I’ve been rewatching the early 90s show Twin Peaks recently, and I just saw the episode where the character of Denise is introduced. Denise, formerly known as Dennis, is a transgender FBI agent. The show walks a line between accepting who Denise is and finding humor in her character. Dale Cooper, the show’s protagonist, quickly embraces Denise and treats her respectfully, while supporting character Hawk makes a joke about Denise’s outfit being a good color for “him.” Twin Peaks is a microcosm of both the transphobia in society as well as the positives of accepting gender expression. Some of the negative and confused reactions that Denise experiences in Twin Peaks are examples of transphobia. Julia Serano discusses transphobia in her article “TransWoman Manifesto” where she writes that there is, “an extraordinary amount of pressure on individuals to conform to all of the expectations, restrictions, assumptions and privilege associated with the sex they were assigned at birth” (2013: 444). While all the cops in the town of Twin Peaks are male, Denise enters the picture and disrupts this societal norm. Serano says that a person’s own insecurity is the cause of their …show more content…
Author Dean Spade’s article “Mutilating Gender” breaks down the often put on requirement of transgender people to “inhabit and ‘perform’ successfully the new gender category” (2013: 441). Denise’s law enforcement ability is not brought into question, her sexuality is not discussed, and other sexist stereotypes of women are not put on Denise. While some of the characters on the show have questions about Denise’s gender identity and find it strange since they have not met someone like Denise before, they do question whether Denise is a woman after meeting her. Denise’s ability to ‘perform’ as a woman is clear that she can and she
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
It was very interesting to read about the different perspectives and experiences that the transmen went through during their transition. When it comes to critiquing this piece, there needed to be more detail on the perspective of men who went through transitioning into women. Schilt seemed to only cover one side of the argument and if she had put in more time, she could have better supported her claim using a transwomen perspective. Nevertheless, Schilt demonstrated a solid argument that supported gender inequality that goes beyond natural difference schemas and physical traits between men and
Language is a powerful tool. The artful manipulation of language has sparked countless revolutions and has continuously fueled social progression over the course of human history. In Carmen Vàzquez’s “Appearances,” Vàzquez argues that homophobia is a serious concern in society. She rallies for all people, regardless of sexual orientation, to challenge society’s unyielding gender roles and homophobia. Through the art of persuasion, Carmen Vàzquez blended careful diction, emotional stories, and persuasive structure to aggressively address the problem of homophobia both coherently and effectively.
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.
Throughout reading this novel, my thought on transgender and transsexual individuals was pretty set and stone. For example, I knew from reading the textbook that a transgender is a person that is born—in Jenny’s case—a male, but was psychologically and emotionally born a female. However, Jenny took things one-step further and became a transsexual, which is an individual that underwent surgery to obtain the genitals that match the psychological and emotional gender within, which in her case was a female. Therefore, Jenny Finney Boylan would be considered a transsexual female. What I did not know prior to reading this book is how tedious the process is to make a sex change. To be honest I never thought about the process a transsexual needed to go through to become one’s self, I did not think about the many steps taken to obtain the voice, or look of a female that Jenny was striving for. I also did not think about the surgery, and how scary that type of surgery could actually be. For example, on page 124 Jennifer is discussing the process of transition with her psychologist, Dr. Strange. On this page Dr. Strange is beginning to inform Jenny, and essentially myself, on how to begin the transition of becoming a female. First Dr. Strange was listing off the effects the hormones will have on Jenny’s body, and I first they made sense to me; softer skin, fluffier hair, but I never knew the physical changes hormones could have on someone, especially a man. For instance, I learned that there is such a thing called “fat migration.” This is when the fat on previous parts of your body migrates to another location. I learned from this novel that fat migration is a result of hormones, and since Jenny was once a man, her face would become less r...
The knowledge of the dress code makes transgender people to wear boy or girl clothes. Parents in some cases may allow a certain behavior from their kids as a prize for achievement of high grades. The use of the knowledge may come with many rewards. In the article Why transgender teen Jazz Jennings is everywhere
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
This is exemplified in another game produced by Nintendo in their instalments to the Animal Crossing series. The feminine giraffe character, Gracie is a celebrity fashion designer who occasionally communicates to the player. In the Japanese titles of the game series, Gracie is labelled as a male yet in the western version of the game, they have the same game model, yet they are labelled as a female. This illustrates how through translation, ‘deviant’ themes such as transsexuality and/or being transgender is changed to “please the western audience”. Through the preceding examples of Birdo and Gracie, it is clear to see the fact characters who identify as LGBT are being hidden by game companies to attempt to appeal to the mainstream audience, in doing so stripping away any sense of relatability queer individuals have to these characters. This is supported in a quote from my questionnaire that I conducted, a respondent stated that they “don’t see enough games with gender neutral or non-binary characters.” In addition to that, 100% of non-binary respondents to my questionnaire stated that they are not pleased with the way their genden identity is represented in video games. Due to the underrepresentation of non-binary and gender queer characters in video games, individuals
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).
An abundance of transgenders are finally identifying as their true gender in our generation. In fact, in the United States alone, there are 700,000 transgenders (Gates 2011). However, our generation isn’t welcoming these true identities, but shaming them. Though, it is incredible that slowly the idea of transgenders is becoming more acceptable, the amount of hate and harassment these human beings receive is unacceptable. Human beings, that is what they are, right? This leads to the next question. Why is our generation shaming something we are? Human beings, right? As we are all human beings, we shouldn’t be treating transgenders as if they are a different species. Many argue that these individuals
Transsexuals see themselves as an actual man or women. The don’t realized that no matter what they do to change their sex, some in society will still see them as that man or women their were born as . For society, the topic of reverse gender is complex with various emotions. Moreover, individuals frequently marked them as misfits, not understanding the genuine essence of being man or woman. There are many arguments that state, psychological disorders do not change a person gender, no matter how trapped they might seem, as
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...
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).
In today’s society people are becoming more open about their gender. Celebrities are becoming trans-gendered and this is affecting society because it leaves people in confusion on if the person is male with feminine traits. This causes society to view a trans-gendered person different than others because they chose to change their gender from what they were born as at birth. Changing from male to female allows people to view that person to be weak because generally the male is the dominant sex in life. In culture women are marked by wearing dresses, their body structures and having the title “Mrs.” while men remain unmarked by their clothing and appearances.