Looking for the latest news of the day, I read recently that Bruce Jenner is transitioning to a woman. My first reaction was: Why do I need to know this? Is this really newsworthy? In a world threatened by global warming, nuclear disaster, political corruption, poverty and ignorance, why should I care about Mr. (or Mrs.) Jenner’s sexual organs? The very fact that this is presented by a major newspaper as “breaking news” speaks volumes about our culture. Never before were the people of a nation so concerned about their bodies as Americans of the 21st Century. From an endless list of artificial vitamins and food supplements aimed at improving our physical health to cosmetic surgery aimed at improving our physical appearance, we are obsessed with our bodies. Let this latest wonder of technology appear on the scene, and we are faced with the dilemma of deciding whether we want to be male or female.
In a society that understands gender roles as ours does, it has indeed become difficult for many individuals to establish their self-identity. If the society communicates to me that “being male” means “being macho”, that “real men” like football, that American men in particular are “rough and ready”, and if I, on the other hand, view football as a violent sport and really don’t like it, if I find “being macho” doesn’t suit my personality, and if I prefer reading poetry to watching the latest military film at the cinema, then I might well question my sexual identity. Could it be that I am really a woman in a man’s body? That is, I might raise this question if I were not aware of the cultural dimension of gender roles. It is, after all, not chiseled in stone that men must be “macho”, and there is absolutely no reason why men cannot share some of the sensitivities that our society attributes to women. Gender roles are culturally conditioned and certainly subject to change. Would it not be prudent to discuss the cultural problem before we rush headlong into the arms of the latest technology?
Transgender individuals are not the first people to discover that their bodies and their minds didn’t harmonize. It was precisely the experienced discord between the body and the mind that led in many religious traditions to a life of meditation and contemplation in search of the desired harmony. It was even hoped that attaining the unity of body and mind through meditation would lead to a new awareness of the divine presence. But alas! Who has the patience today for meditation? If we experience a disharmony between body and mind–voilà– technology to the rescue! If you can’t identify with your present body, technology will give you different one. Yet, the mind, my dear readers, will remain the same: restless, conflicted, insecure and afraid, as Augustine told us some sixteen hundred years ago.
Would that we as a nation could return to higher values than those offered by technology!
Jack E. Brush is a resident of The Villages.
