The Realities of Gender Reassignment
By Stephanie Castle
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For the transexual, the challenges that have to be faced in making the great changes involved in gender-reassignment can be so enormous as to shake one's resolve at every step of the way. But, with careful consideration and adequate forethought, they need not be overwhelming.
However, anyone who assumes that the challenge lies in learning to dress properly, wear nice clothes, maintain an attractive hairstyle and to use make-up to good effect is really only scratching the surface. True, these aspects are important and cannot be overlooked if one is to fit into the new role, but they do not transcend all and if pursued without consideration of the vaster and more critical realities of becoming a woman, they may become rather superficial.
After all, clothes, make-up and appearance are the prime considerations of the transvestite, but for the transexual the entire issue goes to the very core of ones being.
Both the cause and effect are so all-embracing that a very realistic attitude to the deeper issues affecting women needs to be developed by the transexual.
Biological women are many things in the eyes of men. They are the giving, yielding sex, traditinally bending and surrendering to the more agressive and powerful male. The very sexual act itself puts them (traditonally) into the underlying and characteristically subservient position. They are the nuturing sex, capable of imparting unique shelter, security and love to their children.
The bonding between a mother and her child starts at the very first moment of holding and suckling, and from that time on, the relationship has a special quality that cannot quite be equalled by the father. Despite the unique role of women in the continuance of mankind, they are often cruelly reviled and denigrated.
Motherhood is supposedly honured and even deified in all societies, yet women are often treated abominably, are objects of lewd humour and are used as chatels and servants by their lords and masters.
Women have had to fight through history for their rights in a male-dominated world. Consider some historical facts:
All the great religous leaders have been men - Jesus, Mohammed, Confucious and Buddha for example - as have been every pope, archbishop and, until recently, ordinary clergy in most churches. In politics women leaders have almost exclusively been during the post-war years. The UK, India, Pakistan, Norway, Israel and others have all had female leaders in recent years, but look at what women have had to endure to reach those positions of eminence.
The first milestone of modern democracy was probably the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, but it took another 700 years before women began to be granted the vote in most countries.
The emancipation of women has opened up opportunities in many professions and businesses. Women lawyers, doctors, accountants and company directors are today an integral part of the community and not objects of curiosity.
However, there is a downside and it is far from pleasant. Pornography, frequently featuring women in all sorts of highly exaggerated, distasteful and downright lewd situations is churned out by a multi-million dollar sector of the publishing and film industries, supported by an army of writers, webmasters, photographers and artists. This industry is forever testing the limits of public tolerance, including child pornography and satanism.
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