Valentine’s book Imagining Transgender gives rise to the category transgender. He advocates for gender variant people who identify as Trans- (or have been identified as) as a group or individual identity, all with rights to political and social engagement. The politics surrounding transgendered groups are relative to legal frameworks, health and or social provisions, and various other systems that are inclusive to the hegemonic patriarchal society. The differences Valentines creates for the identity categories constructed from the encounters of the participants made notable individualizations especially for persons of color or lower socioeconomic levels. Valentine maintained that social justice for identity politics had much to do with attention …show more content…
It did not seem to be a predominantly white gay male space where there was a sense of otherness or exclusion for anyone else. The T if able to be identified as so were not just tolerated as everyone was included. Also the atmosphere seemed to be very much like hetero social and homo-social in cohesion. There was a lot of conversing, drinking and dancing going on, the majority of people encountered enjoyed their legroom. There seemed to be a consensus amongst who appeared to be cisgender women and gay men which was to not be harassed by heterosexual men or judged and to enjoy their time there. There weren’t many heteronormative opinions publicized. Most of the behavior of the general population would not be considered socially acceptable or appropriate. Female on female, male on male, and FTM sexuality was not chastened. Voyeur enables networking for future collective LGBT oriented social gatherings. The idea of heterosexual men becoming jealous of the lesbian and T women because of their looks or ability to appeal to the same women was cut in half because of the larger gay male population amongst the crowd. At Voyeur there were some miniscule patches of oriented spaces, but generally …show more content…
Many places are much more geared towards G and not so much room for LBT. One would immediately get the sense that these bars might even be men-only bars or at least male-dominated spaces. Ultimately, there is this strong desire for more lesbian or women- centric spaces where the rest of the demographic fits in. From the findings there was no emphasis on political causes that benefit LGBT and also no spaces for women and MTF to explore their sexuality exclusively among women. As far as heterosexual individuals Voyeur can aid in their finding their sexuality or discovering who they are in a safe place. It strays away from the heteronormative views of “appropriate” sexuality in order to lessen the shame and stigma surrounding certain behaviors. On the contrary, the fieldwork conducted led to finding bars that did the opposite of what Voyeur did. There are more places that do not offer the same sense of a safe space for everyone especially Trans or women. It is strongly believed that it would be a beneficial thing for Philadelphia to create more places similar to Voyeur especially for the older demographic or anyone who has individual experiences different from the LGB community. If everyone could have a somewhat parallel space to freely express their sexuality, then they would not have to be told what to identify as. Having safe spaces is an excellent way for
In How Sex Changed by Joanne Meyerowitz, the author tell us about the medical, social and cultural history of transsexuality in the United States. The author explores different stories about people who had a deep desired to change or transform their body sex. Meyerowitz gives a chronological expiation of the public opinion and how transsexuality grew more accepted. She also explained the relationship between sex, gender, sexuality and the law. In there the author also address the importance of the creation of new identities as well as how medication constrain how we think of our self. The author also explain how technological progress dissolve the idea of gender as well as how the study of genetics and eugenics impacts in the ideas about gender/sexuality and identity. But more importantly how technology has change the idea of biological sex as unchangeable.
The definition of gender has become way more revolutionary and expressive compared to the twentieth century. Gender used to be similar to sex where someone would be identified as a male or female based on their biological genitals however, this day in age it is way more complex. Someone can be born a male but mentally they feel like a male. In “Sisterhood is complicated” Ruth Padawer explains the journey of different transgender males and the obstacles they face while attending Wellesley college. Wellesley is a women’s college that has been around for a very long time and is in the process of the battling the conflict of whether they should admit transgender students. Ariel Levy author of “Female Chauvinist Pigs” tackles the stereotypes and
In his work about gay life in New York City, George Chauncey seeks to dispel the various myths about the gay lifestyle before the Civil Rights era of the 60’s. He distills the misconceptions into three major myths: “…isolation, invisibility, and internalization” (Chauncey 1994, 2). He believes a certain image has taken in the public mind where gays did not openly exist until the 60’s, and that professional historians have largely ignored this era of sexual history. He posits such ideas are simply counterfactual. Using the city of New York, a metropolitan landscape where many types of people confluence together, he details a thriving gay community. Certainly it is a community by Chauncey’s reckoning; he shows gay men had a large network of bar, clubs, and various other cultural venues where not only gay men intermingled the larger public did as well. This dispels the first two principle myths that gay men were isolated internally from other gay men or invisible to the populace. As to the internalization of gay men, they were not by any degree self-loathing. In fact, Chauncey shows examples of gay pride such a drag queen arrested and detained in police car in a photo with a big smile (Chauncey 1994, 330). Using a series of personal interviews, primary archival material from city repositories, articles, police reports, and private watchdog groups, Chauncey details with a preponderance of evidence the existence of a gay culture in New York City, while at the same time using secondary scholarship to give context to larger events like the Depression and thereby tie changes to the gay community to larger changes in the society.
The medicalization of transgender tendencies, under what was Gender Identity Disorder, was demoralizing to all transgender people. This resulted in a form of structured and institutionalized inequality that made an entire group of people internalize their problems, making them question not only their own identity, but also their sanity. Therefore, the removal of this disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 2013 and the newest editions was important in that it shows society’s recognition and acceptance of the transgender
Being Trans gender is when a person’s self identity does not conform with their conventional sex. Talking about people identifying as a transgender individual is a difficult and very controversial topic to discuss. One author, Ruth Padawer has brought the topic to light, presenting us with examples from one of the most prestigious women’s colleges in the United States. In her piece, “Sisterhood is Complicated” from 2014, she ponders on the idea of if people who identify as transgender should be allowed in an all women’s college. In her piece, she states that “Some two dozen other matriculating students at Wellesley don’t identify as women. Of those, a half dozen or so were trans men, people born female who identified as men, some of whom had begun taking testosterone to change their bodies.” All of which made the switch to be transgender after being accepted into the school. So, in a college of all women, some are switching genders and it challenges the idea of an all women’s college. The piece continues to go through and tell us the story of three trans men and their experience at Wellesley college.
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
Furthermore, the article clarifies that many transgender people experience a stage of identity development that aids in helping them better understanding their own self-image reflection, and expression. More specifically, they reach out to professional...
During the early 1950s and throughout the 1960s, in an attempt to “control” sexual behavior, law enforcements would raid gay bars as means to show them that their way of life was deemed as “inappropriate” in the eyes of society, and harass them because of their sexuality. On June 27, 1969, the New York Police Department went on their nightly routines of raiding bars, that night they raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich (Goldstein). Usually, when law enforcements would raid these locations, the patrons would oblige to authority. On this night however; in the first time in history, the occupants of the ba...
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...
Even though we live in a place in time where LGBT people can freely love who they want without facing consequences, there are still incidents of people being targeted just because of their sexuality or for being a support for those who are attracted to the same sex. Even at West many of the members of Spectrum have been demonized by bigots. As this still remains to be a huge issue, those in the club come together to find many ways to stand up against their bullies in a peaceful
Gender Outlaws (Smith, 2010) breaks the laws of gender by defying gender normative rules that exclude trans, queer and other non-conforming gender expressions often oppressed by “gender-norming rules,” rules, “expected to observe” or be subject to ridicule and often times labeled as freak by those who consider themselves as normal (p. 28). A gender outlaw seeks to, redefine the notion of gender and are carving out spaces of their own” (p. 30).
In society, people have an issue with things that are different. Individuals want to know who a person is and what they are all about. When human beings cannot figure out what a person is they become confused and often times angry. If a person does not fit into any gender category that someone is familiar with that person becomes an outcast. Being a part of a group is essential in society and those who do not are made to commit societal suicide. If a person is not part of society it is extremely difficult for that person to be able reap the important benefits of society. These individuals are forced to belong to a group that shares the same experiences and lifestyle choices. In this essay, I will be discussing this idea in the form of a documentary called Southern Comfort. It is based on transgendered living in a rural area in Georgia. I will discuss summary, main points, and the importance of cohesion of gender.
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...
In this article, Shaw and Lee describe how the action of labels on being “feminine” or “masculine” affect society. Shaw and Lee describe how gender is, “the social organization of sexual difference” (124). In biology gender is what sex a person is and in culture gender is how a person should act and portray themselves. They mention how gender is what we were taught to do in our daily lives from a young age so that it can become natural(Shaw, Lee 126). They speak on the process of gender socialization that teaches us how to act and think in accordance to what sex a person is. Shaw and Lee state that many people identify themselves as being transgendered, which involves a person, “resisting the social construction of gender into two distinct, categories, masculinity and femininity and working to break down these constraining and polarized categories” ( 129). They write about how in mainstream America masculinity and femininity are described with the masculine trait being the more dominant of the two. They define how this contributes to putting a higher value of one gender over the other gender called gender ranking (Shaw, Lee 137). They also speak about how in order for femininity to be viewed that other systems of inequality also need to be looked at first(Shaw,Lee 139).
Imagine going through life believing that you were born into the wrong body. This is how a transgender feels as they go through life. A transgender is a person who whose self-identity does not conform unambiguously to male or female sex. This topic is very controversial due to many arguments about the differences between the male and female physique. The natural biological differences between males and a females play a huge role in this controversy. These difference become serious issues when athletes want to compete for their non-biological sex. Michelle Castillo, a freelance writer and editor, believes that once a transgender athlete completes at least one year of hormone therapy, then the athletes should be eligible to compete with the sex of their choice.