"What is a man?"

The first act of Terrance Blanchard’s opera, Champion, ends with the aria “What is a man?” sung by the boxer Emile Griffith, a closeted gay man. He would have been content to remain a hat maker, but he has been trained as a fighter, trained to tap into his “killer instinct.” One night, goaded by slurs about his sexuality, he kills his opponent with “seventeen blows in less than seven seconds.” He never recovers from the guilt.   

“What is a man?” he sings. “Inside, outside?” Later he will say “I kill a man, the world forgives me. I love a man, the world wants to kill me.”

I spent a great deal of my formative years wondering “what is a woman?”  The limitations imposed legally or culturally made no sense to me. I was smart, talented, and ambitious. I wanted to lead. I had no desire to be an elementary school teacher, a nurse, or a secretary. My parents assumed I would go to college, but I couldn’t attend any of the elite colleges I was accepted to because they couldn’t afford it - and it was more important to save money for my brothers.

I learned early on that I had to be fully dressed in front of my father or brothers, although they could walk around the apartment in their underwear. And fully dressed, of course, meant armored in a bra and girdle. My sexuality had to be hidden.

My granddaughters have grown up in a different world and yet now I wonder how, in the face of recent legislation and court decisions, they will take their place in the world as women. They have been brought up to be strong and independent. Will they have to relinquish control over their own bodies (and by extension their work and family lives)?

As I listened to a gay man’s anguish I thought also about the persecution non-binary and trans people face as they struggle to find an identity that allows them to match their “inside” and their “outside.”

Perhaps another composer will ask, “What is a person?