Well, actually, you never
resolve that. But the funny thing is, there comes a time when you stop
asking the question. Instead, your attention turns outward, and you
begin to have all sorts of opinions about all kinds of external things
and people in the world that you never had time for before.
I think, in fact, that the
concepts of male or female are so wrapped up with social roles, changing
sexual feelings as one progresses through life, and also the specific
context in which one finds oneself at the moment, that NOBODY on the
planet would really have an answer for that one if they looked deep
inside and reported truly.
What sets the transsexual
apart for the rest of the world is simply that this person keeps asking
the question over and over again. But when the transsexual evolves far
enough emotionally, the question is asked less and less frequently,
until one day it just doesn't come up any more.
At that moment, the
individual ceases to be a transsexual and becomes a person. The
man/woman, male/female, gay/straight, masculine/feminine of it, is how
we classify others, either automatically and subconsciously, or
consciously when contradictory information is observed. But none of
those can be determined by looking at oneself. We know ourselves too
well, and are fully aware that we are really not of a single mind, but
rather are a constant turmoil of contradictory alternatives, through
which we chart a course as best we can.
When an individual grows
through experience to gradually shift the eye of critical awareness from
oneself and back to the external world, that is when transition has come
full circle. This is true not only for the transsexual, but for any
human being who seeks to understand the nature of self. As Zen would
describe it: first the mountain is a mountain, then it isn't, then it
is. The key is not that the mountain appears the same at the end of the
cycle, but that the observer has changed and come back to the same place
as a different, more enlightened human being.
Melanie
