To be what we are |
| If
I - reluctantly - make a start into the topic 'gender', my
motivation for this insecure terrain rests on 3 cinematographic
pillars. All 3 movies have in common the moment of surprise. |
| A Fantastic Woman by Sebastián Lelio (2017) |
| The Crying Game by Neil Jordan (1992) |
| Der Knochenmann by Wolfgang Murnberger (2009) |
| While gender is a main theme of the first 2 movies, it is just an irrelevant (but convincing) episode in the third one.
All 3 films had an exceptionally large audience. There is a high chance
that the reader of this essay is familiar with at least one of them. |
| At
their first appearance, the 3 protagonists in case are charming
females. If any of these movies is unknown to you, I envy you for the
moment of surprise that still is ahead of you. If my memory is correct, in the
two latter films a main (male) character confronted abruptly for the
first time with the undeniable truth is running for the bathroom to
throw up. |
| Taken
together, these 3 pieces of art outlined to me the topic much better
than any sophisticated monograph or symposium could have done. Another
influence was a brain imaging study at the Medical University Vienna
some years ago (Kranz et al 2014) on 23 female-to-male and 21 male-
to-female transsexuals clearly demonstrating that 'subjective'
inclinations reflect neuronal pathways in the brain. |
| If I ever had any doubt,
the evidence exemplified above made it clear to me that humans
sometimes feel alienated in the wrong body. The 3 movies seem to
suggest a simple solution to this dismatch: Leave behind your
biological chains and start living your inner feelings. The only
significant hurdle is to convince the closests relatives. Others will
soon see you as you want to be seen. |
| One enigma remains: What
is it to be male or female, if it is not biology? Don't we both, males
and females, act reasonably? Aren't we both able to lead independent
lives? How do we know what we are, if it is not by biology? Are there
typical behavioral traits for this or the other gender? Do we lose any
gender assignement if we are alone? Is this kind of difference always a
question of action and reaction and only resulting from a social
setting? |
| We
don't
know yet. Maybe any complex large society would develop categories
amenable to ritualized patterns of cooperation. The male / female
dichotomy is not the only one. You may also see a divide between young
and old, between natives and foreigners, between the rich and the poor.
Hopefully we deal with these and other contrasts in a fair and
constructive way, to the benefit of mankind. |
| 1/21 < MB
(6/21) > 7/21 Gender & society |
| Kranz
et al (2014) White matter microstructure in transsexuals and controls
investigated by diffusion tensor imaging. The J Neurosci 34/46: 15466-75 |