I first read Redefining Realness about a year and a half ago and my perception has largely remained the same: it’s an honest, relatable and thought-provoking memoir, which shows both Mock’s resilience and vulnerability. My one criticism, though, has remained the same: Mock seems to locate her gender in her genitalia; which, at least for me, reifies the erroneous conflation of gender and sex. Though, I must admit, this is an implicit conflation as Mock herself reassures her audience that “this was her path to womanhood,” therefore, she cannot universalize her experience. In this blogpost, I challenge Mock’s claim that gender reassignment surgery was “her” path to womanhood, especially since so much of the queer subject’s life is also political. Note, my broader aim here isn’t to critique Mock herself. Instead, I intend on facilitating a discourse on identifying the ways in which the gender dichotomy replicates itself. I propose the opposite of that, a dislocation of gender from genitalia.
Historically speaking both gender and genitalia, at least in Western societies, have been understood to be inseparable. In other words, one’s gender is determined by one’s genitalia. A superficial or in-depth analysis of the phonetics or etymology of the terms would prove their obvious relationship, possibly dating back centuries; and I admit, rupturing the long-standing relationship between gender and genital could take just as much time as it took to create such a nexus.
I will not pretend to know when people began to consider gender an unstable category. For all we know, this began centuries ago. The muxes of Mexico, two-spirits of North America and the hijras of India are but a few examples of the wide range of third genders that have existed historically. Indeed, gender diversity defies both spatial and temporal boundaries and in some cases, has been celebrated as a divine gift from the deities. Unfortunately, many Western nations have not been as accepting of gender diversity as some indigenous societies. Instead, they’ve sought to use gender expression as a weapon of social control that polices all bodies and oppresses some. Though it is not a perfect analogy, British philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon can serve as a helpful model to understand how the state uses gender to control bodies. The individual is forced to always perform their gender “correctly” because the state’s agent(s) could be watching at any given time (notice that state’s agent(s), in this case, can mean any other member of society). In fact, gender policing goes a step further than merely employing a panoptic approach to surveilling gender, since unlike in the panopticon where surveillance is merely a possibility, with gender-policing one can almost be sure that one’s gender is always being scrutinized. Mock herself speaks of this with her own father who incessantly chastises her for not acting “boyish” or masculine enough. Despite the numerous techniques and agents the state employs to control gender, I argue that the most effective “gender police” one can encounter is one’s own self. Gender norms become inculcated during the early stages of childhood and remain with the individual throughout life. It is assigned at birth: male/female and one is taught both actively and empirically that one is a girl/boy and girls do X and boys do Y. It is a matter of ontogeny, unquestionable and immutable.
Fast-tract to the present. The post-modern era. Gender’s ontogeny is impugned and one no longer “is” masculine, but instead “does” masculinity. Gender becomes a social construct. Sociogenic. Or, as gender theorist Judith Butler eloquently puts it: “gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceed; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in time—an identity, instituted through a stylized repetition of acts.”
With Butler’s definition and the liberal framework of understanding gender as a social construct forming the premise of our arguments, let us begin to examine Mock’s decision to undergo gender reassignment surgery.
Let me conclude by saying that I admire Janet Mock. I was already quite resolved in my opinions about the fact that she did the surgery and I still decided to attend her book signing event. I see her as a valuable ally to the queer community. The views expressed here are my political opinions, and they in no way inform my personal opinions of her. I think she is a victim, like myself, of a harsh and obscure social order. Some might call my views conservative, others radical, and some might deem these “value statements” superfluous. As for me, these views are merely my way of making sense of an often-unforgiving world.
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