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 I’ve been trying to tackle the question of how we choose our gender – something that a lot of people have posted about already – and in thinking about it, I found that I often associate gender with sexual orientation. While I know that being gendered involves many components that are distinct from sexual orientation, I feel that, anatomical attributes aside, the gender one is attracted to helps concretize the conceptual binary. This particular issue reminded me of a documentary that I watched about transgender people in Iran (I don’t remember what it was called…I think “The Birthday” or something). The fascinating part of the movie was that, to most of my classmate’s disbelief, transsexual operations are fairly common in Iran and condoned by the state (the government even finances many of the operations). I don’t know about everyone else, but that shocked me particularly because of the radically conservative nature of the Iranian government; I would never assume that such a controversial operation would have been commonplace and accepted. Interestingly, the documentary conveyed that being a transgender person in Iran was considerably more socially acceptable (and less dangerous) than being homosexual. Though the movie never explicitly stated it, ultimately my class concluded that changing one’s gender in Iran, though expensive and a potentially dangerous operation, was a more acceptable solution to issues of discrimination (religious authorities concluded that the Qur’an does not explicitly condemn changing one’s gender, while it does condemn homosexuality). I just thought it was interesting in light of our conversation that the subjects in the documentary, while they were actively choosing their gender category, their decision was potentially motivated by their sexual orientation and its ramifications. I don’t know if we see similar parallels in the US or if it shines any light upon the question of choosing gender, but I did think it was interesting.