ABSTRACT
There are books, television shows, college-level courses, tapes, videos, focus groups, cults, all promising that we can learn to be an identity called "the real me. " Why, I'm wondering, would we need to learn to be that, unless there was so much pressure coming from the rest of the world, mak ing us not be "the real me. " There are obviously enough people in the world who think they're not being "the real me" to keep all these other people in business trying to teach them. People who recover from alco holism become "the real me." Lesbians, gays, and bisexual people coming out of the closet and embracing their desires become "the real me. " Men who learn to cry discover another kind of "real me." People born-again into anything from fundamentalism to feminism claim to have discovered "the real me. " More to the point, some transsexual people believe when they've gone from one gender to another that they've arrived at "the real me." Well, what is that identity? And what's "the real me" got to do with being a "real man" or a "real woman?" And most importantly, does your gender (identity) match up with who you feel yourself to be? Do you think your gender is an accurate reflection of everything you are? Everything you could possibly be? Does your gender match up with the real you? Let's see.
