Marlo Mack’s podcast How To Be a Girl is a sensitive and honest exploration of the joys, fears, and struggles of raising of a transgender child. Earlier this year, Marlo and her seven-year-old daughter M (both pseudonyms) met transgender actress Laverne Cox (“Orange Is the New Black”). The story and photos of that meeting had a brief flare of online virality. In a recent episode of the podcast, Marlo (who also blogs at gendermom) talked about what happened after that meeting, as M began to understand that the world can be a difficult, even dangerous, place for transgender people like her. Below is a transcribed excerpt of that podcast. (A note about formatting: In her podcast, Marlo frequently edits two pieces of audio together contrapuntally. …show more content…
But I stepped forward and I think I said, “I’m her mom,” and thanked her for being a role model or something. And then Laverne bent down and gave my child a hug, and I heard her say, “Remember, honey: transgender is beautiful.” Marlo: “What was the coolest thing about meeting Laverne Cox?” M: “Well, the most exciting thing was that I actually got to hug her, and she didn’t want to do hugs because she didn’t want to get sick, but I was just like, ‘Laverne, I love you!’, and she was just like ‘How could I say no? You’re so cute!’, and then she hugged me, and I was really excited. Super, super, really excited!” I wrote all this down and posted it on my blog, along with photos of my daughter with Laverne. A few days later, the story blew up. I heard from People magazine and the Today Show, and the photos of my daughter with Laverne Cox were suddenly everywhere—even on the home page for Time magazine. Friends from all over the country saw the photos and recognized my child and wrote to me. I had made sure that none of the photos showed her face since I didn’t want her to be identified, but my friends who already knew she was trans could tell that it was …show more content…
I don’t really know.” It felt great to know that people were supporting us and wanted to hear our story. I felt really hopeful and so proud of my daughter. Mama, what’s a coma? Alicia interviewed me, too. But there’s a part of the story that I left out when I talked with her. It didn’t make it on my blog, either, or the Time magazine website. It’s what happened right after my daughter met Laverne Cox, when we were driving home through the dark and rainy night and I heard a question come from the back seat. It was “Mama, what’s a coma?” Marlo: “So, what kind of a story do you want?” M: “Something with no problem – with nothing going missing, no one being sad or left out, just like, just like a happy life.” Before I bought tickets to the event, I emailed the event organizers to ask if it was going to be appropriate for a 7-year-old child. They said, “Yes, definitely!” M: “Let’s say, Miss, Miss, Miss … But there were parts of the talk that were definitely not appropriate for a young child. M: “Mrs. Squeak!” I tried to distract her and cover her ears during those parts. Marlo: “Who’s Mrs.
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
She then insisted that the trans woman "stay in her lane", when in fact, as a cis woman, she was outside of her lane by attempting to define what is or is not transphobic. Her first reaction was to defend her ego.
I watched the foreign film Ma Vie en Rose (My Life in Pink), a Belgian film by filmmaker Alain Berliner. It is a warm, startling, funny, and realistic study of what happens when a seven-year-old boy is convinced, beyond all reason and outward evidence to the contrary, that he is really a girl. His certitude is astonishing in one so little, and his gender conviction is so strong that his belief can't be laughed away as the result of a “phase” or an “active imagination.” Yet the crux of Ma Vie en Rose is not a study of trans-gendered children per se, despite the fact that such sensational subject matter would seem to be surefire material for attention-grabbing moviemaking. You're never even quite certain about the long-term psychological ramifications of young Ludovic's obsession: Is he trans-gendered, a transvestite, gay, or straight? Such determinations are not the movie's concern. What Ma Vie en Rose is interested in is what it means to be a “difficult” child, a child who whose difference always sets him apart, and what it means to be the parents of such a child. Here we see some cultural differences with the characters.
It is a danger, both mentally and physically, to these transgender students attending an all women’s school. I believe Padawer does a fine job informing us as readers on a modern issue like transgender through stories of students at Wellesley College. They face problems such as bullying, humiliation, and sexual assault every day, and the problem is often neglected because they are
In April of 2015, Diane Sawyer premiered an interview on 20/20 that stirred up a heated debate within several, special interest groups in the US. Bruce Jenner decided to tell Sawyer that he was a trans woman, officially “coming out”. After a name and identity change in the public eye months later, Caitlyn Jenner became the media face of the transgendered community. However, as many quickly realized, Jenner’s point of view and experiences differed from other trans individuals in the US, and it drove an already hot topic into a fiery argument in multiple areas of social debate. While there are numerous supporters of Jenner, there are equally just as many that do not see her as a trans woman but a man dressing like a woman. These arguments are
The eye opening article utilized for this analysis is titled, “Trans Women at Smith: The Complexities of Checking ‘Female’” ,written by contributing writer, Sarah Fraas on August 24, 2014 (pg 683-685). Fraas starts off by introducing the audience with a school that accepts trans women, Mills College, and talks about how glorious this decision is. The author then begins to talk about other schools not as accepting as Mills, especially Smiths College. She spews many facts and analysis on the issues trans women face today throughout the article including how transgender women are not gaining enough support to succeed, most transgendered women are neglected in school, and the fact that many have been accused of being a woman for the “wrong” reason. She also mindfully includes the image of a woman of color holding up a sign saying, “Support your sisters, not just your CIS-ters!”. The author utilizes this image to show people that we are all one whether we
For most people, the idea of Transgenders is new and complicated. Because the idea is so fresh, many adults struggle with how to address this topic to the children because they lack knowledge
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...
She interviewed couples who received fertility treatment from Kent University Hospital (Provoost). She interviewed families with a father who did not have good quality sperm, lesbian couples and the children of those families. When interviewing the children she wanted to know how those children defined concept like parenthood and family (Provoost). She drew and apple tree to make them feel more comfortable. She starts off with an empty apple tree and she asked them to fill in the tree as if their family was apples. They would take a paper apple for every family member and put a name on it. She would then ask questions proving that most of the kids knew about their father and were thankful for them and put the donor on the trunk. This is because the donor formed the family and without him they would not be here. This is not the only thing that was a great part of her speech another one would be her
Puberty is a difficult time for any child, but for transgender teens, it can be the difference between becoming who they want to be or remaining in the wrong body. In June of this year, PBS Frontline released a documentary, entitled Growing Up Trans, which chronicled the lives of eight transgender and nonbinary children, from the ages of 9 to 19, as they navigated through the process of transitioning to their prefered genders. Some of the kids took hormone blockers to slow down their puberty, others were going through puberty at the time and wanted to transition before it was complete, and one had already gone through puberty and was still taking hormones to transition. The controversy revolving around the documentary focused on whether or
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...
“I’d been with people in the five years since transitioning, but one night stands left me with some kernel of sadness. This person simply did not care that I had a penis.” (Keller 132). In Ammi Keller’s Isaac Cameron Hill, the topic of gender is intertwined with the story of two individuals, a transgender woman and a transgender man. It documents the chance encounters throughout their life that result in them both becoming large parts of each other’s lives. The story is told from the point of view of an unnamed transgender woman who is describing the life of a transgender man named Isaac Cameron Hill, while also offering reflections into her own life as a result. The work spans from Isaac’s childhood to his approach towards the middle age
Modern social media has coined an acronymic term to capture a sect of feminism making a resurgence in the public sphere. TERFs, or trans-exclusive radical feminists, see the increased visibility of the transgender community thanks to activists like Laverne Cox, Janet Mock, and Carmen Carrera, and have countered with transgender exclusivity. As a result, a divide has deepened in the feminist movement, a war of sorts between trans-exclusive and trans-inclusive activists—a TERF war. In this essay, I analyze the theory behind trans-exclusive feminism, positioning it within contemporary feminist history. This essay asserts that trans-exclusive radical feminism undermines feminist theory by perpetuating a misguided relationship between sex and gender,
“You’re not your gender. You’re not your sexuality. You are a human being above all else. In the end you aren’t known for your gender, you 're known for who you are.”(Anonymous). Maybe if ideas and people 's mindsets would have been like this in the early 1920’s than Lili Elbe would not have had such a hard time transitioning from a male to female. The Danish Girl tells a story based on the true life of Lili Elbe, a transgendered woman, and her wife Gerda Wegener. Throughout the movie we get to see the turmoil that transgender people felt during this period of time because of things like sexoligists, who misdiagnosed people, mental institutions, and so called “treatments” to help cure the disease of being transgender. This movie also explores
So that was one side of my family that did not like me due to the color of my skin and it did upset me. This made it even harder for me to be myself when it came to my father’s dad’s side of the family because they were really religious and did not agree with someone being LGBT, or so I thought. I came up with that explanation on my own based off of the time period that they were raised and the fact that they grew up in a church. So I was nervous to tell them that I am a lesbian because of their backgrounds. I should have never done that because I never tried to figure out their true thoughts towards that subject matter. I gave into the way that society was and their beliefs that they put into place, instead of figuring out my own families beliefs. This made me become the part of society that I did not like and that is, the part that passes judgment on people based off of the time that they grew up in and the beliefs that were in