Pat Califia

from Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism

What would it be like to walk down the street, go to work, or attend a party and take it for granted that the gender of the people you met would not be the first thing you ascertained about them? What impact would that have on how you treated them? Or on how they treated you? What if gender was no longer a marker for privilege, certain personality traits, or roles in the family? If gender was a sexual fetish or a symbol of your ability to provide certain types of erotic or spiritual experiences, how would you put your public persona together? What would you want other people to know about you first? Would it be more important to identify your totem animal, astrological sign, career goals, dietary needs, religion, allergies, or degree of sexual availability to passing strangers than it would be to identify your gender?

If you could change your sex as effortlessly in reality as you can in virtual reality, and change it back again, wouldn't you like to try it at last once? Who do you think you might become? What is that person able to do that you don't think you can do now? What would you have to give up to become oppositely sexed? What would change about your politics, clothing, food preferences, sexual desires, social habits, driving style, job, body language, behavior on the street? Are you able to image becoming a hybrid of your male and female self, keeping the traits that you value and abandoning the ones that are harmful?

What would it be like to live in a society where you could take a vacation from gender? Or (even more importantly) from other people's gender. Imagine the creation of Gender Free Zones. These retreat centers could be maintained by a new class of rude (as opposed to civil) servants. And what would it be like to live in a society where nobody was punished for dressing up in drag? What if it was taken for granted that cross-dressing was a normal developmental phase? Let's expand the definition of drag so that it applies to any other fantasy role that someone needs to act   out so they can obtain nourishment or hidden knowledge. What if we all helped each other to manifest our most beautiful, sexy, intelligent, creative, and adventurous inner selves, instead of cooperating to suppress them? What if cross-dressing and other forms of gender blending became markers for wise people, healers, and visionaries instead of a signifier of sexual perversion and shame? What drag is hiding in your personal closet, kept there by the threat of violence or ridicule?

If these questions frighten, offend, or annoy you, you are one of the people who stand to benefit from transactivism although it probably doesn't feel like your benefactor. And if these questions amuse, engage, and challenge you, you're probably a transactivist already. Welcome to the genderevolution, indeed.