Evil Deceivers And Make-Believers Summary

When Thinking about how Gender and Sexuality Interact it is very clear that there are a lot of areas where they overlap but also there is a lot of areas where they disconnect which causes the perpetuation of oppression and violence. The language use for these two terms carry different connotations and cause problems. This disconnect can be clearly seen in Bettcher's article Evil Deceivers and Make-Believers: On Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Illusion. This article illustrates the issue called the double bind that transgender people experience when interacting with sexuality therefore presenting the problems with the disconnect between gender and sexuality.

In Bettcher’s article the story of Gwen is explored to help illustrate the

If a trans person was to openly come out as trans then the transphobia would cause violence and also invalidating to Gwen's experience because Gwen sees herself as a woman and would still be painted as a deceiver; or if she simply goes about the night anticipating that the man wanted her and that's what she was supposed to do then when it came down to the act she would still be perceived as a deceiver. The issue of the double bind is extremely harmful for trans people but also alludes to smaller sub issue that could feed into the double bind. What should have been done? With the Greater question being does preference mean discrimination and how is gender identity disconnected from sexuality? The man who interacted with Gwen can be assumed to be a heterosexual meaning he was only attracted to people who he saw as female and to him at first Gwen was perceived to be a female by him, which she believed and identified herself as female. Only once her genitals were revealed did the man no longer see Gwen as a female. This is due to the genderization of sexuality and genitals. A lot of society

Each of these words play into a bigger image in the social imagination. For example thinking about the word heterosexual or even homosexual I think of sexuality in relation to sex; e.g. heterosexuality is being attracted to the opposite sex. It seems to be that this excludes gender presentation however that sexuality is solely surrounded by the sex of the individual which plays into the social imagination that sex is determined by genitals which perpetuates the binary by excluding intersex folks. This ignorance is passed on into the perpetuation of oppression against those who have a different gender identity than their orginal sex. Therefore the fact that sexuality has the tendency to be thought about in these terms causes a disconnect from gender identity language because of how these terms are relational. Sexuality tends to be about how you relate to others sexual whereas gender seems to be more introspective although there are relational aspects to gender it is not majorly relational. The way we speak about sexuality and the social imagination that follows it allows for this hatred because of the emphasis of genitals in sexuality, someone can be attracted to someone who is perceived to be female until the presentation of their genitals and the are no