Watch: Chaz Bono explains transgender to David Letterman
By Peter SmithMay 13th, 2011, 1:00 pmComments (7)This is a pretty remarkable video of a transgendered celebrity talking about gender identity, on national television, with an extremely famous host who manages to be curious and respectful. I feel like public discourse this civilized about transgender would've been unthinkable even ten years ago. No matter how much regressive nonsense goes on in American culture and politics, it's striking to see a video like this and realize how much the times are changing, even when the pace of that change is often frustratingly slow. Check it out.
More About David Letterman
Follow Hooksexup
Comments ( 7 )
This is not progress. People should be able to dress up however they want and take up whatever jobs they wish and shack up with people of the same or opposite sex without having to shoot hormones and cut off body parts to "prove" that they should be allowed to do so. My 2 cents.
But that's not why trans people feel the way they do -- it's not about dating someone or getting in job, and in fact it is probably harder in a lot of ways to do those things after transition. It's about their gender identity. Chaz felt like a man on the inside his entire life; the hormones and surgeries simply helped him feel more comfortable in his own body.
We don't really know why transpeople feel the way they do, but something tells me it has less to do with innate gender identity (sex v. gender, remember the distinction? Only sex is innate. Gender is socially constructed; just 100 years ago pink and long hair were for boys and blue was for girls, for example).
So nothing against people doing whatever hacks they want to do to their bodies, but for the love of all that is good, don't claim this bs about boys wearing blue and girls wearing pink is innate.
Even socially constructed concepts are deeply important to one' self-image and you can't turn off your gender anymore than you could turn off being able to distinguish between blue and green (without physical trauma). Gender seems to be just as ingrained as physical sex given what happened in Dr. John Money's experiments. And I don't know why you wouldn't take these people at their word about how they're feeling or what their motivations are for sex reassignment treatments.
Even biological "sex" is to a degree socially constructed. We divide the world into the labels "male" and "female" based on parameters that don't neatly divide into a binary. Not everyone is born with male or female genitalia. Not everyone is born with either XX or XY chromosomes. Our classifications of biology/anatomy/physiology are just as socially constructed as our classification of "masculine" or "feminine" behaviors. If someone feels as though their body is in dissonance with their mind, why not take control of the situation and alter it accordingly?
If he felt like a man, she'd get his shit together and get a job. Instead of living of his mom. The amount of work he'd need to do to earn the money to chop off her tits would have sobered her ass up.
Progress? Maybe. Is he/she momma's little girl/boy? Definitely. Maybe one day, that's the kind of discussion TV will facilitate.
Really interesting and nicely done. Bravo to Chaz and Letterman.
(Because 'Chaz and Dave' would be wrong).
Add a Comment