Transgender Women Go Topless

Earlier this month at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware, a few transgender women decided to take off their tops and show off their surgically enhanced chests.  Mind you, Rehoboth Beach is not a nude beach.  When asked by a life-guard to put their tops back on, the transgender ladies protested but eventually submitted to the request, as not desiring an encounter with the local police.  But according to the local Police Chief Keith Banks, the transgender ladies were doing nothing illegal, and get this, because they still had male genitalia.  Though because of this quirky situation, Rehoboth Beach commissioner Kathy McGuiness feels that the issue needs to be discussed at the next town hall meeting.

If you are like my wife, your head probably hurts after reading this story.  What sort of sense or logic is there to any of this?  But there are bigger questions at hand.  How do you define what a man or woman is or is not?  Is this news story about sex, gender or both?  Why can men (whatever the term men/man means, and are we talking about sex and/or gender here?) take of their shirts legally pretty much everywhere but women can't?  If you have a surgically enhanced chest and you have a penis then why can't you bare your chest?



First, it is important for us to understand the difference between sex and gender.  We often use the terms interchangeably and without thought.  Sex is biological: you're male or female, you have a penis or a vulva (this is the correct term to describe the whole of the female genitalia, vagina is only a part of the vulva).  Being a man or a woman is a gender.  Genders have roles: men are bread-winners and strong, and women are homemakers and emotionally soft.  It is important to note (before I get any hate mail) that I don't endorse these gender roles, they are merely just examples.

I think it is also important to note that many believe that there are only two sexes and only two genders.  This is most definitely not the case.  There is an almost unlimited number of sexes and possibly genders.  However, I could argue that there really is only two genders: those who have power, privilege and access to resources, and those who don't.  For the sake of brevity and clarity I will avoid getting into this debate, but if you want to know more, I suggest that you read Monique Wittig's, The Straight Mind: and other essays and Anne Fausto-Sterling's, The Five Sexes: why male and female are not enough.  But back to the point.  In Native American cultures, the third gender has been known and culturally accepted.  In some cultures, such as the Indian (India) the Hijra are revered and asked to bestow blessing upon married couples.  The bigger picture here is that gender is a cultural construction.  Genders and gender roles are not universal across all cultures.  The only thing universal concerning gender is that those who are "women"usually have secondary class status.

The ideal dichotomy of two sexes and two genders is the root of the problem here, at least, in my humble undergraduate opinion.  It is normal and convenient for us to have boys and girls and penises and vulvas.  While this sexual dichotomy wraps up sex in a nice, neat, easy to swallow package, it is not the case.  At what point is a male a male?  Is it when he has 100% of a penis?  If so, what constitutes a complete penis?  And the reverse is true as well.  When do we have a complete and totally whole female?  And what about the 'third sex'?  Are herms, merms, or sherms, male or female or other?

If one is considered a man because they have a penis, or, rather, a man has a penis, then our trans-gender friends in Delaware have absolutely every right to bare their chest.  This is what the law states in so many words.  Yet, what would have happened if these trans-gender folks took off their tops and they had natural man-breasts?  However, women, who have a vulva cannot bare their surgically enhanced chest, let alone a natural one.  And why should it be this way?  Why does owning a piece of dangling flesh between one's legs allow one to have rights that a person without a penis can't have?  Or is the problem that our culture has so sexualized the breast that we just can't have them hang out?  I think the answer is a bit of both of the former and the latter.  And again, we as a culture have real issues with stepping outside of the sex/gender dichotomy.  

Overall, I believe the problem is with cultural gender inequalities: women don't have as much power as men, and they never will until access to resources and rewards (e.g. money) is shifted away from men and into the hands of women.  Another point to take note of here: you do not have to have a penis to be a man; you don't have to have a vulva to be a woman.  Remember, man and woman are genders; thus, they are culturally determined.  So, to clarify my statement above, I am using man and woman as our mainstream culture uses these terms.  Really the issue is with those who have power and those who don't.      

References:

2010     Transgender women go topless at Delaware beach.  In The Dayton Daily News    (http://www.daytondailynews.com/lifestyle/transgender-women-go-topless-at-delaware-beach-744402.html)

1993     Fausto-Sterling, Anne. The Five Sexes: why male and female are not enough.
             In The Sciences: pp. 20-24.  http://frank.mtsu.edu/~phollowa/5sexes.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynecomastia