The Femininity of the Shemale

Shemales--those transsexuals who have completed the feminization process except for undergoing sex-reassignment surgery itself, having opted to retain their male genitals--disturb some folks. Are shemales to be understood as being women with penises and testicles, as such vulgar phrases as "chicks with dicks," "sluts with nuts," and "shemales," suggest, or are they to be thought of as representing men with breasts, of being, as it were, "dudes with boobs"? While a penis and a pair of testicles are definitely male attributes and are, in fact, for scientists and many others, experts and laymen alike, the very organs that comprise masculinity, they are not, it would seem, enough to establish a male identity for shemales. Despite their penises and testicles, such individuals are regarded as being feminine or, at least, as being more feminine than masculine. Why should such a person be regarded as being more feminine than masculine rather than as being more masculine than feminine or even as being half and half of each?

The answer is not difficult to discover, for similar situations, in a racial context, occur and have occurred for centuries, if not millennia. Why should the child born or interracial congress be considered black, for example, rather than white? Did not Halle Berry, to name one such child, or Barrack Obama, to name another, not inherit the same number of chromosomes from both their black fathers and their white mothers? Are they not, therefore, in reality, half-black and half-white?

Although they may be so as a matter of genetics (and common sense), they are not so, from a social standpoint, and they are not for the simple, if irrational, fact that a group of people who occupy a position of greater social status usually will not accept as one of their own someone who is born of a parent of a class of people of a lesser social status. Often, the reverse is not true, although, occasionally, it can be the case. In a racist society, white trumps black, and, in a patriarchal society, male is superior to female. By the members of the higher social class, therefore, a child of interracial parentage will be considered to be black, and a shemale will be considered to be a woman.