyway similar? Would you have ever thought to compare them to one another?