Redux

"I know that, silly, but what does it mean?"

He smiled at her naiveté. It was one of the things he loved about her, beside her beauty and the fabulous incongruity of her mixing of humanity's sexes and genders. He started to lecture her about "art for art's sake," but decided, instead, to approach the topic from Anne's more naïve point of view. "You mean what does it mean, as it what's the meaning, or the moral, of the story?"

She smiled. "Exactly."

"Well," he began, "there is a certain openness in the interpretation of a work of art--even a copy such as this--but my patron's intent, in replacing the female figures in the series he's commissioned me to paint, with a shemale--I mean, a transwoman--" Anne had told him how she detested the word "shemale"--is to show--how did he put it?--ah, yes!--to show that gender, if not sex, is entirely plastic and fluid, and that, as a consequence, both masculine and feminine characteristics may be exhibited in the same figure, regardless of the cultural and artistic milieu out of which any specific work of art itself arises."

"Wow. He said all that?" Anne mused. "The same asshole who refers to transgender women as 'shemales'?"

Danielson laughed. "A man who is astute in one area may be, as you say, an 'asshole' in another."

"So what does all that mean, that stuff that he said about 'plastic and fluid' and all that?"

The artist smiled. "He means, my dear, that masculinity and femininity are accidental, rather than essential."

"You mean, gender is socially determined, rather than innate?"

"Yes, and, more than that, that even our sex is something that, although it is assigned, as it were, by nature, is arbitrary and random, and, therefore accidental and capricious, rather than necessary and essential."

"So we can change sex?"

"If we like, although, I must admit, I prefer the hermaphroditic mixture of sex and gender that your choice, in foregoing sex-reassignment surgery and retaining your male parts, represents."