EXHIBIT A AND EXHIBIT B

Now I’ve watched some films about transgender, one documentary and ambiguous and one fictionalized memoir, very sincere and hopeful, plus --  my "Vanity Fair” has come and I’ve read the story about Caitlyn Jenner -- though I have to say that the guy who wrote the story, Buzz Bissinger, is more interesting.  Jenner comes across as someone who can’t really make up his mind, so lets other people push him around.  But once set on a course, he’s focused and disciplined, which can be also distant.  He has children, but isn't close to them.

Greta Garbo

In some poses he looks a bit like Greta Garbo, with that hint of strangeness a bit of “bi-” can give a person.  His face came out well, which is always a gamble as people in Hollywood know.  In fact, if ten hours of surgery can make a person that attractive, maybe ugly women should look into it.  But what IS ugly?

We’re told that Jenner used to wear pantyhose and a bra under his man clothes to preserve his sense of being female, while keeping it to himself.  But Buzz, in an article that I gather has become a bit of a classic, http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201304/buzz-bissinger-shopaholic-gucci-addiction?currentPage=1  rebukes himself for his lapse of taste when going to a fashion show in ordinary Jockey shorts when he should have either worn Calvin Klein or nothing.  [I wonder what it means that I haven’t worn pantyhose for many years and only put on a bra for great state occasions.  I suspect it means I’m old.]

Buzz says he gets compliments on his extravagant clothes from women, gays and African-Amerians because they “go for it” when it comes to style.  In fact, he has a leather addiction more expensive than Jenner’s sex-change.  But his article about Jenner, even when dealing with the Kardashians, is gentle and tolerant, offering the kindest interpretations.

The Kardashians.  Jenner in the middle background.

Now I want to move back to the scientific “what is reality” kind of approach.  In terms of eukaryotes, the goal of meiosis -- that is, two sexes -- is the creation of a new entity by mixing the codes of two previous entities.  The idea is to combine two single helixes into a double helix of molecules.  Just jamming the two blobs of cell together would be pretty messy and defeat the purpose of increasing the number and kind of blobs.  So the blob (cell) makes a little blob with only half the DNA (an ovum) and the other makes just a half-DNA that can travel (sperm or pollen).  One has the house and the other has the brief-case with the second half of the renovation plan.  Together they begin to grow.  

We’re told that at that point, the joint-venture blob that begins to make a new creature is already determined as to sex by the sperm, which has one of two kinds of genes on a crucial chromosome.  If the gene is X, the new blob is an XX; if the gene is a Y, the new blob is an XY.  XX’s are female and will eventually make at least ova and maybe babies.  XY’s are males that make sperm.  All this stuff is molecular without even tissues beyond blobness.

The theory now is that at some point in the reconciliation and growth of the two helixes, the part of the brain that does these little tasks sets a dial for the feeling of sexual identity.  It’s SUPPOSED to match the XY stuff, but sometimes it doesn’t.  

Conches "doin' it."

Also, somehow this neuron dial -- or more probably another -- sets for adult or child, male or female as an object of desire.  It’s SUPPOSED to be set for an adult of the opposite sex, but somehow it isn’t always.  Evidently, these dial settings continue on through the development of the creature into a person and adulthood.  Environment can bend them a bit.

It’s all very subtle and doesn’t happen all that often, but sex is much more pliable than we thought -- at the same time more pre-set and independent of other people than we thought.

There are simple creatures, esp. in the sea, which are capable of changing sexes according to the acid/alkali balance, or temperature, or relationship of close individuals.  Is it starfishes who, if there is a pile of females, one changes itself to male so "he" can shower them with sperm?  Ursula LeGuin has portrayed a sci-fi species where everyone is gender-neutral except once a month they cycle into being sexual, taking on the gender opposite of whomever they are most physically close to at that moment so that fertile mating can ensue.  Then they go back to neutral.  Women, who are used to accommodating a bit of personality switch every month, understand this.  “The Left Hand of Darkness.”  Great book.

So we have binary sense of identity, binary valence of desire (with a blip for age-inappropriate), and binary of physical presentation, with a spectrum of variations between male and female genital equipment in addition to the evolved di-morphism of many millennia of women who raised children by the garden and campfire while the men went out with spears to find an edible woolly mammoth.

Jenner

One of the first gender changes Jenner made, in an act of masochism without pain relief, was electrolysis to remove his beard and body hair.  Too bad he didn’t have Asian genes.  For women who have been abused by big hairy guys, Asian and American Indian men have a lot of appeal.  Everyone thinks of hairiness as a product of testosterone.  So the next dimension in this progression is social presentation, gender-assignment according to cultural assumptions.  Ironically, one kind of hairiness -- long head hair -- is considered female, an easy target for conforming short-haired males and parents who worry that their children don’t fit in.

Caitlyn

Fitting in is what Jenner does -- it just depends on what he is fitting into.  He’s far from the poor Tom Wilkinson character in “Normal,” who buys musty and tasteless Salvation Army clothes that are female.  Jenner goes top-of-the-line in fabulous gowns.  Class has a lot to do with gender.  I remember showing a Montana friend photos of a wealthy Hollywood friend’s daughters, who were dieted into slenderness with fashionable boys’ haircuts -- short nape, long bangs.  Very upscale.  The scruffy Montana guy was shocked.  “They don’t even look female,” he objected.  He was shocked again, he told me, when in his other explorations he felt up a woman with breast implants.  (Being a minister sometimes means hearing a lot of things other people don’t think about.)  He never quite realized that some people were rich enough to leave the original plan at birth.  Worse, he couldn't grasp that not everyone should be like the people he knew and expected.

Caitlyn and Buzz

Like a high-end fashion model, Jenner is more glamorous than sexy.  There’s something almost virginal about her, while Buzz is a bit devilish.  Yet what they have in common is sports, guy-stuff.   In fact, Buzz claims both are sexually focused on women.  What that means to me is that there are endless scales and dimensions to sexuality, including fantasy.  Buzz tells us Jenner gets up before dawn, puts on an elegant gown and full make-up to please herself, to be who she feels she is -- not showing off, staying quietly in her room. 

Buzz, sans leather, and with leather (ostrich, maybe)

But Buzz had to check into a therapy group for his leather addiction: he figures he owns more than half a million dollars worth of leather items, including 15 fabulous leather jackets.  He teeters on the edge of gay and S/M motorcycle culture, but never quite dives in, partly because of his attachment to the women in his life, including his stylist.  In some circles sex IS money, any way you like it.  Buzz describes his favorite store:  "an ooze of sensual darkness in the gauzy lights. . . The clothes hang like fantastic sex toys."

Sunglasses are basic.

I remember long ago Hollywood friends showing up in expensive leather pants one August day.  Bob's comment after they had left was, "Can you imagine the state of their crotches by the end of the day?"  I reckon chaps would take care of that problem.  But a white satin corset like the one Jenner is wearing?  Spare me.  The thing is, a million dollar collection of leather clothing can be re-sold, if necessary.  A million dollars of surgery cannot.