Self-Validation and Social Acceptance

People often need to have validation from themselves, in regard to both their sexuality and general self, before being able to be accepted others. Too often this important fact is disregarded by today's culture and societal norm. This appears to be a recurring theme throughout the many passages and articles we have read in class, as well as in various piece of fictional literature.

I will be using the 1991 film "Paris Is Burning," a short work of fiction by Jane S. Fancher called "Moonlover and the Fountain of Blood," the lecture given by Carolyn Dinshaw on the twenty-third of September, and Cherrie Moraga's "The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind" to support my thesis.

Originally, I started thinking about this paper in a manner quite different from that which will be shown here. I thought I knew everything I had learned and that I could take a single idea and 'run with it,' as the saying goes. Then I began reviewing the articles and rereading my classmates' posts. I have always had an unusual interest in how 'outsiders' interact with a society that tends to be somewhat exclusive. Being on the receiving end to this sometimes painful exclusiveness, having had a disability from an early age, the ideas of censorship and prohibition toward people discovering themselves intrigued me.

Due to illness, I watched "Paris Is Burning" after sending in my original plan for this paper. I was impressed by the complexity of the homosexual community in New York during the eighties. Despite the fact that all of these men were living outside of societal norms, they had a sense of belonging and home. They created Houses and families to replace what they had lost, but also to give them something they had not experienced in their previous liv...

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...Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity, ed. Becky Thompson and Sangeeta Tyagi, New York, Routeledge.

7. 234. Moraga, Cherrie (1996), "The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind," in Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity, ed. Becky Thompson and Sangeeta Tyagi, New York, Routeledge.

8. 234. Moraga, Cherrie (1996), "The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind," in Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity, ed. Becky Thompson and Sangeeta Tyagi, New York, Routeledge.

9. 238. Moraga, Cherrie (1996), "The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind," in Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity, ed. Becky Thompson and Sangeeta Tyagi, New York, Routeledge.

10. Moraga, Cherrie (1996), "The Breakdown of the Bicultural Mind," in Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity, ed. Becky Thompson and Sangeeta Tyagi, New York, Routeledge,