"The" Fantasy (Anime-ted)

Gender. The Final Frontier. As much as we have learned about the universe, the world, its people and the workings of their minds, we have yet to come to grips with the essential duality of our humanity. All variations are suspect in a society that prefers simple choices: fish or cut bait; stand or sit; male or female. The transgendered suffer both from this primitive view of a far more complex reality and from the failure of science and society generally to understand them. I was struck by this comment in the October 9 issue of the New Yorker -- in an article which seems to celebrate duality as a personal trait:

"Even the cross-dressers, who are now presented as heroes
of our time seem less self-expanding than self-exploding,
resigning their identities to their nylons."

Ouch! This is wildly unfair, but also contains a grain of truth. For an M2F, the outward display of the inner femininity comes from a motivation and at a price that can be all-consuming. Does this mean that we resign our identities or that we become resigned to our identities? Who gets to do the defining? That brings me to the fantasy which has sustained me for a long time and which I am willing to bet is not unknown to many of my readers: let someone else do the deciding ( as long as he or she makes the right decision). Don't make me bear this awesome responsibility alone.

Better yet, avoid human frailty in these matters altogether and take the matter to the supernatural. "Oh Goddess, let me wake as a woman." Unfortunately, the entities of the pantheon can be somewhat arbitrary. Orlando, hero/ine of the Virginia Woolf classic of gender mutation, was not known to have expressed any desire to change, but woke as woman one morning anyway. And so she remained. As you can see, I did not invent this fantasy. Others have preferred to keep their dualism optional, like the other-wordly beings in Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Left Hand of Darkness". When the mating urge is upon them, they may take either the male or female form and have no control over which it will be.

The fantasy takes another form in the Japanese Anime "Ranma 1/2". The teenage hero/ine was pushed into an enchanted well where a young girl had drowned. As a result, she will take the female form whenever cold water is splashed upon her and revert to her original male form when in contact with hot water. I am just the opposite, but we share the same problem showering in the girl's locker room. There are nearly 100 episodes playing out this drama in a martial arts sort of way, and one movie.

The Impossible Scene:
Ranma as Male and Female

Reading some of the scripts, which are online, I found that my favorite was episode N75 where Ranma-chan (F) becomes resigned to the female mode. She is helpful and domestic and apparently happy in this state. Her fiancee, Akane (GG), is not happy, however. She prefers the combative Ranma-chan who is always in or on the verge of personal combat with someone. A blow to the head with a rock brings Ranma-chan to her "senses" and the series continues. I have little in common with teenagers of any kind, much less Japanese martial arts students, but the underlying challenge of becoming comfortable with a role and a personality that will reconcile gender duality is a theme I know well. Like the Anime genre generally, everything else is kid's stuff by comparison. There are points at which fantasy and reality become indistinguishable, but no one is going to wave a magic wand and make everything OK by the end of the story. Too bad.

Meanwhile, back at the New Yorker, the writer gets past the dualities of which he seems to disapprove, and finds one he likes:

"If he was a double man, it was for the best
of reasons: he saw twice as much as other
people did."

I can think of no reason why the transgendered should be excluded from this kind of insight. In fact, one would think we were the best-placed people in the world to savour the experiences and understand the psyches of both genders. In my fantasy, that would make us all very wise and very happy indeed. Next time, I'll take a look at our reality . . . as I see it.

Janet

"Living Better Electronically"

(No, this isn't me either)