In a review titled “Putting the ‘I’ in GLBT”, the reviewer introduces the primary author of the book ‘What Becomes You’”, a book about transgendered identity written by a pair of tormented souls:
“Aaron Raz Link was born Sarah, daughter to the now-celebrated University of Nebraska-Lincoln English and women and gender studies professor Hilda Raz. Aaron was a boy born, physically at least, as a girl.”
I’m sure that Sarah’s problems stem directly from mom’s occupation and philosophy:
“Raz Link talks about the arduous path of making his external self match up to the man he’s always been inside.
That path includes not only navigating the dense thicket of psychiatry and surgery — as it turns out, they don’t just let you get a sex reassignment operation — but also Raz Link’s struggles to leave womanhood behind, an act seen as a betrayal by the feminists that populate Raz Link’s life.”
More likely, it’s the feminists that betrayed Sarah, by poisoning her view of womanhood and femininity and driving her into the darkness she currently inhabits. But, for all the poisonous sociology, Sarah exhibits an unusually normal trait:
“And there’s another wrinkle: Not only is [Sarah] a former physical woman who is now physically a man, he’s also a gay man.”
Ok, so she’s attracted to men. Men with issues, but she shows an inclination towards men. You’d expect that from a woman.
Now a quick note to any readers who have any personal stock in the GLBTAN continuum; If you’re offended now, prepare to be appalled.
A quote from the author:
“People said ‘she’; I fought for ‘he.’ I got the word ‘he,’ complete with expectations of violence and invulnerability and testosterone jokes and shaving products advertised as the high point of my existence. So I fought for the word ‘I.’”
Isn’t ‘I’ the focus of all behaviours that separate us from God? “I want this”, “I feel that”, “I am this”, “I will not do that” are all mantras to define ourselves, and we often define ourselves contrary to the role God assigns us.
The focus on ‘I’ by Sarah is a learned trait from her mother, as unconsciously noted by the reviewer:
“Then, Hilda Raz’s part, the reaction of the mother saying goodbye to the daughter she never really had. Her assignment was to focus on herself, bits of her own autobiography and identity in addition to her daughter/son’s change, but the book actually would have been more cohesive had she dwelt less on certain aspects of her own life and focused mainly on Raz Link’s relationship to her and their family.”
Maybe, if Hilda weren’t so practiced at dwelling on the self, she may have enjoyed the daughter that God gave her, instead of twisting that gift into a mockery of femininity.
There’s an ‘I’ in “Faith’, ‘Humility’ and ‘Obedience’, but it’s nowhere near the front.
1 comment:
My head was hurting just trying to figure out "whose on first?"
These are very tough times indeed when the I becomes the front and center as you rightly said.
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