Gender roles in the Transgendered

By Marcella Castillo

After reading Genevieve Vaughan, For-giving: feminists Criticism of Exchange, ‘The Concept of man’, I started becoming interested in how gender roles and biological traits such as vagina vs. penis or breast vs. pecks defined our femaleness and our maleness. Can the impact of language when we are in the prime states of childhood define us as who we are? Can either the child challenge these gender roles themselves or the adult who is raising the child? What happens when the categories we have gotten so used to and depended on come crashing to the ground, and children are left to identify themselves in a society that loves to categorize all things and outcast anything different.

“What happens in the distinction of gender is that the aspects of language which involve giving and giving-way are identified as the behavior of biological females, while the aspects of substitution and categorization are assigned to males. These two roles eventually develop into dis-empowered nurturing on the one hand and domination/exchange on the other.”

This automated assigned nature of biological aspects of our self is something that didn’t really make since to me. I mean I understand that if you display physical signs of femaleness and maleness you are automatically identified as either ‘little boy’ or ‘little girl’ from a young age by others but what happens when you don’t identify yourself as the ‘proper’ gender? What if a biological boy were to identify with a the gender role of female or a biological girl were to identify themselves with the gender role male? I quickly remembered a documentary that I had seen on TLC called I am Jazz.

Transgender community has been making a presence for themselves in media with characters such as the recent Caitlin Jenner but I wanted an example of children who identified themselves as the other sex. I also find it interesting that Adults who later identify with the other sex say they are transgender and children such as Jazz has deemed with “ Gender identification disorder”. This word ‘disorder’ really struck a cord with me as if this “Gender identity disorder” was something along the lines of a mental illness. Jazz was born a biological male, but from the age of two he strongly identified himself as female. The traits associated with “ Gender identity disorder” were so strong and present in Jazz from such a young age. The film shows clips of home videos shot in which the parents referred to Jazz as ‘him’ ‘he’ and ‘his’ which gives pretty good indication that on a day-to-day basis Jazz was always linguistically associated with being male.

“Thus, what little boys perceive as their gender role at an early age is the incarnation of the sample position itself and a partial incarnation of the word. Being equal to or like the sample and taking-the-place of others become important in the male identity, while other-orientation and gift giving remain principles of the female identity.” (For-giving, Genevieve Vaughan).

Would Vaughan then say that Jazz though displayed all traits of maleness did not identify himself with the importance of taking-the-place of others in his male identity, but identified with the gift giving principles of the female identity? Vaughan says that the male has been taken from the sample of humankind and all others are beneath him in relation. In this case Jazz who is born the ‘boy’ in this situation should have identified himself to the characteristics of the ‘father’ in relation with the male gender. As you can see later in this documentary Jazz relates to female traits and has every since her parents finally allowed her to, did this mean he identified himself with his ‘mothers’ female traits?

How Jazz is in relation to her community also seems interesting to me. Jazz’s parents say in the documentary that after the age of five the most defining moment was her birthday party when she was allowed to wear a clearly girl marked –swimsuit. When Jazz was running around in a swimsuit that is usually made and designed for girls their entire community friends and family were now left to understand Jazz as no longer adhering to the typical gender roles of ‘his’ sex but identified with gender roles of another. Another example is when she is denied the right to play on the girl’s soccer team. The soccer association has clear gender diving roles for males and female players, for the “safety” of the players in my opinion they were scared of the safety of their female players if Jazz a biological boy were to play with them.

“ Therefore, women have appeared to be lacking, deficient in the supposed human characteristics which men have. Abstract thinking, aggressiveness, individualism, leadership, independence (qualities having to do with competitively achieving the one position) appeared to be ‘human,’ and women seemed to be ‘inferior humans’ because that was not their focus.” (Vaughan).

As Vaughan explains male characteristics that women do not have make women inferior humans. Its interesting to me because though Jazz at this child age looks like any other little girl, is still associated with negative traits of male stereotypes like aggression which is probably one of the reason she is not allowed to play on the girls soccer team. This is negative for both girl and boy soccer team by dividing them by sexes that automatically assign them with traits of that gender.

In conclusion Jazz to me was one of the examples that when even gendering names therefor assigning gender roles from birth may not always be left unchallenged. There many people today challenging these gender roles defining themselves as a-sexual, bi-sexual, transgender and so on

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