I went to my very first Grad Show last Friday. Five dollars to get in to "Viva Las Divas" and watch dress-clad men dance. Most heterosexual males would be sickened by this, as evidenced by the fact that I was one of no more than three of my kind sitting in the audience. The rest of the patrons were made of gay males, lesbians, bisexuals, straight women, transsexuals, and transvestites.
But I wasn't disgusted, and I didn't feel out of place. I had a lot of fun. In fact, never once during the entire night did it even cross my mind that the people I was looking at were in fact men - and you know what, you shouldn't think of them as men either. They looked like women, dressed like women, spoke like women, had breasts (fake, but nonetheless there) like women, and were generally speaking interested in men. Like women. (Except for one of the dancers, Taj Mahal, who was a self-proclaimed bisexual.) I suddenly realized that even though they may have male genitalia, a drag queen who is attracted to males is straight. She is a heterosexual, because she is a woman.
Some people would object to this classification. But really, let's think about this. If you go around living your life as a straight woman, attracted to men, wearing women's clothes and buying women's things, what is unfeminine about you? I say nothing. Gender - the cultural construction of sexual identity - is just that, a cultural construction. It has no basis in reality, and hence cannot be tied to one sex or the other. If someone embodies the generally accepted gender roles of a female, then that person is female, regardless of what their genitalia may look like. In fact, that United States government agrees - transvestites and transsexuals can get the sex designation of their choice of forms of identification like driver's licenses.
But for some reason, many people are easily scared by such people. But I am here to educate and offer my opinions. So, let me educate you about the different types of sexualities and gender identities, and maybe you can realize that there is so much more than straight and gay.
Sex is a person's physical sexual identity, male or female as based on their genetic makeup. This is not to be confused with
gender, which is the cultural construction of the generally accepted identity of a person of a specific sex. The female sex has a uterus and gives birth, the female gender wears dresses. See the difference? Moving on, a
homosexual is someone who feels a sexual attraction only to members of their own sex, a
heterosexual feels a sexual attraction to members of both sexes, and a
bisexual feels attraction to members of both sexes.
Gay can be a synonym for homosexual, but persons designated as gay are generally homosexual males. Homosexual females are called
lesbians. Now, a
transsexual is someone that lives their life as the opposite gender to their assigned sex. A
transgender person refuses designation as a gender altogether. A person of the male sex who lives their life according to female gender roles is considered a transsexual. Now here is where it gets complicated. Stay with me on this. Transsexuals may change gender roles in their lives, but this does not necessarily mean they are attracted to any specific sex. A transsexual of the male sex may be attracted to females (and hence be considered biologically heterosexual) and yet still feel as if they are a female. Thus, they would be a homosexual transsexual - a transsexual who is physically attracted to members of their same sex, even though their gender identity has changed. Transsexuals may choose to complete the process and have sex reassignment surgery, after which they can be known simply as members of either the male or female sex. Males and females who have had sex reassignment surgery are known as
post-op transsexuals. Transsexuals are not to be confused with
transvestites, members of a sex who wear clothes that were intended for the opposite sex. They are also called cross-dressers (which is actually the English translation of the Latin root words in "transvestite"). Contrary to popular belief, most transvestites are NOT homosexuals. The majority of them are in fact heterosexuals (see British comedian Eddie Izzard). Transvestites can vary from wearing the opposite gender's clothes in only private situations to wearing them all the time - it just depends. A
drag queen is a member of the male sex who dresses as the female gender for performances - whether or not they actually live as women has nothing to do with their designation as a drag queen. Some drag queens live their entire lives as "manly" truck drivers or construction workers, and some live their entire lives as females. It just depends.
Get it?
Basically, I am arguing that there are such a variety of persons and identities in the world that attempting to simplify to gay straight man and woman oversimplifies a situation that was intended to be complex. A hermaphrodite (a person born with both sets of sexual organs) who was raised as a heterosexual female in the female gender but realizes - though they are sexually attracted to men like a heterosexual woman - that she actually wants to live her life as a transvestite male probably exists somewhere. If you met this person, would you refer to them as he or she? Or does it even matter?
Just posing the questions.
