Not Quite Keeping Up

I chose the book for our WI Book Group for June: Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernadine Evaristo. I chose it based on the fact that it won the Booker Prize for 2019 (or perhaps half - it was the first ever shared prize, along with The Testament, by Margaret Atwood.) Also that it appeared on Barack Obama's list of favourite books he read in 2019. I can't say I'm an Atwood fan, though I recognise she is a powerful writer. It's just that I find her books to be rather depressing and I prefer a bit of escapism in my reading. I'm not sure I'd call what I got as escaping, but Evaristo's book was far from boring.

Every one in the book group said they really enjoyed the book and our discussion was lively. They congratulated me on a timely choice, as though I knew back in May that George Floyd would be murdered and that his death would cause protests world wide. 

Without getting into the story line(s) of the book, it did strike me as being as much about sex as it was about race. I remember telling Bill that the first character, Amma, was not only black, but gay, worked in theatre and lived in London. I commented that I couldn't find a character more opposite to me: white, straight, stuck in my left-brain and definitely a suburban girl. Fortunately the book has many stories and Amma's is only the beginning. I never came to like Amma but I definitely respected her.

While making my way through this book my attention was drawn to the controversy around J. K. Rowling's essay that revealed a sad past of abuse. The essay highlighted her concern that women's private spaces were potentially about to be invaded by men claiming they were women (in spite of no hormone therapy or surgery) and therefore entitled to be in the women's toilets or changing rooms. She saw this as a potential threat to the safety and well-being of women. She also questioned the motivation of young women wishing to become men; was it because the world treats women as less than men?

I'd read about the actors who distanced themselves from Rowlings viewpoint but didn't read her essay until a New York Times opinion piece titled "Harry Potter and the Scales of Justice" claimed that Rowling's essay was full of hate. That seemed so unlikely that I had to go read it for myself; it certainly is not. However, I found that I needed to look up a number of words to understand her meaning, which made me aware that I've just not been keeping up with the goings on in the world. Just in case you haven't either, I shall share some of the things I learned.

I think I've always used the terms 'sex' and 'gender' as interchangeable, but nowadays they are different things (or perhaps they always were). Simply put, 'gender' is what is in the brain and 'sex' is what is in the pants. Also, 'cis' is from the Latin for 'on this side of ' which is the opposite of trans, meaning 'across from'. So a person who is 'cis-gendered' is lucky enough to have been born with the same genitalia as how they feel in their mind.  

Non-binary can be someone who doesn't necessarily identify as either male or female, but apparently non-binary is a term that means different things to different people and it is important to ask an individual who identifies as non-binary what it means to them. They may well wish to be referred to as they-them rather than he/she-him/her. The character Megan / Morgan in Evaristo's book was actually one of the more popular with our book group, simply wanting to be able to be themselves without having to live up to the expectations of either a feminine or masculine stereotype. 

Another thing that was cleared up for me is that the sex that comes after the word 'trans' is what that person has become, not what they used to be or changed from.  Also, that sexual orientation is a completely different issue to sex or gender, referring to whom one is attracted. For example, a person born male who became female can be attracted to either men or women; or a woman who became a man can be attracted to either men or women. 

All these terms and concepts were news to me and though I'm glad I looked them up, I don't feel hugely wiser. How many people aren't happy about being men or women? Have there always been this many and I just didn't know? One thought that I cling to is the idea that I just need to treat people as human beings, I don't necessarily have to understand them; after all there are plenty of cis-gender people I've never really understood. 

I wonder how all this will be looked back on in fifty years. Will the idea of male/female identity be outdated? What will have replaced it? Will people look back on this as a time of great change and confusion out of which good things came? Will women of any ilk have equal pay and equal representation in places of power? Will Black Lives Matter have achieved their aims? And, most importantly in my opinion, will we have saved our planet from ruin? I can't say I'm optimistic about much of this, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.