Jackie Kay created a topic of controversy regarding gender identity in the novel Trumpet. Through the difference in perspectives on gender of Joss Moody and Millie Moody, the novel challenges the absolute nature of each person's identity by proving the inability of language to express it. Kay thus accesses another way of representing identity through a more universal means: music. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay It's understandable that Joss's gender as well as Millie's would seem indefinable given their circumstances. Joss Moody was a girl, until her passion for jazz led her to pass as a man; over time, she becomes so accustomed to being a man that she forgets her original identity - woman - and thus obtains another identity - man. In this identity, he meets and falls in love with Millie – a woman who still considers him a man despite his female body. Their relationship is so complicated that no existing sexual category can describe it. For most people, including Sophie Stone in the novel and Ceri Davies in "'The Truth is a Tricky Question': Lesbian Denial", the couple are simply lesbians attempting to deny their sexuality by creating an unreal heterosexual family . ] a son; one plays mom, the other plays dad” (Kay, 170 years old); “Millie must reject the term 'lesbian' because it suggests otherness rather than the normality she wants her life to project” (Davies, 12). In this sense, gender aligns with the body and so no matter what couples do, they will never escape their bodily gender. However, it is important to remember that, as in "The Power of the Subversive Ordinary in Jackie Kay's Trumpet" written by Tracy Hargreaves* "anatomically differentiated bodies need not... be the guarantee of heterosexuality" (3, 4) **. Gender is partly a person's identity; it therefore cannot be defined simply by materiality, but rather by other factors such as self-definition, environment... The relationship between Joss and Millie can only be described as lesbian if both consider themselves like women. However, to Millie, they are still husband and wife. “I cannot see him as anything other than him, my Joss, my husband” (Kay, 35 years old). As husband-wife indicates heterosexuality, Millie Moody's emphasis on this term shows that Joss is a man – at least in the relationship. Furthermore, as gender is manifested through behavior, Joss's behavior in his most private life proves that he is a man. However, can he be a man completely, considering the fact that he was a girl and he does not deny this identity. ? Rather than eliminating the feminine gender altogether, it is possible that Joss developed multiple genders – identities within himself. We can clearly see that Joss considers Josephine - his female version as in the third person. “He always [talks] about her in the third person. She [is] his third person” (Kay, 93). In doing so, he created a new genre analogous to the "androgynous spirit" of Virginia Woolf, a spirit both masculine and feminine or, as Hargreaves writes, "a celebration of place, in itself, of the presence of two sexes, a recognition of sexual plurality” (13). Such a complex identity cannot be condemned within a limited range of definitions created by cultural norms. If language cannot express a person's identity, then that identity should be expressed through a more universal means, such as in the novel Music. In music, no gender or self is necessary: ​​“One's whole self collapses – its idiosyncrasies, its.