classification
No Variant from R*E*S*P*E*C*T
Submitted by Barbara on Sat, 09/12/2009 - 10:43am
Yesterday, September 11, was a day that will live not only in infamy. For me, it is a day of celebration — not only for my life — but for the work of Ingersoll Founder Marsha Botzer and other pioneers in our upheaval of the gender binary. As the very funny Travis Simmons serenaded me with his best Louis Armstrong voice marking the 20th birthday of my SRS surgery, (You haven’t lived until you’ve heard Louis What a Wonderful World Armstrong sing “Happy Birthday to Your Stuff”) at a local comedy club, I tried to bring my thinking out of the box.
We who defy the determinations of medical professionals at our birth still sit uncomfortably in the waiting room of life glancing over long-expired publications that carry words like “gender dysphoria,” or “gender variant,” or the more preferred “illegal mutant from outer space.” Even here in the upper echelons of the 100-story, gender neutral Marsha Botzer Tower where the Ingersoll Gender Center board chews on issues surrounding identity documents, DSM-V, and whether we should pass out chocolates or Broccoli florets at national conferences, we suffer our own identity crisis.
Apparently, there is some apprehension about the term “gender variant” being used as one of the first descriptors of the Ingersoll community on this Web site. An asterisk on the page notes a definition as”a person who identifies with non-polar (male/female) gender identity, a mixed or fluid identity.” The fear is that a Sarah Palin-like observer of our community will either take this to mean someone who can’t commit their own minds and therefore should be committed, or, in the Palin-tradition take up arms against this strange species — polar or non.
