Sexuality and American Culture

In his epic novel Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides casts the character of Dr. Luce as the world's preeminent sexologist, expert in all matters of "Sexual Disorders and Gender Identity" and famous for discovering that when it comes to determining gender, upbringing plays a far greater role than biology. Clearly, Dr. Luce understands that the social constructions of "male" and "female" are just that - social constructions. It may seem ironic, then, that in evaluating confused, young Callie, Luce relies on all the stereotypes that his very own line of work have proven to be false.

In questioning his patient, and in trying to determine the gender of the "real" Callie, he pays more attention to her mannerisms than to the (often inaccurate) answers she provides. Cal explains Luce's reasoning behind this method: "Females tend to smile at their interlocutors more than males do. Females pause and look for signs of agreement before continuing. [...] Women prefer the anecdotal, men the deductive" (Eugenides 417). While such stereotypes are clearly limited in their clinical usefulness, Cal concedes that it would have been impossible for Dr. Luce not to fall back on them. Perhaps this is because they are so deeply ingrained in most of us that they may as well be "real." But the ease with which Callie is able to present to Dr. Luce a performed "female" self, in the hopes that "if [she] seemed normal enough, he might send [her] back home," highlights just how precarious such presumptions about gender are (418). And as in Lolita, the doctor's eagerness to accept whatever she's tells him, even though it is clearly just what he wants to hear, serves to make a mockery of psychiatry, as well. 

However, Dr. Luce is probably not as gullible as he may seem. We learn, through insight from Cal, that "Luce felt that parents weren't able to cope with an ambiguous gender assignment. You had to tell them if they had a boy or a girl" (413). He knows that whatever the results of his tests, Callie will not fit neatly into the category of either boy or girl. His use of stereotypes is therefore motivated by his need to bring out whatever is Callie's "prevailing gender," and he knows that it will be much easier for her parents to deal with if this gender is not male. 

Similarly, Cold-War America could deal quite easily with a sexually transformed Christine Jorgensen, but not with one who wasn't entirely transformed. Upon initially undergoing sexual reassignment surgery, Jorgensen's new gender expression was very warmly received. It did not conflict with, but, rather, bolstered, society's feminine ideal. It did not blur any gender lines or force society out of its comfort zone in any way. However, Jorgensen was no longer accepted once the public found out that her male-to-female sex change wasn't "really" a sex change simply because the surgery at that time could not provide her with a fully formed female anatomy. If she were not "fully" a girl, then society would be forced to actually look the true nature of gender in the face and then confront other issues like homosexuality that countered the culture's heteronormative ideals.