Since there was a lot of reading in both Middlesex and Sexing the Body, I could not summarize or comment on the entirety of both readings. Thus, I focused my blog on what I found to be the most interesting and most important.
When reading Books Two and Three (more so Two) in Middlesex, I found that I had a hard time separating the past from the present. The constant back and forth between the different generations confused me. This was a similar problem that I also faced when I read Book One. However, the reading became easier to follow in Book 3 because it focused more on Callie’s personal life. It was interesting to read about Callie’s adolescence. I found myself wondering how her gender had gone unquestioned for so long. It is understandable in her younger years, when the body is less developed that things could go unnoticed. But between her baptism, missing period and growth of a mustache, one would assume that someone in her family, or even doctor, might question her overall body development, or for that matter, lack of body development. As a reader, I sympathized with her, for in the reading it came across as if her family didn’t pay that close of attention to her. I think I felt even more sorry for her because of Fausto-Sterling’s statistic that only 1.7% of all births results in intersex babies (51). This statistic further showed me just how alone Callie must be. “Can you see me? All of me? Probably not. No one ever really has” (Eugenides 218).
Throughout Book Three Callie refers to the fact that she has never been naked in front of others. She would wet her hair instead of taking team showers with her field hockey team. “I wasn’t naked for a second…At the nearby drinking fountain, I pressed one finger over the hold, making the water squirt high in the air. I put my head into this stream. Coach Stork always touched our hair before letting us leave, making sure it was wet” (Eugenides 299-300). As time passed, Callie refused to show her body to others. It wasn’t until one of the final chapters of Book Three, “Flesh and Blood”, when Callie finally comes to terms with the fact that she is different. “…For the first time [I] clearly understood that I wasn’t a girl but something in between” (Eugenides 375). From this point after Callie has recognized and accepted who she really is and has become more comfortable with herself and her body.
Middlesex is an example of a coming-of-age novel however; it is not the typical story. Thus, I found it interesting to learn that HBO is set to develop Eugenides’s novel into a one-hour series. I think it will be interesting to not only see this book come to life, but also see how it is perceived by the public. Since it is being produced by Rita Wilson and is going to be aired on HBO, it is sure to garner a lot of attention. Thus, I am sure the media will comment on it, I just wonder how so.
There is a significant difference between Middlesex and Sexing the Body. Eugenides’s novel is easier and more pleasurable to read since it is a fictional story whereas; Fausto-Sterling’s chapter “of Gender and Genitals” focuses more on scientific research. Fausto-Sterling’s reading really gave me a better insight into Callie’s life. Since I do not have that much prior knowledge on the topic of intersex, “Of Gender and Genitals” provided me with a basic understanding of this subject. The thing that stuck out most to me was the visual imagery, especially those dealing with “fixing”. The figures of the surgical fixings were explicit and somewhat disturbing. I think these images further exemplify how serious a process it is to go from an intersex to one specific gender.
It is very helpful to read a biological and factual source of information, “Sexing the Body”, in combination with the fabricated fictional life narrative, “Middlesex”, to understand the complexity of inter-sexuality. Before reading these two works, I admit to knowing very little about intersexual individuals. Because of my ignorance, it was easy to pretend that people with “genetic anomalies”
ReplyDelete(as doctors refer to them) did not exist, or at least were incredibly rare in the world. In specific, I was shocked to find out that intersexual individuals are more common than Albino people are. Thinking about it more, I realize that my ignorance for the issue proves society’s hesitance to address the issue. After reading the disturbing process that parents have to go through immediately after birth and the coming of age tale of Cal, I am more disturbed than ever about society’s narrow mindedness. If we could stop treating the issue as such a “problem” then eventually we could create another level of “normal” in society. Granted, this process can not be achieved overnight, I believe it would be better and less painful for the families who have to go through the process of deciding what sex their child should be while risking major identity crises.
Like Katrina, I was somewhat confused as to how Cal’s intersex condition was not acknowledged earlier, especially after reading how the 1950’s marked the beginnings of the debate over the malleability of sexual identity with the research of John Money and the Hampsons (Fausto-Stering 66). However, also given that only 1.7 % of births produce intersex babies I suppose that when a doctor checks a newborn’s genitals that they are checking for the presumed “normal” gender, with investigation of abnormality as more of an afterthought (in Sexing the Body it seems like the apparent obsession with “ideal” genitals perhaps warranted a closer examination, but it also appears that the type of surgery described seemed to get a lot more developed later on, after the 1950’s). I read “Of Gender and Genitals” first and found it interesting after reading all about how doctors are so concerned with prescribing a sex to a child that they can go so far as to skew the information they give parents (such that intersex conditions are presented as the situation of simply having some underdeveloped organs, but that the child is “really” either male or female) that in Middlesex I noticed how Cal tried to conform to being female. Between faking periods and stuffing a bra, in adolescence even though she knew that she felt different, she felt considerable pressure to at least maintain the appearing of being female because it was what was expected. Something else that jumped out at me is how at the end of Book Three she states that prior to being taken to a specialist, though she did not know yet “what was wrong,” but that she know she “was no longer a girl like other girls” (Eugenedes 396). I might be splitting hairs, but saying she is “no longer” a girl implies that she was a girl, though I think that she means that she previously identified with being one. Though I was a little confused by the controversy and contradicting studies regarding development of sexual identity and sexual orientation, I think that as we learn more about Cal’s change in identity it will be interesting to compare it to the opposing theories presented by Money and Diamond in “Of Gender and Genitals.” It seems that the data collected, or perhaps the research methods used, yielded results that were often contradictory or just inconsistent, and so I wonder if there really is some overarching explanation for the development of sexual identity or if it has to be taken on a case-by-case basis.
ReplyDeleteI like how Katrina highlights the distinct difference between the scientific approach to gender issues and the literary approach in Eugenides' and Fausto-Sterling's texts. I actually disagree though with Katrina and think that Fausto-Sterling's was much easier to comprehend and relate to because the scientific nature of her examination lends to greater credibility. Eugenides' approach by way of a fictional tale seems just that, a fictional story, where I question many instances and descriptions in the novel.
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