Introduction: Looking for Understanding

Ariadne Kane
Executive Director, Outreach Institute for Gender Studies

If I had known 25 years ago what I know today probably I would've stopped my work in 1980, because gender is one of those strange phenomenon in which once you get started, you can't turn it off. It's sort of like the Sorcerer's apprentice. You get involved with one facet of it and then another facet of it and then another facet opens up and on and on and on. My gender journey started when I came out of the closet as a cross dresser of 30 years, hiding this from lots of people who probably should've known about it but didn't know about it. I searched the literature, tried to find out what this is all about. I was inquisitive, intellectual, perceptive, and it was a conundrum for me.

And so a part of the motivation for the fair and the other programs that the Outreach Institute has done is powered by this insatiable quest to provide some understanding to people who are so blessed as we are, or so condemned as we are. I tend to look at this thing as an optimistic opportunity. I didn't think of that 30 years ago but as I've watched 25 years of Fantasia Fair, many of the programs and the people, who've come through our portals, I'm more convinced than not that we have a gift to offer the universe. And while that gift may take on different phases, drawing on the years that we work in the field as gender specialists, or gender workers, as I like to, call people who are colleagues-- there are certain things that come up. I just want to touch on a few of those, very briefly, so that in your discussions you can come to some other venues about how to look at gender. The first piece that comes to mind is the journey associated with somebody who is on a gender quest. And different cultures have tackled that very differently. Here, in Euro-Americana, that journey has some very specific touchstones. Some of us have learned where they are, how to avoid them, how to compensate for them, and make changes that are in the best interests of the individual. That, of course, always runs into conflict with the culture and the values of gender as a social phenomenon. So the individuals on a gender journey are really paramount in the discussions, I think. We've spent 24 years of that doing here at the fair to help people come to grips both individually and professionally with gender diversity.

The second piece that comes up are the norms of gender. Who set them up? Who decided that men do this and women do that and there is no real cross-over? When you start to investigate that, you find it's very arbitrary and culturally bound. When you find yourself on the point of saying, "Why can't I do that?" you then take a quantum leap and you say, "I can do that!" Then you open up what I call the Pandora's Box but also the world of gender ecstasy, exploration and perhaps peace of mind.

A third argument that I see as critical in understanding this has to do with the dynamic between the individual's gender journey and the social value system that a culture places on gender. That needs to be looked at in the context of how the changes in the culture affect changes in our own personal behavior and interactively with the individual. I am a true believer in the androgyny of a person, an individual, and that gender and change are interactive and interplay dynamically. My feeling is that as you go through changes during your life cycle, gender role also changes. We cannot allow ourselves to be fixed in a gender journey that only has one option: either I do it or I don't do it. We need to be flexible; we need to look at the dynamic and see it for what it is.

The other piece that is so important and is always missed by health care people has to do with time. I've watched people grow in ways that were absolutely unpredictable as a result of their gender explorations. Each decade is fraught with new and ever-burgeoning possibilities of what we can be as human beings. And I would welcome this group to look at that very seriously as a harbinger as well as a catalyst for changing the culture that we live in.

The second important maxim in my life has been to know thyself.In order to know yourself you need to love yourself. And most of us don't take that very seriously. I found by doing that I've been able to give more than I ever thought I could. So filter and factor into that the notions of love and knowledge about thyself.

And the last thing I'd like to share is the Socratic Principle: an unexamined life has little meaning. We never should stop examining the values of our lives. We need to look at the world as always changing and being a challenge. And as long as we feel compassion and love for our fellow human beings we will achieve some things. Thank you very much.