What I thought was interesting about Books 2 and 3 of Middlesex was how there were many parallels drawn in other ways regarding the discrimination that intersex individuals face. For example, Lefty's needed to become more "American" to maintain his job at Ford. Contrastingly, Desdemona had to be more "Turkish" and less "Greek" in order to get the job at the silk plant. This fit in nicely with the polarizing male vs. female sex system and the pressure to fit into one of the categories. It seemed so blatant that there was discrimination in Lefty and Desdemona's jobs because of their nationality. It was reflective of a "melting pot" where they needed to leave behind what made them different and unique (their nationality and heritage) in order to neatly fit into society's culturally accepted idea of "American". Similarly, these prenatal fixes, surgical fixes, and psychological fixes, are ways in which contemporary American society creates another proverbial melting pot and force people to give up what makes them different and unique and challenges our culturally decided "mainstream American" ways and perceptions.
Another parallel was when Desdemona was trying to get the job at the silk plant. She needed to lie about her heritage or exaggerate her heritage basically to survive because she needed to feed her family. While intersex people aren't necessarily facing the exact same problem of survival, they are exaggerating qualities of theirs in order to fit into society's accepted 2 sex system. They are in a sense lying about and exaggerating their identity, which seems so ridiculous given that this is America where people are greeted with the Statue of Liberty who says "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" When I was in grade school, we were taught to think of America as more of a salad bowl where we mix together people's identity rather than a melting pot where we melt away what we don't like and then combine it, but it seems to me that little progress has been made. As many of our immigrant ancestors faced that "melting pot" we continue to make each other face the "melting pot" and less of a "salad bowl."
Perhaps when we can accept people as they are and let them "Be" however they are, we will move closer to that proverbial salad bowl.
One part of the novel Middlesex that I am really enjoying is the Greek heritage and cultural aspects. I think that the Greek theme is very effective in tying the old to the new through relating ancient mythology to Calliope’s current life, such as her high school play. I also think it is a great way to convey the subtle ways that intersex is evident in our mythology and history. It is symbolic that Calliope is cast as Tiresias, because Tiresias is a character in Greek mythology that has lived both as a woman and a man. Of course, Calliope doesn’t know this when she was cast as Tiresias, and she thinks she was mainly cast for other reasons: “I was a shoo-in to play the old, blind prophet. My wild hair suggested clairvoyance. My stoop made me appear brittle with age. My half-changed voice had a disembodied, inspired quality. Tiresias had also been a woman, of course. But I didn’t know that then. And it wasn’t mentioned in the script” (331). In Greek mythology, Tiresias also gets drawn into an argument between Zeus and Hera about whether males or females enjoy sex more. Since Tiresias had lived as both, they call him to settle the dispute. Tiresias says that females enjoy sex more. So, Tiresias is definitely thought to have a unique, prophetic view that no one else can have since he has lived as two sexes. It will be interested to see if this is the case with Cal later in the book. I think the fact that Tiresias was also a prophet serves to foreshadow Calliope’s discovery of her true self in the chapters to come.
ReplyDeleteEven though the case study written by the doctor is fiction alongside the rest of the novel, I think it’s useful to show how arbitrary the factors are in the incredibly significant decision regarding Cal’s sex. One of the factors he uses to justify her classification as a girl is that she has “no visible signs of tomboyishness” and “inclines her head to listen when another person speaks and does not hold forth or assert her opinions in a bullying manner characteristic of males” (Eugenides 436). It is clear by his rhetoric and use of “she” that his decision has already been made in regards to her being a female. It is problematic to conclude that if one exhibits signs of tomboyishness, one must have the biological composition of a man. The doctor makes an incredible amount of assertions, even about the philosophical aspects of what makes a life good, with the chilling comment that “the surgery may result in partial or total loss of erotosexual sensation, sexual pleasure is only one factor in a happy life” (Eugenides 437). He also creepily declares that her sexual history was a success even though it was extremely painful. Overall, the doctor’s report makes the whole process seem extremely arbitrary and solely based on gender stereotypes. Similarly scary is the diagram in Sexing the Body on page 59 called Phall-o-Metrics, which rates the genitals according to length in centimeters and indicates the following surgical action that should be taken. It makes such a decision of incredible magnitude and implication come down to a simple measurement.
ReplyDeleteI’ve found that as we’ve learned more about intersex I’ve become much more comfortable with the subject. The topic of hermaphrodites has tended to make me feel extremely uncomfortable, and using the term “intersex” is helpful because there is less social stigma attached. Hermaphrodite has connotes something like a strange, mystical beast, whereas intersex has many fewer implications or associations. it allows for the possibility of a move away from “an era of sexual dimorphism to one of variety beyond number two” (Fausto-Sterling 77). Instead of a birth defect, intersex status will hopefully be seen more as an objective state of being, a beginning point that can result in a healthy, happy life.
I really like the point that Emily made about assimilation. I thought this was very true when you looked at the part of the reading with ellis island. When Desdemona's hair is chopped off and her silk worms are taken away. They are also labeled based on health conditions as they go through immigration. I thought that both of these situations were really great parallels to how we label people based on sex in society and how we change people to fit our perceptions.
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