What Katie Couric's "teachable moment" missed.



Katie Couric totally missed what she referred to as the "teachable moment" in her interview with Carmen Carrera and Laverne Cox. Sadly, what she did do is reinforce the reality that society as a whole has a long way to go in coming to understand who they know themselves to be.



Couric's questions said more about her -- and her audience's -- ignorance of what is it to be human than it did about their lack of knowledge of being transgender.



At the crux of the situation is that sex does not equal gender. When we're born we are assigned a sex based on what genitalia is seen between our legs. The error occurs when we make assumptions on someone's gender based on that sex assignment label.



Assigning someone as female at birth does not mean their gender is female. Assigning someone as a male at birth does not mean their gender is male.



Gender can been seen with three different elements: 1) Who you know yourself to be, 2) how you express yourself to the world, and 3) how the world sees you.



Sex organs do not define gender. Regardless of what we have beneath our clothes our gender is defined in ways beyond our body. Further, the gender we know ourselves to be is a deeply personal experience -- if we have the courage to explore it.



No one would ever ask, "Katie, what does your vagina look like today? You've given birth twice, right? Has it lost any elasticity?" So why should she ask Carrera what status her genitalia is currently in? How is that Couric's or her audience's right to know? And how is that relevant to the gender Carrera knows or expresses?



Asking about sex organs is a) inappropriate and b) shortsighted to understanding the experience of being transgender.



If Couric was more aware of her own gender she would never dare view Carrera as a person who should have to describe the anatomy between her legs. While it may be very personally pertinent to how Carrera feels as a human being, it is no one's prerogative to use her genitalia or state of transition to make a judgment on her gender. It's simply not relevant to how we should see Carrera.



With class and compassion Carrera and Cox seized upon the "teachable moment" themselves, highlighting the horrific violence, oppression and discrimination transgender people face. But what doubled the disappointment was that Couric did not listen. She had a list of questions in her head and could not lead the dialogue appropriately. She hadn't even bothered to learn correct vocabulary, making her use of "transgenders" majorly cringe worthy.



Nonetheless, whether we are transgender or not, why should anyone care what anyone else's genitals look like? We are all born with what we have and the only reason someone may assert that our body is 'wrong' is if that body doesn't meet the expectation placed upon it. Remove the expectation and allow that human being to just be. Only we know what it's like to experience being ourselves. Neither Carrera's nor Couric's genitalia define the "correctness" of their bodies.



People who are not transgender, who do indeed identify with their sex assigned at birth, are known as cisgender. I would make a guess that Couric is cisgender.