This Sunday finds some controversy on the femulation front.On the right side of the Atlantic, there is a big brouhaha over a calendar released by a Spanish LGBT rights organization. The calendar mimics religious paintings and features transgender models dressed like the Virgin Mary. (photo right)
This is not sitting well in the predominantly Catholic Spain.
Meanwhile back in the States, Peaches alerted me to this story about Morehouse College's new dress code that bans its students from wearing female attire.
Morehouse is an all male college and the crossdressing ban is aimed at "about five students who are living a gay lifestyle."
The campus' gay organization supported the ban with a 24 to 3 vote.
So far, I have been unable to determine whether the crossdressing students are transgender or not.
Atleast one of the Morehouse students is a transsexual who was a freshman last year (2008/2009) and was planning SRS in (2010/2011).
ReplyDeleteI don't understand the problem as over in Europe it was customary for male actors to play a woman in the plays up until the turn of the century.
ReplyDeleteDidn't God make us in his or her image?
But then again I said her instead of him, well if I was made in his image then he also likes to dress as a woman.
Morehouse is a traditionally (and still predominantly) African-American college. I happen to work in a college in which 80 percent of the student body is Black (about evenly divided between African-Americans and Caribbeans, with a smaller contingent of Africans), so I would like to offer my "take" on the situation:
ReplyDeleteIn African-American and Caribbean communities, there are two seemingly opposed forces that achieve odd and, at times terrifying, congruences. I am talking about on one hand, the churches and on the other, street culture, of which the soundtrack is hip-hop music.
African-American and Caribbean people of a certain age, and those who attain high positions, are almost always active in their churches. Young men are often involved with the "street" culture: sometimes to be "down," but other times simply to survive.
That last word is the key to connect those two cultures. They both see their race and communities as embattled: their literal as well as spiritual psychological survival is at stake. The males in both cultures feel this sense even more acutely, as they know just how easily their lives could be ended.
When people, especially men, feel their survival is at stake, they tend to draw the gender lines even more sharply than they would in easier circumstances. They develop the sense that their race will die out unless "men are men." One sees this kind of thinking in cultures and races under siege throughout history, including the Hebrews of the Old Testament.
In colleges like the one in which I teach, the male's student dilemma is compounded by the fact that he, as often as not, enters the college at a significant disadvantage in terms of academic skills compared to his female classmates. Plus, he comes from a culture in which he learns that he must be "strong." That does not include seeking help with a difficulty, whether academic or personal.
I say what I am saying neither to condone such thinking nor to indict black men. Indeed, many of my students as well as colleagues who happen to be black have treated me very well and have praised my abilities as well as what they perceive to be my ability to identify with them. And some of them agree with what I've said.