New issue of NIKK magasin: Gender and climate change
Individual needs
(12.08.2008)
Caro had the mastectomy done in May 2005. It was not a felt necessity of belonging or "passing", but one developed in the specificity of Caro's body; a strong dissociation from the breasts as flesh and as attributed meaning. We know of people with desires for the same or similar surgery, developed and understood through other diverse narratives and intentions, different perceptions of bodies, gender, agency and ontology.
This summer has been hot, Caro's scarred chest is tanned after weeks in the sun, only wearing a pair of shorts. We live in a communal garden. No one here has commented on Caro's seemingly odd body.
Our life, so ridiculously ordinary, is still thought impossible by many: No one can surely choose standing outside the binary gender system; loving and living with such an atrocity must be confusing.
Caro has had to meet the rigid believers of the binary as something unheard, unspoken, unthought. I get the questions perhaps closer to heart: Do I think of Caro as «she», but won't admit it? Is Caro confused, but doesn't know it? And the most candid question of all, the one uttered surprisingly often and always in a low tone of voice: How can we have sex if Caro has no gender?
The idea that Caro is some sort of butch Barbie doll, smooth and transformed into a blank, a non bodily being where others have genitalia because we insist that sexed bodies are culturally and temporally situated in a system deeply invested in dicotomies of good/bad, light/dark, culture/nature, man/woman, is scarily ignorant. But it's true, people do ask me this.
I begin by saying, well, there is a body, Caro's body. It's a fully functioning human body. Then I try to explain language as gendered, social roles, basic history, biology as more diverse than commonly known. Most people make a full stop at biology. Surely the body is? Yes, but what we write on these bodies are not.
And then, if still interested: Do you see religion as a historical phenomenon? Yes, most people answer. And the sciences? Biology? Harder to swallow.
Yes, I say, that too.
This summer has been hot, Caro's scarred chest is tanned after weeks in the sun, only wearing a pair of shorts. We live in a communal garden. No one here has commented on Caro's seemingly odd body.
Our life, so ridiculously ordinary, is still thought impossible by many: No one can surely choose standing outside the binary gender system; loving and living with such an atrocity must be confusing.
Caro has had to meet the rigid believers of the binary as something unheard, unspoken, unthought. I get the questions perhaps closer to heart: Do I think of Caro as «she», but won't admit it? Is Caro confused, but doesn't know it? And the most candid question of all, the one uttered surprisingly often and always in a low tone of voice: How can we have sex if Caro has no gender?
The idea that Caro is some sort of butch Barbie doll, smooth and transformed into a blank, a non bodily being where others have genitalia because we insist that sexed bodies are culturally and temporally situated in a system deeply invested in dicotomies of good/bad, light/dark, culture/nature, man/woman, is scarily ignorant. But it's true, people do ask me this.
I begin by saying, well, there is a body, Caro's body. It's a fully functioning human body. Then I try to explain language as gendered, social roles, basic history, biology as more diverse than commonly known. Most people make a full stop at biology. Surely the body is? Yes, but what we write on these bodies are not.
And then, if still interested: Do you see religion as a historical phenomenon? Yes, most people answer. And the sciences? Biology? Harder to swallow.
Yes, I say, that too.
Writer and activist in health and gender politics
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