Nature vs. Nurture: Sex Change Romances

In class we explored sex change romances, a reoccurring topic in medieval literature, notably the tale of Silence. The neomedieval books we studied also bore traits of gender confusion and appropriation, such as the path of Arya Stark in AGOT. I looked up some information about sex change romances and came across the article "How to be a Man, Though Female: Changing Sex in Medieval Romance" by Angela Jane Weisl. [Access it at http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1813&context=mff.]

Weisl explores gender confusion and transformation in medieval literature, which she finds to be a "surprisingly popular topic." She states that the literature "offers a full range of gender potential, suggesting that the gendered body is permeable and malleable" and that "in more modern parlance, the romance implies that biology is far from being destiny." In class we discussed how Arya's journey through the A Song of Ice and Fire novel series seems to portray a more realistic struggle of a woman posing as a male as she struggles to embody and master masculine, rather than feminine, traits. In contrast, Silence seemed to portray a far more idealized depiction of a woman thriving as a man, for not only was her gender never questioned, but she was a wondrously successful knight [before her gender was exposed, at least].

A quote in Weisl's text helped me to understand why it was far easier for Silence to pose as a man than it was for Aria. Weisl states: "because knighthood is so explicitly defined in terms of gender, the women who pass as men in these stories are able to do so because of their rigid understanding of what nature means." This quote sheds some light on the nature vs. nurture debate that Silence examined. Since Silence was raised from a young age to live as a boy—she learned all the social cues of a man and was raised with the gendering of a male—it made it much easier for her to assimilate as one. She was exclusively and explicitly taught to think and act like a man, which gave her a solid grasp of how to be one. On the other hand, Aria clearly had an innate desire to jettison her traditional female upbringing, but since she was not allowed to learn the social customs and training of a boy, she struggled more when forced to live like one. Therefore, nurture clearly played a role in both females’ abilities to pose as men.

However, I find that both texts undermine the importance of nature. A debate over the "cultural and biological determinations of gender" can be read at http://articles.latimes.com/2004/may/13/local/me-reimer13, which delves into the sad story of David Reimer. After a botched circumcision rendered the male infant genitally deformed, his parents chose to raise him as a girl. Reimer lived for 14 years as a girl, but he “rebelled at [his] imposed identity from the start,” always knowing that something was wrong. After discovering what had happened, Reimer chose to live as a male, but the psychological scars were too devastating for Reimer to overcome. He eventually took his life at age 38. Therefore this very real case argues against some of the questions raised in the medieval sex change romances and neomedieval tales that we examined. Though gender is in part a product of social conditioning, I think that nature also plays a predominant role in shaping an individual, which Silence eventually comes to learn at the end of her tale, as she so seamlessly is able to embrace her biological female nature once women are allowed to inherit once more.