Wrong sex Morris's life

Morris, a self-described "transgendered person", realised at the age of three or four that she was a girl despite being a man. It bothered her that the soul was being packaged in the wrong body -- since Freud's theory became widely accepted, gender confusion has often been labeled a "sexual paraphilia," and their origins are naturally seen as sexual problems. But for Morris, the scope of his own gender issues is much broader than sex issues. It is spiritualized and more related to the cognition of his own identity. In She he, she looks back, saying: "It's not a sexual relationship, it's not favoring one sex over another. It is a burning, lifelong, indelible faith..." In Morris's understanding, gender is a matter of soul as well as self-unity. "Gender is the soul, the talent, the interest, the environment, the feeling of the person, the light and shadow, the music of the heart, the leap or the wink, the more real life and love, not the sum total of sex organs, ovaries and hormones," she said. It was about every aspect of her life -- "not just the sexual impulse, but everything she could remember seeing and hearing and smelling, the buildings, the sights, the bonds of family and friends, the power of love and trouble, the satisfaction of the senses and the satisfaction of the body."

Fortunately, Morris's family atmosphere and living environment are very relaxed and tolerant, and her uniqueness is not regarded as a disease to correct, but as a character is well protected. That said, in 1920s and 1930s Britain, gender issues still had an unchallenged place in the public eye. The battle between the sexes enforces a commitment to one's gender identity. In "She and He," Morris repeatedly reiterated his gender concept that men are born to represent the social sphere, they are powerful, reckless, physically Stoic and have a strong control over the situation; Women are meant by nature to be in the private sphere, gentle, noble, weak, with an innate understanding of art, and to be led and taken care of by men. Her understanding of both sexes is of a strong color of The Times, and the tension generated by gender antagonism brings her a strong sense of oppression. She was ambivalent about her gender identity, but felt she had to choose a side, with a certain identity and self-awareness and sensory responses to match it, to deal with the tension of the sexual world.

Morris drifts into the "man's world", but lurks like a spy dressed as a woman, wary of revealing her secret identity. But she was also aware that she possessed a special feminine charm that, far from being isolated, made her attractive to the boys around her. This continued from the time she was at school until the outbreak of the Second World War when she joined the 9th Royal Lancer Regiment. She "felt like the heroine of an unconvincing novel, dressing up in ankle boots or a hussar's coat and wandering off to battle in search of glory or adventure". Morrisd's account of the experience in "She he" is romantic. The 9th Royal Lancer regiment is an elite unit whose members are mostly rich or noble, have a high sense of honor and like to talk literature in their leisure time. Morris was surrounded by many young, charismatic men, an experience that would be precious in her adventurous life. She felt that there seemed to be an unbridgeable gender gap between her and them, but at the same time felt that she was accepted and flattered by her "macho" peers. In the context of the war, the wide world came to her, and when she and her young colleagues were on the run in foreign countries, she felt the happiness of a young girl dating a young boy for the first time. For the rest of her life, her experience of climbing Mount Qomolangma as an accompanying journalist was probably comparable only to that of the qomolangma expedition. The two experiences are similar in that she has a deep sense of masculinity, in what she believes is a relatively traditional view of the sexes, and in particular the freedom that comes with a man's "consistent control over his body." Sometimes she even briefly rejoiced at having a man's body.

Her unique soul gives her a unique perspective and allows her to examine the experience and memory in an emotional way. Her accounts thus have the touching air of a good documentary. It's an atmosphere that conveys the subtleties of her time and place, the thrill of the adventure that lurks secretly among the opposite sex, the anxiety of leaping between sexual identities. In her he describes such a story, at that time, she and a spear corps colleagues (this is a "Lawrence of Arabia" type of legend) in the middle of the night to drive back to barracks, "this is Egypt's winter make people a thrilling starry night night, the air smelled the smell of sand and drought only, the sky looks crisp, cold can cut open, The cold force of the twinkling stars makes one shiver all over the body and soar in the heart. We stumbled across the open desert, leaning against the roof of the car, his coat draped over both of our shoulders as we leaned close to keep warm. For a while we were silent and the truck jolted along. And then Otto said, 'God -- god,' he said, 'I wish -- I wish you were a woman. '"

This thrilling drama constantly struck her and contributed to her new understanding of herself. More often, however, Morris suffered from the confusion of his gender identity. She doesn't always get along with her male self. After leaving the army, she became a journalist, working first for The Arab News agency in Cairo, then for the Guardian and then for The Times. She doesn't want to be "cured", just a way to change her identity. She was prescribed estrogen so she could start the transition slowly when she wanted to. At the age of 23, she met her soul mate, Elizabeth. As improbable as it seemed, it happened quite naturally, and not only did they marry (Morris was now a man, both physically and legally), but they had several children.

Elizabeth is a different woman, she accepted Morris's definition of self-identity, and even supported Morris to change his gender through surgery, which she believed was inevitable after all. In his thirties, Morris felt he could no longer live with his male shell. In her eyes, everything she experienced seemed to be a metaphor for the battle of the sexes: The Times and The Guardian, where she worked, showed the character defects of masculinity and femininity respectively; Mingling with journalists brings the tension of being alone among the opposite sex; A male-dominated society seems to be responsible for all the imperfections of the world; The masculinity of public life is unbearable, only the femininity of private life matters... Morris sees the disappointing parts of reality as all derivatives of masculinity, and only self-exile from them can preserve the integrity of her soul. During this period, she resigned all her posts, traveled the world, and wrote books. Writing also became a unique way of identifying her gender. Writing, she wrote in She he, was a way of satisfying her senses, a repository of feelings and secrets.

As her children grew up, Morris began to practice her plan, swallowing hormones and slowly transforming her body. The growing confusion about her gender, and her occasional appearance as a woman, made her feel that her years of gender bias had been effectively compensated. When people saw her as a woman, she felt they saw their ideal of herself. She was obsessed with changing her sexual identity to adjust her social status and status. In 1972, after a series of complicated preparations, including inquiring about the possibility of legally changing her sexual identity and being forced to divorce Elizabeth, Morris underwent her own sex change operation in Casablanca.

Fortunately, the operation was a success, though the transformation did not happen overnight, and she has since had several minor operations. She continued to live with Elizabeth, changed her name, accepted a full set of government-remade identity documents, and reappeared in society as a new gender. She was finally able to see the world through a woman's eyes and validate what she had known for years about female gender identity. In the process of identity transformation she wrote her greatest work, "The Peace of Britain" trilogy, she believes that her changing perspective has a great influence on the writing style. But it was her life that was most affected. She was indeed intoxicated by the attentions of men and her own submissive vulnerability; She believes she has developed many attractive female traits in vain since transitioning; When she feels inferior as a woman, she is apt, as all women are, to think that it is better to be a man.

As mentioned above, Jane Morris is one of the most famous gender changers of her time, and her gender concept is very contemporary. Although her actions were far beyond the scope of understanding of her time, the binary opposition between the sexes was always present in her consciousness, which even shaped the way she perceived the external world. She was not, I think, a woman who had crossed the gender divide. She acknowledged that it existed and that it was difficult to bridge, which forced her to seek her own unity by abandoning her male gender identity. She is not a conventional rebel on gender issues but, in a rebellious way, one of the last inheritors of conventional wisdom. Morris has two gender identities, but the experience of both is incomplete for her, especially as a woman. Even she was regretfully forced to admit it. Towards the end of her autobiography, Morris reflects on why the people who share her enthusiasm for gender change are middle-aged. Perhaps because the days when gender was considered a sacred and unbreakable issue are over, for a new generation of young people, their natural gender is no longer as tightly bound as it used to be. Gender is more like a knob that can be turned on or off to make things work for everyone.

If she had lived in a different era, under the rule of a different idea, she might have made a different choice.

Yet gender is not, in my view, the central theme of Morris's autobiography and her fabled life. Behind the problem of sexual identity lies her courageous exploration and questioning of self. Behind the gender, as she says, is the soul. "If I can't be myself, I won't be myself," she once said after repeated setbacks. But she lived up to her soul. What fascinates me most in "She he" is not Morris's mysterious experience of being a man in a daughter's heart, nor her tortuous transsexual experience, nor even the so-called experience of crossing two genders. It would be imprudent to assess Morris's actions only in terms of sex. She is a great adventurer, and her transformation of her gender and body is a great adventure to explore self. In her and Him, the psychological experience that Morris struggled so hard to gain will always be alive and well. They cannot be judged by others, nor can they be labeled and categorized. As Morris himself puts it, they are "neither male nor female, neither themselves nor others, neither fragments nor wholes", but rather a separate chapter in the history of the human spirit.