This essay begins with a joke:Joe is a regular at his neighbourhood bar. One night he tells his buddies he's going to have sex-change surgery. 'I just feel there's a woman inside me,' he says, 'and I'm going to let her out.' A few months later, Joe - or rather Jane - shows up at the bar and introduces herself to her old buddies. Once they're over their amazement, they greet her warmly, buy a pitcher, and start asking her about the surgery.
'What hurt the most?' they ask. 'Was it when they cut your penis?' 'No,' says Jane, 'that wasn't what hurt the most.' 'Was it when they cut your balls?' 'No, that wasn't what hurt the most.' 'So, what was it that hurt the most?'. 'What hurt the most,' says Jane, 'was when they cut my salary.'
When I shared this with a medical school colleague, he got huffy: 'That's not a joke,' he said, 'that's feminism!'
Paula Treichler, "Aids, Identity, and the Politics of Gender", in Gretchen Bender and Timothy Drucker (eds), Culture on the Brink: Ideologies of Technology, Seattle: Bay Press, 1994, reprinted in Feminisms, Sandra Kemp and Judith Squires (eds), Oxford University Press: 1997
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