dual*ities

The episode entitled Ch-ch-changes, like most other CSI episodes, started out with a murder. This time, the victim was a Las Vegas showgirl who goes by the name Wendy Clancy. While trying to establish the woman’s identity, Gil Grissom’s team uncovers that she was really a he. Wendy was really a Walter.

Okay, so that certainly got my attention and kept me wide awake.=)

The twists and turns of the case thereafter offered the audience a peak into the lives of transgenders in Las Vegas. In keeping with the CSI tradition, the story was masterfully told, with its riveting plot and showcase of clever forensics. But more than that, it was a real eye-opener in that it went beyond the usual stereotypical portrayal of trannies either as promiscuous individuals or as cross-dressing impersonators who provide good entertainment at night-clubs. (Funny, because that’s how they were portayed in Ms. Congeniality, which I watched just a few hours before I tuned in to CSI.) Rather, it dug deep into the realities that confront them as they adjust to the ch-ch-changes in their life that accompanied the changes in their bodies. As Grissom told a MTF (male-to-female) transgender in the episode, “It isn’t about sex, it is about soul.” He goes on to say: “People often confuse your obsession with sexuality as an obsession with sex.” Hmm, never thought of it that way before, but yeah, he has a point there.

The said episode also reminded me of a Season 4 episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit entitled Fallacy. Much like CSI’s Ch-ch-changes, Fallacy was about the case of a girl named Cheryl Avery (played by Katherine Moennig) who was actually a man due for gender re-assignment surgery, but who fell victim to circumstances before s/he saw his/her dream to completion. In both stories, it would not be difficult to sympathize—and perhaps empathize—with the victims’ characters, as they represented the transgenders in society. Whereas their greatest desire is to achieve full expression of who they really are, the sad reality is that some of them never truly gain full acceptance of the people they love the most. They are forever subject to the larger society’s unfair judgment, no matter how “open-minded” and “tolerant” society deems itself to be. Like Dr. Robbings said to Grissom in the said episode: “They (transgendered individuals) are ready for the world, but is the world ready for them?

Those are points that deserve to be pondered indeed. Sad, yes, but powerful and moving too. It is these kinds of stories that make you think and make you want to challenge existing social constructs that simultaneously defines and limits “what” and “how” people ought to be.

Perhaps we could learn a thing or two from oysters. Yes, oysters. As Grissom says in the final scene of the episode:

“There are two types of male oysters, and one of them can change genders at will. And before man crawled out of the muck, maybe he had the same option. Maybe originally we were supposed to be able to switch genders, and being born with just one sex…is a mutation.”

For the record, I am happy to be a woman. But mostly, I am happy just to BE. To be myself, be the person that I choose to be. At the end of the day, that’s what counts the most. And if I were to be an oyster, I’d probably be just as happy as well.=)