Shemales–those transsexuals who have completed the feminization process except for undergoing sex-reassignment surgery itself, having opted to retain their male genitals–disturb some folks. Are shemales to be understood as being women with penises and testicles, as such vulgar phrases as “chicks with dicks,” “sluts with nuts,” and “shemales,” suggest, or are they to be thought of as representing men with breasts, of being, as it were, “dudes with boobs”? While a penis and a pair of testicles are definitely male attributes and are, in fact, for scientists and many others, experts and laymen alike, the very organs that comprise masculinity, they are not, it would seem, enough to establish a male identity for shemales. Despite their penises and testicles, such individuals are regarded as being feminine or, at least, as being more feminine than masculine. Why should such a person be regarded as being more feminine than masculine rather than as being more masculine than feminine or even as being half and half of each?
The answer is not difficult to discover, for similar situations, in a racial context, occur and have occurred for centuries, if not millennia. Why should the child born or interracial congress be considered black, for example, rather than white? Did not Halle Berry, to name one such child, or Barrack Obama, to name another, not inherit the same number of chromosomes from both their black fathers and their white mothers? Are they not, therefore, in reality, half-black and half-white?
Although they may be so as a matter of genetics (and common sense), they are not so, from a social standpoint, and they are not for the simple, if irrational, fact that a group of people who occupy a position of greater social status usually will not accept as one of their own someone who is born of a parent of a class of people of a lesser social status. Often, the reverse is not true, although, occasionally, it can be the case. In a racist society, white trumps black, and, in a patriarchal society, male is superior to female. By the members of the higher social class, therefore, a child of interracial parentage will be considered to be black, and a shemale will be considered to be a woman.
This being the case, shemales, accepting their lots in life with joy, rather than sorrow, do all that they can to appear, feel, and behave as though they are, in fact, women. As the transvestite Dil of The Crying Game tells Fergus, her male genitals are but easily ignored “details,” and their presence, she implies, are not a hindrance to her perception of herself–and her hope of being perceived by others as well–as being a female. Shemales style their hair, wear bras, panties, and other feminine attire, wear makeup and jewelry, carry purses, wear stockings and high-heeled shoes, and walk, talk, and otherwise act like women. In all these details, they are women. However, the “details” of their male genitals remain as testaments against their completely feminine gender. Still, since English grammar allows, in addition to the neuter, or sexless, gender, only the masculine and the feminine, shemales must be classified as one or the other, and they are categorized according to the sex and gender that they profess and want to be, not because this is what they want, but, mostly, because, in a patriarchy, women’s social status is less than that of men’s.
Within the limits of biological and physiological laws, shemales are expected, as women, to accept and to model the female role. They can’t have children (although lactation among shemales is not an unknown phenomenon), but, otherwise, they are bound by the same set of sexist and chauvinistic prejudices and biases and by the same social expectations that apply to women per se, whether they like it or not or whether it is right or wrong to require that they do so. The shemale, like the female, becomes, in Deborah Tannen’s terminology, a “marked” woman.
Not all children that are produced as a result of interracial unions are accepted even by the ethnic group that occupies the lower level of social status. Depending upon the communities in which they live, some are rejected by both races, the black and the white, although such rejection is relatively rare. Racism, after all, exists in every ethnic group. If males refuse to accept shemales as “dudes with boobs,” women may also refuse to accept them as “chicks with dicks” of as “sluts with nuts.” In this case, shemales suffer a fate similar to that of the racially mixed child who is rejected by the ethnic groups of both of his or her parents. Shemales who experience such twofold rejection are regarded as a third sex, of sorts, just as doubly rejected racially mixed children are regarded as being strange progeny called “half-breeds,” “mulattos,” or “high-yellows.”
Femininity, we learn, can be affected, but, to be attained, it must also be accepted. One is not feminine unless she is accepted as such, no matter how much she may look and act the part.
Part of acting the part is having sex with men, because, whether women also have sex with others of their sex, women, also, by definition–or by most people’s definition, including most women’s definition (and it is the majority that determines the meanings of words, at least socially)–have sex with men. To have sex with men marks a shemale as a female for those who are willing to accept the shemale’s femininity. If those who are willing to do so constitute a majority in her community or country, she will be accorded the state and the attendant status of womanhood. Her sexual acts will be considered heterosexual, as will her sex partner. However, if her femininity is rejected by the majority in her community or country, her having sex with men will mark both her and her partner as homosexuals. This is why, for some men, having sex with a shemale is an acceptable variation upon heterosexual behavior, whereas, for others, it is a decidedly homosexual act.
Just as, only a decade or so ago, having a penis and testicles would have defined one as male, regardless of any female secondary sexual characteristics he might have or how he dressed or behaved, being able, if only in theory, to conceive and carry a baby to term and to deliver it in the act of birth would have been the defining characteristics of a woman. Following the invention and widespread availability of birth-control pills, the legalization of abortion, and the increased array of social and political roles that have become open to women in the wake of modern feminism, the ability (again, if only in theory) to give birth to a child that one has borne in her womb is no longer regarded by many as the defining characteristics of women, and, indeed, many women are offended by such an “archaic” concept. These changes in the way women are perceived and defined and the changes in the roles they are allowed to adopt has made the definition of “woman” more fluid. Whether the concept is fluid enough to admit shemales to the sorority of sisterhood has yet to be determined. Meanwhile, shemales continue to do all that they can do to be accepted as feminine, if not exactly female, including not only dressing and acting feminine, but also having sex with men, just as women do. In other words, to put the matter more simply, if more crudely, shemales look like females, walk like females, and talk like females, even if they can’t have penile-vaginal sex or become pregnant. Having the appearance of a female and behaving as a female may be sufficient grounds for a being considered a woman, if the majority determines that such characteristics should be the determinants of what is and should be considered feminine.
