Free The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You by S. Bear Bergman Page B

with genitals.
    Okay, genitals are private, and as a rule ought not to be asked about. But, but —when we wish to know or talk about a person’s life and relationships, do we not have to basically agree on the terms of the discussion in order for the discourse to have any meaning at all? To the extent that the LGBTQ community is laboring righteously to change the terms of these discussions, I’m all for it. I’m decades past thinking that genitals determine anything, necessarily. But that’s not to say that they don’t matter, sometimes a lot. They can’t possibly be off the table entirely, can they? I just don’t see how that’s possible. The sex-gender discussion, obviously, is not in a settled or stable state. As long as that’s true, doesn’t everything have to be on the table (as it were) while we sort it out? Which means, I think, that my question was not as out of line as your response seemed to suggest.
    It’s half the problem with old friends, I’m afraid. They really call you on your shit. And they make it difficult to sidestep the complex parts of the question by dismissing the entire thing on a bad premise. It’s not like answering the questions of a university undergraduate, in which I can address only the parts of the question I want to discuss. On the other hand, with old friends I can talk about things I feel, and ways in which I’m tender, not just what I have studied or can prove. I wrote back:
    Okay, that’s fair. Here’s the thing:
    When I identify someone’s gender (with a pronoun, name, or other gendered words like “boyfriend”) and then someone inquires about genitals, here’s the subtext I hear: “Is this person really a man? Help me assess.” And that’s complicated. Granted, you and I have a long and fairly close history, in a somewhat odd but present way, and so in part I should have been more thoughtful about the fact that you were asking that question in relationship to how it might affect me. I’ll take that, and apologize if I was an ass about it. But about gender and genitals, I still have a few thoughts:
    Those questions are complicated because it seems to suggest that further interrogation of trans bodies is appropriate, which is a difficult concept. A lot of my work is about saying, hey—here’s my gender. Deal with me on the face. If there’s some possibility that you might encounter my genitals, we’ll deal with that when we get there. And also, it’s about creating a space in the world for others to say the same. Asking a transperson about hir sex will always carry a whiff of, “But what are you, really ?”
    It is a lot like asking someone what name they were given at birth; it’s a way of trying to peel someone apart in a way that is intimate or invasive (based, largely, on the relationship between asker and askee). I do not use my first name anymore; no one calls me that except my parents and older relatives. When strangers ask, “What does the S. stand for?” I say, “My first name.” When people ask me about my genitals, I invite them to tell me about their own first. Being a display-model transmasculine person is a full-time job, but it does not pay well enough to offer all comers a look into my underpants, metaphorical or otherwise. It’s an intimacy, and I reserve the right to reveal it only to my intimates.
    So—do genitals matter? Of course. The question for me then becomes—to whom, and why? I talk about my genitals with those people who I may reasonably imagine, through word or deed, have a legitimate interest (a group pretty well limited to my doctor, my therapist, and anyone with whom I have sex). The fact that my genitals are nonstandard for my gender matters to my mechanic or bank teller not at all—they are not interacting with them. Does someone learn more about me if I talk about my parts? Well, maybe. But why do they want to know? How many times in a day do I have to drop my pants for the educational good of others?
    Am I