Story of A Transgender Woman: Nong Toom

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Make(ing) Up Gender

The lights flashed on and off twice indicating that the show was about to begin. The excited audience crowded together into compact rows of folding seats. The bar, located in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, stank of stale Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and cheap whiskey. The walls were covered with decapitated and mutilated mannequins with messages like “Fuck Gender. Just Fuck PEOPLE!” written in permanent marker. As an alluring song began to play the performer took the stage; his dark green army uniform was perfectly contoured around his muscular form, a large bulge in his pants was plainly visible, and his mustache was thick and black. He sat on a lone chair and unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a white tank top then reached down to unbutton his pants while pelvic thrusting to the rhythm of the music. He then stood and turned around to slip off his tank top to flex and showcase his well-defined back muscles. The performer pulled his/her pants to the floor (and a pair of bundled socks) to reveal a sparkling pink thong, turned around, and revealed a voluptuous décolletage equipped with nipple tassels that she/he made dance in clockwise motion. She ripped the mustache off her face, straddled the chair, and tempted the crowd as she removed her wig flipping her long brown hair onto her shoulders in one motion. Within two minutes the performer had evoked a sexual response from almost everyone in the room, regardless of their sexual orientation, while undergoing a dramatic metamorphosis from first performing and being perceived as male then to female.

In Judith Butler’s “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” gender is defined as a fluid identity instituted by bodily gestur...

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...of gender], there would be no gender at all” (Ibid. 522). The feminist declaration that the personal is political is even more significant in this era where the individual is seemingly powerless in the face of oligarchical controlled governments and inhumane patriarchal political structures. Even though gender in isolation may be meaningless, the construction of gender and experience of gender is universal and is important for its potential expansion unite people to protect or revolt against political frameworks and social norms that rule the world today.

Works Cited

Beautiful Boxer. Dir. Ekachai Uekrongtham. Perf. Asanee Suwan, Sorapong Chatree. GMM Pictures, 2003.

Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." Theatre Journal 40.4 (1988): 519-31. Print.

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