Failure to Communicate: Arnold Scwarzenegger, rape, and the problem of being transgender

The Carolinian -- Arnold Schwarzenegger, my favorite former actor turned Republican Governor of California to date, signed a law at the end of September which limits the "gay panic" defense. This defense is becoming popular, or infamous, in cases of attacks on people who are transgender.

The scenario goes - as it did in the murder of Gwen Araujo, for whom the law was named - that a transgender person, we'll say one that was born a man, is living as a woman. That person then has sexual relations with a straight male. The straight male later finds out that the person he was with is not a woman. Then there is violence.

There is another crime here that is not discussed very openly, as it is usually overshadowed by the horrible details of these attacks. After being outed as a man, Gwen Araujo was beaten and then strangled to death by three men - previous lovers - who then attempted to bury Araujo in a California desert. No one outside of evangelical Christian clergy would defend these three monsters, who have since been convicted of their crime. There is, however, an uncomfortable point that needs to be made here.

Gwen Araujo was "living as a woman." This is how they phrase it. Living as a woman. But Araujo was living as a woman in the sense that if I put on a hook and get a parrot, I'm living as a pirate.

Full column

I foresee this column getting more hate mail than anything I've written so far (or at least so far this semester), so I should clarify a couple things. I'll be referring to male gender reassignment here, since it's the more common and more effectively done surgery. "Sex change" is a poor term for this procedure, since one can never change their sex. Gender and sex are different things.

First, I am not stating it to be my opinion that a man cannot change into a woman. It is a fact. A man can not ever change into a biological woman. He can be altered to appear to be one, but he will never be one.

Second, this surgery does not give a man a vagina. It changes his penis into something that looks like a vagina. This is just genital origami, it only looks like it's something else.

EDIT: So I was right about getting a lot of feedback from this column, though it's not nearly as hateful as expected. Or, at least from strangers it's generally positive. I've got friends from other colleges calling me up to argue, which is fun.

On a positive note, a friend of mine studying law at Wake Forest told me that just a few days ago in one of his classes the professor brought up the Gwen Araujo case while discussing the nature of rape. Apparently I'm not that far off.

And, most importantly, people love the final line. Eat that, Kathryn.