It is not for me
When I entered the trans man community, I assumed that there would be other trans men like me – feminine and does not, “pass”. I have always adored pink, sparkles, and dolls my whole life and it was an integral part of my identity that I would never change. However, coming out as a trans man, I was expected to participate in toxic masculinity that I wanted no part of. My friend who introduced to me to the trans man community was already on hormones, passed, but, he was very feminine like I was.
At the time, I could not afford hormones, and even though I was intensely dysphoric, I decided that I was not going to adapt my behaviour or interests to appear masculine. The other trans men in the community talked of always liking
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What happened? Well, in the trans man community (specifically a Facebook group), another trans man that I barely spoke to wrote an essay about me. At first, I did not know if it was about me because it did not contain my name or my pronouns yet it was a post that he was aware I had access to read.
In the introduction of the essay, it talked of how I was not trying to pass and that I looked feminine; it referenced my recent public selfies of me wearing a pink flower crown and a sailor mini moon shirt. It was an unstoppable stream of gender policing and femmephobia that was directed at me! As I read on, I felt my body grow cold but, I kept reading his comments on my make-up, lack of muscles, and presentation.
He wrote in morbidly explicit detail of how I looked, how I acted, and how that I somehow managed to make other trans men look bad by merely existing. The essay constantly degendered me by using, “they” when I clearly stated I used, “he” and then it went downhill by comparing me to a, “little girl” even though I was nineteen years old at the time. It shocked me how much of an effort a person who I barely spoke to, was gender policing me in my own queer community and how it went on and
Along with ethos and small touch of logos, the author Roxane Gay uses a strength appeal of pathos to persuade her audience onto her argument. “White people will never know the dangers of being black in America, systemic, unequal opportunity, racial profiling, and the constant threat of police violence. Men will never know the dangers of being a woman in America, harassment, sexual violence, legislated bodies. Heterosexuals will never know what it means to experience homophobia.” (Gay). In this paragraph, the author is identify the inequality between racial barriers, genders and sexual orientation which an emotionally involved topic to bring up. How people are treated differently how the way they look, where they come from. Woman would
The article introduces a secondary argument about the society’s view of one gender writing about the other. A woman writing about the man is viewed by the society as a prejudiced person. This is true; in my opinion a female writing about a male is sexist. I feel a woman writing about for instance the flaws of the male character is sexist because both genders have flaws and why should only one gender be put to question.
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
I was born on March 08, 1995 at roughly seven pounds. When I was extracted from my mother, I was given the gender of a male with the appearance of my male body parts. My mother used to say to me, growing up as a toddler that I had so much hair like former American Football player, Troy Polamalu. People had always assumed that I was a girl, therefore my mother had to correct them and say, “No, he is a boy”. Growing up a toddler, I was always wearing some type of jeans with a sports shirt and shoes that were mostly colored black or blue. As I grew older, I gained interest in baseball, wrestling, and the military. I always wanted to play with action figures such as GI Joe and wrestling celebrities in addition to imaginary flying in an apache helicopter or taking command in a battle tank. Advancing to my pre-teen years, I wanted to play baseball, which is considered to be mostly a boy sport. It was at this moment, that my gender was a boy. Progressing to my teen years, I started to observe my father and learn my gender on his roles as the man in our family. I noticed that my father was already taking charge in the house and giving me orders that I needed to complete. Going through middle school, most boys had some type of sports backpack while the girls
A transgender, 25 year old woman named Avery Edison travelling from London, England was detained at Pearson Airport by Canada Border Service Agency. According to her, the reason for her detention was due to an immigration issue involving her overstaying a previous student visa. Despite being identified as a female on her passport, Avery had male genitalia. Avery tweeted that she would be assessed by a nurse before being placed in a male or female cell. However, the fact that she had male genitalia resulted in her being sent to Maplehurst, Correctional Centre in Milton, Ontario which is a prison for males where Avery stayed for one night. In the article, it is stated that Avery had concerns regarding potential sex attacks towards her in the
In Zhou, Li’s article “The Sexism of School Dress Codes,” she explains how the dress codes are diminishing children's self-esteem and, is mostly sexist towards girls as well as the LGBT community. To reach a wide audience including students, parents, and high school administrators, she relies on a wide variety of sources from high school students to highly credited professors. Zhou creates a strong argument against strict dress codes and encourages audience to take a stand against out of date dress codes that schools implement, using the rhetorical tools ethos, pathos, and logos to advance her argument.
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...
Around the world gender is genuinely seen as strictly male or female. If you step out of this “social norm,” you could be considered an outcast. This disassociation includes, biological males/females, interssexed, and transgendered individuals. These people are severely suppressed by society because their gender identification, behaviors, and even their activities deviate from the norm. Most Americans are exceedingly devoted to the concept that there are only two sexes. Therefore, the constrictive American ideals of male and female gender identities inhibits growth and acceptance of gender expression.
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...
As well, by Castillo sharing the story of Chloie Johnson, it gives the audience a chance to live through the transgender vicariously. Another example in which Castillo creates a shocking experience for the reader is when she states that “The NCAA in its ‘Transgender Handbook’ debunked the notions that people born male would have advantages over females, and that men would pretend to be trans females in order to have a completive advantage.” This addition to her article was very crucial to her argument as it disproves
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.
A secret agent. A professional football player. A fire fighter. These would have been my responses when asked that inevitable question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Family, Media and Peers are said to have influenced my views concerning the role I am to play society. All of these factors had one thing in common. They all were influencing me to behave according to my gender. Everything from the clothes I wore to the toys I played with contributed to this. Even now as a young adult my dreams and aspirations are built around the gender roles that were placed on me.
Transgender women face just as much misogyny as cisgendered women, and often times more. “The worst insult for a boy is that he acts ‘like a girl.’ In a transmisogynistic society, being trans is punished and being feminine is punished, but nothing is punished more than the femininity of people who are not ‘supposed’ to be women,” concurs Max Thornton, a journalist at Advocate (Thornton). This is just one example of the misogyny and stereotyping that trans women face on a daily basis. People’s ideals of hypermasculinity nowadays creates even more of a stigma against these women than there might be otherwise. Even more so than there is for trans men, as Kortney Ziegler, another jou...