Drag has been used as a way of healing for some, it allows an individual to create a new self of self and draw on their own strengths (Yee, 2011). By entering the world of Drag it is opening a world of possibilities for an individual, and allows them to make close relationships with others within the Drag world (Yee, 2011). This was the case for Yekaterina Petrovna Zamolodchikova, or Katya for short. Katya is a beautiful drag persona of Brian Joseph McCook (Runyon, 2017). Katya competed in seasons two and seven of RuPaul’s Drag Race, which is where she was able to make a large public appearance (Rudolph, 2016). During December 2016, Brain shared in an interview that he struggled with addiction, throughout his college years at Massachusetts College of Art and Design (Daw, 2018). Brain was quoted in an interview with Christopher Rudolph saying: “I’ve been through hell on meth, but I’ve also been up in the clouds, and that’s why you do it” (2016). Brain shared that he was scared of failing and he was using pills and meth to cope with his fear of failure. He continued using drugs …show more content…
I thought there would be a lot more information on drag culture, but it was difficult to find much of anything. While scrolling through articles I found one explaining the difference between someone who identifies as transgender and someone who preforms as a drag queen or king. It was while reading this article; I realized how much people were lacking in knowledge. This is how I landed on the topic of gender non-conforming, because it was an umbrella term both of the two groups are categorized with. I enjoyed learning about the creation of Katya, and how Brain was able to use her persona in his recovery process. I had never heard of drag being used as a form of healing. I also learned from this paper, that there are many areas of improvement and misunderstandings still in popular opinion in
She is a high school student that has depression, but for my interview she said that she would like to be anonymous. This is how a lot of teens feel about going to therapy. They may not go because it costs too much. So the people that don’t go to top therapy or talk to anyone, might self medicate. Mrs.Tyra a counselor at LOHS said “.self medicating would be like getting into parents medications, drugs, alcohol, etc. and pot” (English Project).
In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler discusses complications with constructions of inner and outer worlds of the body. She argues that “internalization of gender”, as common linguistics describes it, is a part of the heterosexual hegemonic binary of gender conformity which distinguishes inner and outer worlds. Gender, in the commonly accepted model, is innate and through a process of bringing out the inner gender is expressed. Butler proposes, instead, that “the gendered body is performative” and “has no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its reality” (173). Thus, gender does not exist within a person, a part of the body itself, but is a performance constructed through many displays. Gender is not explicitly connected to identity because it is not internal but rather on the body. Butler says that drag “reveals the distinctness of those aspects of gendered experience which are falsely naturalized as a unity through the regulatory fiction of heterosexual coherence. In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself – a...
Barbie is tall, thin, has large hips and a large chest; she is beautiful, blonde, and she loves to shop; overall, Barbie is the feminine ideal. As researchers Jacqueline Urla and Alan Swedlund acknowledge, “little girls learn, among other things, about the crucial importance of their appearance to their personal happiness and to their ability to gain in favor with their friends” (1995:281). Gender roles are both centered around behavior as well as around bodies; this poses huge problems for transgender people, as well as explanations for transphobia; society has, for so long, accepted gender and sex to be synonymous. Because of this, a person whose gender is female and whose body is (rhetorically) male is a frightening and concerning deviant to most people’s understanding of the way in which gender exists. Everything that has to do with ideals for bodies leads to problems for transgender people; whether it is, as Urla and Swedlund also commented, that “...woman’s body was understood through the lens of her reproductive functions” (1995:287), or the general idea of “norms” for body proportions. When considering women’s bodies’ main purpose to be that of reproduction, it is apparent why the concept of transgender people may be concerning; transgender women -- that is, people, assigned male at birth but who live as women -- are women whose bodies cannot reproduce in the way that women are expected to; transgender men -- people assigned female at birth but who live as men -- may still have bodies which are viewed as useful mainly for their reproductive capabilities, but which they do not intend to acknowledge or use as such. When things stray so drastically from a norm which has long been accepted with minimal thought, onlookers panic that other norms will start to change as well. Straying from this norm also
Seidman, Steven, Nancy Fischer , and Chet Meeks. "Transgendering." New Sexuality Studies. North Carolina: Routledge, 2011. . Print.
Mental health professional have tried to correct their ‘‘gender identity disorder’’ with brutal aversion therapies. Tran’s youth who came out often faced crises throughout their family and social systems. Once out, developing a sense of realness about their new gender became extremely important. An urgent need develops ‘‘to match one’s exterior with one’s interior’’ In ad...
Throughout her life, Demi Lovato has fought with many disorders including bulimia nervosa and bipolar disorder. In 2011, she voluntarily checked into a rehab facility to receive treatment for bulimia nervosa; however, the facility’s doctors soon diagnosed her with bipolar disorder, most likely bipolar II disorder. After receiving this diagnosis, Lovato’s struggles in her past made much more sense. As a child, she was frequently bullied, and it was at this point in her life when the depression
The world was happy to see her healthy and singing again; everyone thought she had made a full recovery and was ready for her to appear back into the spotlight. Tragically, on February 11, 2012, Whitney Houston was found dead in her Beverly Hills hotel, she was 48 years old. Her mother, Cissy Houston, has written a book about her daughter's life, entitled Remembering Whitney, which depicts the rise and fall of the tragic singer's life. The purpose of my paper is to evaluate the reasons as to why Whitney Houston began to use drugs and how it played a professional and personal role in her life. I have utilized these approaches: trait approach, L-data and psychosocial development, in order to garner a better understanding as to why someone who is highly regarded could use drugs, as a form of solace and comfort at the peak of her stardom....
The depiction of transgender women characters in mainstream television has been offensive, insulting and derogatory. An article from GLADD called “Victims or Villains: Examining Ten Years of Transgender Images on Television”, examines 102 episodes and storylines on mainstream television that contained transgender characters since 2002. Of these, more than half were characterized as containing negative representations of transgender. In 2007 only 1% of television series had a recurring transgender character, which has slowly increased to 4% in 2013.
Living life as a transgendered person is not easy. There are very few times when someone comes out as transgender and their lives are still relatively easy to manage. There are a copious...
By taking on the body of an obviously transgendered male and performing this body in the small town of Orangeville, Ontario during the profoundly eventful holiday month of December, the comparing experience of varying embodiments between myself as a young, white female versus myself as an obviously transgendered male lead to a variety of emotional and social repercussions which will be theorized and analyzed throughout this research paper.
In today’s evermore politically correct society, the term transgender is loaded with various meanings and implications. The inability for a consensus to form as to universal meaning stems from various interest groups laying claim to the significance of the term. For instance, the term ‘transgender’ is often interchanged with ‘transsexual’ or ‘transvestite.’ The two conditions are wholly different separate from transgender. For the purposes of this paper, Andrew Solomon’s definition will suffice: “The term transgender is an encompassing term that includes anyone whose behavior departs significantly from the norms of the gender suggested by his or her anatomy at birth. The term transsexual usually refers to someone who has had surgery or hormones to align his or her body with a nonbirth gender” (Solomon, 2012, pg. 599). It is helpful to know what the key differences between the terms transsexual and transgender. A person who is transsexual is someone who has gone through the process of changing their physical sex from the sex they were born with to the desired sex. A transsexual person could be someone who has met the criteria for the DSM-5 diagnosis of gender dysphoria and physically transitions so their inner-self matches their physical body thereby erasing the dysphoric state. Although the term transsexual falls under the umbrella of transgender, it is important to distinguish the two terms.
Credibility Statement: I have watched 7 seasons of Rupaul’s Drag Race to enhance my own knowledge about drag, so I want to pass that knowledge on to you guys.
This study included people with and without sex changes and looked at the mental and physical development of these transgender individuals. Most participants described how they felt “different” for as long as they could remember. Most participants also discussed how as they developed they participated in acculturative processes that blurred the line between male and female roles/ characteristics. In these situations simply learning to be transgender through modeling or societal expectations was not the
I believe that Gender Identity Disorder or gender dysphoria is a complicated physiological disorder that can be affected by the variety of things including the chemical makeup from person to person. We should treat the disorder as such and respect the people suffering from the disorder enough to try to solve the underlying cause, not just the outward symptom. I believe that this disorder can be treated through therapy and hormone therapy to establish hormonal and chemical balance within someone. I view gender reassignment surgery, unless for the benefit of the physical health of the patient, to be a complete waste of medical resources and to be an idea that has been glorified through the media as not only acceptable but as courageous; while the drawbacks of the surgery and the poor results are downplayed or ignored. I also believe that by making gender reassignments available we are “playing god” and taking physical alteration too far. Taking a physically healthy person and performing an entire change of identity because he or she is uncomfortable with the way he or she looks teaches people to be intolerant of problems instead of pushing through them and supports fighting the very way we were created. Lastly, with such alarming rates of people who ultimately were unhappy with their physical appearance and emotional state following the surgery, there doesn’t seem to be a countervailing benefit to
Transgender people have been around for centuries, yet they still face problems in the eyes of education, medicine, and law; even, with biological evidence of transgenderism being a natural state. People in these professional fields have the influential advantage over the minds of society and help change discrimination and institutional services through making it more comfortable for transmen and transwomen to go through life.