A dear friend, Artist and photographer Yishay Garbasz asked me to comment on the afterword to her latest book Becoming - A Gender Flip Book

Yisha,

Please find my comments with minor tweaks . . .

Artist Yishay Garbasz courageously explores one of human society’s last unresolved taboos – the unmaking of a gendered body and the creation of another. Becoming’s flipbook format makes visible and immediate the element of time and its integral role throughout this process.

Which of course motivated me to push a bit further


Keep in mind that some taboos are not meant to be resolved. Yet, with respect to human gender variance and its linkage to the natural order, this one is ripe to be. Increasingly, as a society we are coming to the realization that biology is not necessarily destiny insomuch as it affects so-called “gendered” behavior. While morphological differences do indeed exist as markers of biological sex, the concept and constructability of gender per se is a more expansive expression of our innate developmental neurology and our shared experiences. This of course touches on the concept of “normal” behaviors, not as the ossified dictates of a religio-social imperative but rather, as the effects of the statistical distribution of self-reinforcing homogeneous behaviors typical of the “herd mentality” of human beings. As concepts of construction go, it is no less valid to conceptualize a social milieu in which gender fluidity is not only tolerated but also and indeed embraced as an integral part of the human experience.