The Novel: Middlesex by Jeffry Eugenides

On 'Middlesex'  by Jeffrey Eugenides

    The character I chose as the hypothetical client is the main character of the novel. Born Calliope Helen Stephanides into a Greek-American family of strong Greek Orthodox Immigrant influence and heritage, “Callie", unbeknownst to the family, is intersexed for many years, and subsequently is raised as a girl until he makes a decision to present himself as the male he believes himself to be.
    The novel was written as a memoir from Cal's point of view as 41 year old man, though throughout the novel, the narration modulates back and forth between the perspective of the girl, Callie, and the voice of the present-day Cal. However, the first half of the story is based on events that occurred prior to Callie's birth. As emigrants,  Cal's grandparents (his grandmother, Desdemona, secretly married her blood brother Lefty), after fleeing riots their homeland in Asia Minor upon arriving in Detroit Michigan, lived with a cousin who had migrated earlier from Smyrna, their birthplace.
    One of the major themes of the novel is the subject of incest between the two siblings, however, that did not seem to hamper their functioning as a married couple making a family of their own.  As a result of Cal's grandparents' diligence and hard work ethic, the family developed into an upper class immigrant family. They spawn and raise two children and after building up a successful family bar and restaurant business, the family moved into the Grosse Point neighborhood, at the time, a well established upper class neighborhood. As the grandparents fade into the background, Cal's father takes over the family business and continues to provide the same standard of living to which he had become accustomed.
    All three generations shared the same living quarters, assimilating into a culture surrounding them that was in the process of becoming homogenized, while in private maintaining their strong cultural ethic  and customs of dress, speech and superstition. Callie's grandmother refused to learn the english language, and at the point when Callie was about to be born, the narrator, Cal, explains how his grandmother, Desdemona , dangling a spoon tied to a string over the pregnant mother's stomach, predicted by the arc of its movement that Cal would be a boy, while his parents made preparations for the birth of a girl. They were delighted when Callie emerged as female, because their first child had been born male.
     As it turns out, Callie inherited the mutation for a gene that causes 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, which impedes the conversion of testosterone hormone ( causes the brain to become masculine) and dihydrotestosterone (molds male genitals). The condition was not apparent at the time due to the under-developed status of her genitals at birth, and so Callie was raised as female. However, as she begins puberty and adolescence, she begins to wonder why she has not begun menstruating like her peers, and why her breasts are not developing. She has all of her other faculties in tact and is performing within the range of full functionality. Intellectually she is bright and  creative, but her body does not seem to be flowering as she anticipated that it would. Callie adapts to the deficits by becoming somewhat precocious in her social interactions, seeming mature and wise beyond her years, in spite of the fact that being an underdeveloped late bloomer, might cause her to feel inferior in high society adolescent culture.
        Now for the first time, we begin to see an identity beginning to form and take shape. As Callie's personality begins to emerge in adolescence, she seems to have liberal views, and this becomes apparent when she develops a 'crush' on one of her female classmates, whom she refers to only as the "Object Obscure". The Cal identity however seems to be invested in the social construct of binary gender relationships, and feels fear, guilt and perhaps shame at her attractions to her female friend. In her mind only boys and girls make valid relationship partners, and she sets out to align her outsides to match her insides.
    Still, in the secret of Callie's taboo attraction to the 'Object Obscure" she seems to find strength, and never once does she apologize for that attraction. Perhaps her fortitude and self-confidence are rooted in her bargaining power as a well adjusted young girl third generation immigrant girl having been born and bred in the crucible of a thriving, well established immigrant family.  Under-girded by the socio-economic potentates inherited in a life of privilege, unhindered self-determination and unfoiled self-efficacy, she rose above the obstacles inherent in her particular human struggle, unimpeded by the foibles of her fate.
    Cal, in retrospect, writes that he is a man trapped in an hermaphrodite's body, meaning to say, that while his genitalia are primarily seen as female (though his breasts are not well developed), his sexual attractions are toward females. When Callie reaches puberty, her testosterone levels increase, resulting in the formation of a larger Adam's apple, deeper voice, broader muscles, and a larger clitoris that resembles a penis. Eventually, Callie's parents bring her to New York City to see a foremost expert on hermaphroditism, who believes she should retain her female identity. The doctor determines that she has the XY chromosomes of a male after inspecting Callie's genitalia. He plans a gender reassignment surgery to make her female. However, Callie knows that she is sexually attracted to females, and decides to run away to pursue a male identity as Cal.
    In comparing Callie's life experience with mine, her life was very different than mine, almost quite the opposite, although we did share more than one thing in common. The primary similarity was our struggle with sexual identity, and our orientation being at odds with cultural expectation and strong family religious ethic. The other thing we shared was the manner in which we struggled as a result of our late-blooming process of adolescent development. I never shaved until I was 21 and had very little body hair, and for a long time, this caused me to carry a lot of shame at not having developed like other males.
    Culturally, Callie was born to the breed, and very well connected in lineage to her generational Greek Orthodox family. My parents on the other hand, had no real knowledge of their generational lines, and our class was in the lower economic sphere. Callie was one of two offspring, and I was one of eight who survived a thirteen year run of twelve births by my Roman Catholic mother. As mentioned, In one respect we shared the value of religiosity and did all of the things required of our religion, but like the characters in the Stephanides clan, we too had our secrets, and our ethical expression of those values were incongruent to the ideology that belied them.  Our parents told us not to smoke cigarettes, but they themselves did; they also told us not to use expletives, but they themselves did. Cal's grandparents knew incest was a taboo subject, but they made the choice to marry anyway. Callie's life exposed her to privileged degrees of educational experience, and my experience was in the local Roman Catholic parish church school. Even though Callie's grandparents appeared to be religious and had strong religious ethics, her own parents clung to the traditions merely out of habit. Because Callie was exposed to a higher degree of soci-economic currency, she was privvy to a broader range of opportunity than I, as the son of a hard working blue collar worker. Callie and I both however did seem to inherit the 'hard work gene'.
    When I think of the circumstances under which Callie might have had the occasion to become a client of mine, I would think that it would be at the point at which she runs away as a young minor when faced with the prospect of sex reassignment surgery. My effectiveness as a social worker might be compromised were she assigned to me.
    My initial impulse would be to want to shield her from the harm that she was facing in being forced to undergo the sex reassignment surgery. But I would also be conflicted about having her placed in foster care unless the placement was in a situation that would match the standard of living to which she had become accustomed and with care givers who would honor her right to self-determine. I would want for her comfort, and I'm not certain where this consideration falls in the specter of priority, or if in fact it does.
    I would definitely want the decision to have the surgery or not be hers alone and I would support her in whatever choice she made. However, my support, though noble in its intent, would not be springing from a sense of objectivity, but rather from my own desire to not have my own rights stripped away in such a dismissive manner. My ability to be objective would be at stake, since I would be too emotionally involved in her plight, and would be desiring to shield her from the struggles she faced.