TransAmerica - How we become a woman?

What is a ‘woman’? This is the question Beauvoir posed in her 1949 book <The Second Sex>. According to her, even though ‘biological and social sciences no longer admit the existence of unchangeably fixed entities that determine given characteristics’, the distinction between men and women is evident in her society. How are the facts of being a female and a woman correlated then? Beauvoir gives an answer by ending the book with this famous sentence: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”

She was then mostly talking about how a female becomes a woman, through all her life, as a result of the oppressive discipline. However we can easily deduce that, if a ‘woman’ is a socially constructed identity, surely anyone can become a woman, as if putting on a mask, no matter what kind of genital one is born with. Even the latter can be altered, thanks to the advance in medical science.

But HOW do we become one? On what basis do we recognize an individual as a woman or man? A transgender individual’s life is a continuous pursuit of the answer to this question.

Transamerica is a 2005 American independent film, written and directed by Dunkan Tucker. It’s a story of a transgender woman Bree, a conventional Christian and in her mid-30s. One week ahead of her longed-for vaginoplasty, she gets a call from her unknown son, whom was raised secretly by her ex-girlfriend from college. To her this is a nightmare, since she wants to leave behind the life before Bree, get the surgery, and finally ‘become herself’.

What interested me most in this movie is the way it shows how meaningless the line between transgender and cisgender can be. In a scene Bree gets to hang out with a bunch of transgenders, and when she worries that the one sitting behind her cannot possibly pass for a woman, for she’s put on too much make-up and wearing too pink a dress, the host tells her that she is in fact a cisgender woman. In another scene, if judged only by their tenues, Bree’s sister would be considered much more ‘boyish’ then her.

Despite the storyline which seems like a journey to the surgery, Bree already passes quite well as a woman, going under a series of cosmetic procedures, dressing herself in an overly ‘girlish’ way, doing her make-up and nails to perfection, and toning her voice and body motion. Which is quite interesting because cisgender women have the same struggle as Bree, trying to appear more ‘woman’, painfully fitting herselves into the norms of society. This is the mystery of gender. We all recognize what roughly ‘feminine’ aspects are, but it is impossible to pin them down, because the femininity itself is a contradiction. Shall we say whatever a cisgender woman does is a feminine thing? If the answer is yes, the limit of femininity doesn’t exist and therefore femininity cannot be defined. If the answer is no, why do we even call them ‘feminine traits’? What I’m trying to say here is that what we think to be feminine is completely arbitrary to female, and plus, pretty obscure itself. It is true that we frequently see some sets of values and appearances in the women’s side, but those are not fixed at all, and are not limited to any gender either.

So again, what does it mean to be a woman? It is about identifying oneself as a woman, acting conforming to the idea of woman (however unstable it is), and thus interpreted to others as a woman. The last part matters pretty much, sometimes even more that the first two parts. Here I want to point out one more thing: we treat man and woman so differently that we cannot stand someone who doesn’t fall into a category at first glance. And as Beauvoir said, the difference is not just symmetrical counterparts. I know some feminists worry about MTF transgenders’ tactic intensifying the stereotype of woman, but if we are to fight for equality, I think as much as redefining the femininity, we have to intentionally shake the femininity dominated by cisgender women. As we make the femininity less rigid (welcome the ones who cross the border is one way), and it will change the way people react to woman, not only in the sense that woman have more choice among various modes of woman, but also in that people can be less attached to gender, that there will be less difference in treating man and woman from the start.

In the movie, Bree undergoes the surgery as planned, but we can see that her new organ isn’t the only thing that satisfies her. She is finally respected in her choice and treated as such even before the surgery. The respect is not particularly given because she is a woman, it is an unconditional one. I’d say it’s an ideal film, but shouldn’t we all dream?