I can’t get this out of my head….
My first thought #(not the one I want to stick with so bare with me) is that it wrong. Men can’t have children; changing sex then having children is….cheating. The single thing that has most defined my experience of being a woman is having children therefore somebody who is a man cannot bear children…its not part of the package. However when I examine this more closely I can see some fundamental flaws in this logic. If I couldn’t have children would I still be a woman? If I was sterilised would I still be a woman? If I choose not to bear children am I still a woman? Clearly I am therefore its not that thats the crux of being a woman….and so can’t be the crux of being a man either. Which leads me to the question- what is the difference between men and women? When my son asked me this I said it was the penis and that was all that mattered and so if he wanted to dress as a fairy (wings, skirts, a wand) then he damn well could. Since then I’ve become friends with somebody who claims to be trans and so doesn’t have a penis (I haven’t checked!) and he so clearly is a man that I’m begining to think this might not be it either…I also read about somebody who lost their’s and it would seem wrong to deny their sex on these grounds; what about sterilisation is a non-functioning penise as good as the other sort in determining sex?
Which brings me to a childhood joke; If a stool with four legs wobbles what do you do? If a stool with three legs wobbles what do you do? both sexes answer put some paper under the leg to the first; women give the same answer to the second however males answer 3 legged stools can’t wobble. This seems to work remarkably well with the added bonus that both sexes feel their answer is superior…women for their practicality, men for their logic…But then does that take us to a socially constructed view of sexuality?
April 2, 2008 at 10:50 pm
The exact difference comes down to chromosomes, as far as I’m aware.