"Prodigal Sons"- The Oprah Show

You've read my rantings about tv talk shows before. You've read my writings on what it means to do right by one's gender. Now, you get both:

Yesterday, as I was watching the end of the Ellen DeGeneres Show, I was caught mid-step by an advertisement for the Oprah show immediately following Ellen. The commercial promised viewers a look into the life of a transsexual/transgendered male to female. I was awestruck at the story being presented right there on national television, not out of offense, but out of the story’s content. Of course, I stopped right where I was and continued for an hour to watch Oprah dig into this person’s life. Here is Kimberly, nee Paul, on Oprah’s couch talking about her past life as a high school star quarterback, valedictorian, and all-around “golden boy.” In Paul’s mid-twenties, he had moved to San Francisco to pursue other sexual pursuits than were considered appropriate in his Montana home and he underwent sex reassignment surgery to become Kimberly. She showed clips of her documentary detailing the events of her life as a boy and now as a woman, which also included footage of her family, who held differing opinions amongst themselves about Kimberly’s current life.

Let’s take a look at Paul’s high school achievements: He was the quarterback on the football team, incredibly popular, and valedictorian; he was a leader, but never felt quite right in his own body. Was Paul simply “doing his gender” (as Lorber would put it) by participating in these activities and succeeding at them? Some would say that he was acting the way a straight, white, male should in a small town in Montana. How then, can his personal feminine feelings be incorporated to his “doing gender” as a male? There was no middle ground for him. Paul felt inherently female throughout his entire life, and it wasn’t until he had escaped his hometown that he could pursue his goals as a woman. Which gender was he supposed to perform as before his reassignment surgery? Though he was born biologically male, he had played that part already. In exploring his “feminine side,” he was now “doing” that gender and felt better about it. The question then arises to ask whether or not Kimberly was doing her gender, since she was not biologically born as a woman? How did she know how to act or perform in everyday life? Did this knowledge stem from whatever Paul had learned in his lifetime, and if so, does that mean that Paul wasn’t doing his gender properly since he felt female?

Lorber says “Every society classifies people as ‘girl and boy children,’ ‘girls and boys ready to be married,’ and ‘fully adult women and men’” (143). Kimberly doesn’t exactly fit into this stratification. Lorber continues to argue that between the two genders, there are certain roles and characteristics applied to each, and yet Kimberly defied such social norms and constructions when she underwent her surgery. While many theorists/scientists/educators emphasize these stratification separations as necessary components of daily life, there are those like Kimberly who defy such ideals. Anne Fausto-Sterling, in her essay “Two Sexes Are Not Enough” states that “if the state and legal system has an interest in maintaining only two sexes, our collective biological bodies do not” (140). I think Fausto-Sterling is absolutely correct in her statement, especially when it applies to trans-gendered/sexual people, because for a moment these individuals are, at a minimum, two genders at once. Which one should they do?