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| Passing In America |
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| Opinion - Global Warning | |||
| Lisa Jain Thompson | |||
| Sunday, 28 February 2010 10:00 | |||
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Fairfax, VA, USA. I am half Sicilian. Both my mother’s grandparents arrived in the United States from Palermo. The rest of my genes come from the British Isles except for a sliver of Iroquois. My facial features are classic American Italian with the high cheekbones of the Haudenosaunee. My father was one hundred percent mongrel British Isles, less a generation more Haudenosaunee than I have. [N1] His skin was as dark as my olive but with distinct reddish tinge to his tan. In photographs and oil portrait my daughter painted, he looks Spanish. Any African or Hispanic bloodlines would trace their roots back to Sicilia and the many nations who have attempted to occupy her. Sicilia sits atop crucial Mediterranean trade routes, a fact not lost on the Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, Normans, Saracens, French, Arabs. Moors, Bourbons, Spanish, Germans, Americans, and, of course, the Mafia. They all thought the island was theirs at one time or another. A true Mediterranean mix.
Fairfax, VA, USA. Meet me at the crossroads where psychology engages  neuroscience and biology. Join me at the sharp edge where cultural anthropology and sociology confronts the higher maths and scientific methodology.
There ...Post-op transsexuals do not need to pass as anything other than they are: men and women. Transsexuality is a transient medical condition of birth that surgery corrects, not a permanent state of being.But in the third millennium of the Common Era, all of we Italians pass for white Americans. This is a relatively recent development that occurred in the decades immediately after the Second World War. We remain neither white enough or black enough, however, to be a successful candidate for the Presidency of the United States. There are limits to everything. So let’s talk about passing, shall we? [N2] With the historic racial policies of the United States, racial passing refers most often to someone who is passing for “white.” Historically the term has been applied to light skinned Americans with Caucasian/Black African ancestry who do not announce their mixed heritage to the world. In the United States, as in the majority of other societies in the world, there is a mostly unconscious assumption lighter skin tone is associated with higher social class. This assumption is prevalent where the majority population is considered white but the same unscientific bias exists in Hispanic cultures, Eastern European groups, the African American subculture and those in Africa itself, the Middle East, and throughout South America. A species archetype appears to exist that equates whiteness with the gods and goodness and blackness with death and sinfulness. This archetype often expresses itself in our cultural stories at the basic metaphorical level: white represents good, black, the not good. God is light and happiness, the underworld, only darkness and human misery. In the culture of the United States, with our mixing bowl of white, black, brown, red, and yellow immigrants, the given assumption has been that is better to be white than to be something other. Italians, and especially Sicilians with our dark olive complexions, are still considered “other” by many North Americans. Property deeds once contained specific exclusions that forbade the sale of property to Blacks, Italians, and other specific ethnic groups. All of these exclusions are now forbidden by law, but many of the assumptions on which the ethnic exclusions were based still exist unspoken. In America, as in most other cultures, it is still better to be considered “white” than any other ethnic group. [N3] This underlying cultural given is slowly losing force as the white population slowly becomes just another ethnic minority in the United States, albeit the largest minority. The transgender community, specifically the subset that forms the world of male crossdressers, has appropriate the term passing for its own uses, much like the transgenders have attempted to appropriate transsexuality as a cultural flimflam to further their own causes. In the crossdressing transgender community, passing most often refers to a crossdresser’s ability to be accepted in society as a member of the sex opposite from the one in which they were born. Typically, successful passing requires the male crossdresser to be an actor who presents a mixture of physical and social clues (i.e., hair style, clothing, padded hips and breasts) combined with an imitation of the natural body language culturally associated with a woman. Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t. The most common reason that male crossdressers fail to pass is that, despite their best efforts, they still look a guy dressed as a woman. Crossdressers focus so much effort on passing, they fail to replicate a woman’s natural confidence. When there is a constant worry whether a woman would do this or that and over careful attempts to move like a woman rather than just be a woman, the crossdresser’s attempt at passing becomes a pale caricature easily detected by the public. An online crossdresser humorously summed the problem up nicely:
True Transgenders, however, the non-crossdressers, don’t want to pass, they want to be transgender, loved for who they are. They have every right to be who they wish to be. I wish them all the luck in transversing cultural norms. There is one other critical point to note: post-op transsexuals do not need to pass as anything other than they are: women and men. Transsexuality is a transient medical condition of birth that surgery corrects, not a permanent state of being. Transsexuals do not need approval from male crossdressers and the transgender community. A crossdresser must pass, not a transsexual. Post sex reassignment surgery, men and women born transsexual exist simply as men and women. We exist as we are and do no not need to pass as anything but ourselves. Notes[N1] If I am a sixteenth Iroquois, my father would be an eighth. Improbable as it might seem, I have been approached by American Indians and asked what tribe I belonged to.
[N2] So let’s talk about passing, shall we? It is a less than graceful example of metabasis, a rhetorical device used for transition from one subject to another. I include this footnote for Professor Marc Bertanasco, who taught me to really write and mentored me through my post graduate work. [N3] A fact which makes many liberals feel guilty about being born into the white subculture.
Lisa Jain Thompson is the Co-Founder & President of TS-Si, Inc. She also serves as a Contributing Editor and columnist for the TS-Si website. She maintains another site, StarPoet.com, for her poetry and literary works. Ms. Thompson's signed articles contain her own opinions and do not necessarily convey an official position of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates. Lisa welcomes your comments. Use the form below or email via her TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.
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| Last Updated on Saturday, 27 February 2010 21:49 |
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