Thinking About Gender

OK. I watch a lot of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. I watch all three of them. I love them all (although David Caruso is terrible; he is the only one I don't care for). And they all make me think - how many television shows now make one think? Not just during the show - but after as well.

There is an episode in the fifth season of the original CSI (Las Vegas) that is called Ch-Ch-Changes, and it revolves around a murdered woman who was a man. She (and yes, it is appropriate to call her "she") had gender reassignment surgery and became a woman. I realise that this is telly and not necessarily reality, but in this case, people really do have gender reassignment surgery - if he or she is deemed mentally fit to do so. How anyone is truly qualified to know that is beyond me, but I understand that there is a long psychological process before the "corrective" surgery can take place.

Humans being the terrible creatures that they so often are do not understand this kind of thing and very often people who cross-dress, pass themselves off as the opposite gender or go the whole route and really do change - physically and mentally and aesthetically - their gender are enormously mistreated. I hate that. It is rather dismal that we are so motivated by fear as to lash out at others only because we don't understand them and are frightened by this.

I love being a woman. And as Greg Sanders said in this episode, "I, for one, like having a penis." I was going to title this "I Like Having a Vagina" but it seemed... uh... inappropriate (which is silly but I don't write this to be vulgar, but to mull things over. And I won't ever apologise for using words like penis and vagina - those are perfectly good words, and proper. Anyway, I do like having a vagina - sure, it took a little time to get accustomed to ( you know, the weird new things - like getting my menstrual cycle - when I did; growing hair; and that whole, you know, sex thing - it is not as easy to become used to as it must be for men), but on the whole, I really wouldn't want it any other way.

Imagine, if you can, and I won't be surprised if most of you cannot, being a stranger in your own body. What must it be like to be mentally wired as a man but be trapped in a woman's body? I understand that only one in four gender reassignments are female to male - it is much more common to want to be a woman. I wonder how that is? Still, back to original musing - I cannot imagine hating being my gender so much that I would take hormones and have things removed/attached to change it! It is just so foreign to me. It is outside the scope of my understanding. And what these men will go through! OK, sure, there are tons of hormones and other pharmaceuticals involved but let's look at the physical process.

I don't know a lot about the F to M process, but I know something about the M to F process (in very basic terms). First the testicles are removed and then the penis is inverted to form a vagina. Yikes. Tell me that doesn't sound painful. Yes, of course, the patient is sedated, but what about after? It takes five days for the neo-vagina to heal enough to remove the piano wire that is put in to anchor it in place. Ouch. None of that sounds... really great. But it sounds better than living as a person you don't want to be.

Still, I can't imagine that. I'm very glad to be female and even happier that I am happy to be female!