Changes, from Gesy to gender

THE WAY THINGS ARE

By Colette NiReamonn Ioannidou

Change isn’t always easy and isn’t always for the better, but adaptability has been key to the survival of humankind from the start. So, we cope with changes of place, job, health-related bland diets, disability, acrimonious divorce or when our mental health is endangered, and we get on with it, each to his own devices.

Probably the most difficult change is to gender. I saw my elderly neighbour doing his morning canter and was surprised to see a Jason Statham dome had been hiding under his woolly hat during the winter. Previously, he had a mop of salt and pepper guarding his cranium, was it a wig that came off with his hat? Maybe he decided bald was sexier. What will my next sighting of him bring? (Not much going on in this ‘hood these days!)

Gesy has settled in and has wrought change. Before the system arrived cheap multivitamins were on prescription, now supplements have to be bought and are expensive for those on low incomes. At least now we can get our usual, trusted brands where at the start we oldies weren’t sure we would and, given what peanuts do or don’t do, bodies won’t all react to medication or food in the same way. X-Rays and other such peekaboo technologies also have a price and it adds up. The health-tank rolls on as it robs Peter to pay Paul, and we follow in its trundling wake. There is, however, the happy advantage of being able to choose a doctor you respect.

Unfair distribution of movement permission SMSs leaves some more restricted than others and couples have two-up on singles. Youth has always had to adapt to change, protesting parents eventually being dragged along. Young people in the Covid-19 period have many abnormal challenges to their social freedom. Their education has been badly disrupted at a time when there’s that awful insecurity of competitiveness facing them in careers if there is no one to push or pull them into a lucrative job and protect them when they are in it. Then there’s the desperation to stay employed for those with scant financial back-up who depend on a wage packet to survive and perhaps have to work far too many hours, suffer humiliation or unfairness not to mention inadequate salaries to do that.

Sexual harassment of women in the workplace was (and in some areas still is) par for the course, but that issue is being confronted. As some grow older, they forget what it was like to be young: the broiling emotions, the Mount Vesuvius pimples, the keeping up with your peers. The daring to do what wasn’t tolerated when parents were teens, as an echo of the repression, religious or parental, still resides in Ma and Pa, worried that youngsters having access to technology they don’t may lead offspring into dark zones they can’t easily govern. Frustration at their own helplessness can make parents more disciplinarian and a vicious circle of antagonism sets in.

Humankind is forever in flux; that’s how we evolved. The lives my generation live as grandparents do not resemble those of our grandparents. Ways of thinking about and addressing the time we live in changes with what we term progress. Each consecutive generation has experienced its own inner or outer inclination to rebel, rattle the established order. And thankfully, today’s youth for the most part are far more accepting of difference.

I called Lily a long-time friend in the UK and she seemed a little flat. Her daughter whom I know to be an intelligent, lovely young woman, had trusted her mom and come out to her. Lily was struggling with the new fact in a life that had not been an easy journey, but had made her a strong woman. My friend hoped it was just a passing phase. Her daughter, approaching 20, was adult enough to make an informed choice, was my input, and Lily needed to respect that her daughter’s life isn’t hers to live. Put her first, don’t give a damn what people will say, they don’t pay your bills, they don’t own you, was my advice. By the next call, things had returned to the loving, close former relationship, the crisis had passed. Acceptance was there and so was the love of a mother that knew her child’s worth.

Then there is someone for whom I have a lot of respect because when George decided to become Georgina, it was way before it was easier to be gay or trans, let alone show openly that you were so in Cyprus in the early 70s. Georgina was the youngest in a large family, and knew from early on that the body she was in was not what she felt it ought to be. Her voice wasn’t masculine and her movements were feminine. She had the courage to wear make-up and female clothes, do her hair in a style that was definitely not mannish and toughed it out through jibe and insult to be who she knew she was. Lily’s concern was mostly for what her girl might face in a world of hypocritical people many of whom say they follow Christ, a symbol of love, but wallow in hatred. Judge not and you will not be judged stuck with me. Oh yes, and – live and let live. I’m not entitled to throw stones, are you?