3. Gender Outlaws (Smith, 2010) breaks the laws of gender by defying gender normative rules that exclude trans, queer and other non-conforming gender expressions often oppressed by “gender-norming rules,” rules, “expected to observe” or be subject to ridicule and often times labeled as freak by those who consider themselves as normal (p. 28). A gender outlaw seeks to, redefine the notion of gender and are carving out spaces of their own” (p. 30). According to Gwendolyn Smith (2010), lesbians, gays, transgender, transsexual, cross-dressers, sissies, drags king and queens, have someone they view as freak. Smith considers this to be a human phenomenon, especially among marginalized groups. Smith expresses that those that consider themselves as gender normative finds comfort in identifying the “real” freaks, in order for them to seem closer to normal. Smith attempts to tear down the wall of gender normality as it is socially constructed as simply male and female. According to Smith (2010), “we are all someone’s freak” (p. 29). Smith asserts that there may be some type of fear in facing the self’s gender truth, “maybe I was afraid I would see things in my own being I was not ready to face, or was afraid of challenging my own assumptions” (p. 29). Smith’s, chapter (2010) was …show more content…
After discussing his concerns with the hospital staff, a decision was made that he should keep his gender identity as trans a secret. Not only did he loose agency, but his well-being, emotional and physical health was hindered. The danger in this is that the fire that fueled his eating disorder, or “starved it, since I was anorexic rather than a compulsive eater” was his gender identity (p. 122), but he was forced to keep the culprit in the closet. During his transitional phase, he used food intake to experience a sense of control of his
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
The author’s intended audience is most likely to people who are experiencing the disorder or are interested in knowing more about eating disorders. When Lia was admitted to New Seasons, her rehabilitation facility, she relates her experience to someone who has gone through the struggles in that kind of facility. Lia was expected to be “a good girl [by not poking holes] or write depressing poetry and [eat and eat]” (Anderson 18). Her struggles in the facility allowed the audience who experienced this disorder to relate their experiences. In addition, people who choose to starve...
From reading the first few lines of the book, Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation by Kate Bornstein, I was immediately hooked. I personally connected with the section “We are all somebody’s freak.” At first glance of the title, it implied something sexual to me. After reading the explanation I completely understood the concept. The concept is basically that we are all individuals, and somebody out there considers us to be a weirdo. In the same way I would consider somebody to be weird. It’s extremely eye opening because I never thought of that before. Also, within this section I learned that there is hate within the transgender, gay, and lesbian community. Initially, I was under the impression that all of that community would only be drawn
For this first journal entry, I have chosen to address Judith Lorber’s paper “Night to His Day.” A number of points made throughout the entire article paralleled ideas and concepts I was familiar with due to previously taking a Psychology of Women course at WSU. A few of these points included: West and Zimmerman’s notion of “doing gender,” the idea that men who enter traditionally female-dominated fields lose prestige, the case of David Reimer (Lorber refers to him as “the accidental transsexual”), and the fact that women still do the majority of child-rearing—even if she works full-time. In addition to previous course connections, the part of the paper which recounts how “gender blending” women have been expelled from women’s bathrooms struck a chord with me. I recently donated to a campaign calling for funds to build a gender-neutral bathroom at a school with a high enrollment of trans students. It saddens me when a human being is subjected to judgment or harassment, especially when it comes to something as basic as using the restroom. Finally, I found the idea that a woman could b...
In an effort to legitimize all subcategories of sexuality considered deviant of heterosexual normatively, queer theory acknowledges nontraditional sexual identities by rejecting the rigid notion of stabilized sexuality. It shares the ideals of gender theory, applying to sexuality the idea that gender is a performative adherence to capitalist structures that inform society of what it means to be male, female, gay, and straight. An individual’s conformity to sexual or gendered expectations indicates both perpetration and victimization of the systemic oppression laid down by patriarchal foundations in the interest of maintaining power within a small group of people. Seeking to deconstruct the absolute nature of binary opposition, queer theory highlights and celebrates literary examples of gray areas specifically regarding sexual orientation, and questions those which solidify heterosexuality as the “norm”, and anything outside of it as the “other”.
“Boys will be boys, and girls will be girls”: few of our cultural mythologies seem as natural as this one. But in this exploration of the gender signals that traditionally tell what a “boy” or “girl” is supposed to look and act like, Aaron Devor shows how these signals are not “natural” at all but instead are cultural constructs. While the classic cues of masculinity—aggressive posture, self-confidence, a tough appearance—and the traditional signs of femininity—gentleness, passivity, strong nurturing instincts—are often considered “normal,” Devor explains that they are by no means biological or psychological necessities. Indeed, he suggests, they can be richly mixed and varied, or to paraphrase the old Kinks song “Lola,” “Boys can be girls and girls can be boys.” Devor is dean of social sciences at the University of Victoria and author of Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality (1989), from which this selection is excerpted, and FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society (1997).
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...
In this article, Shaw and Lee describe how the action of labels on being “feminine” or “masculine” affect society. Shaw and Lee describe how gender is, “the social organization of sexual difference” (124). In biology gender is what sex a person is and in culture gender is how a person should act and portray themselves. They mention how gender is what we were taught to do in our daily lives from a young age so that it can become natural(Shaw, Lee 126). They speak on the process of gender socialization that teaches us how to act and think in accordance to what sex a person is. Shaw and Lee state that many people identify themselves as being transgendered, which involves a person, “resisting the social construction of gender into two distinct, categories, masculinity and femininity and working to break down these constraining and polarized categories” ( 129). They write about how in mainstream America masculinity and femininity are described with the masculine trait being the more dominant of the two. They define how this contributes to putting a higher value of one gender over the other gender called gender ranking (Shaw, Lee 137). They also speak about how in order for femininity to be viewed that other systems of inequality also need to be looked at first(Shaw,Lee 139).
In her online article “What Makes a Woman” (2015), Elinor Burkett asserts that the trans society should not reduce being a woman down to the genitalia and that a woman is created through the experiences she endures in her lifetime. Burkett supports her claim about what creates a woman by presenting the reader with evidence taken from trans-genders who are fighting against women’s rights and goes to challenge them by sharing her view on the topic. Burkett’s purpose is to dissipate the undermining of women’s characteristics by silencing their experiences in order to generate awareness of what a woman’s identity is. She has a young adult audience that is aware of current events in the trans-gender movement in mind because she writes with a tone
Men and women are “correctively” raped, assaulted, or killed for presenting as the “wrong” gender. “[T]he Rules of Gender dictate that there are two and only two genders, and presenting in a given gender means that you have the corresponding sex” (101). Taking that a step further, the corresponding sex means that one shares the heterosexual desires associated with that sex. These assumptions are the reasoning behind the violence that plagues women, minorities, and the LGBT+ community. By presenting oneself as a gender other than that which corresponds to their sex—whether through clothing or mere behaviors—they are in essence misrepresenting themselves and attempting to confuse the people they interact with. According to Gilbert, “the physical mannerisms frequently presented by a sissy, that is, an effeminate male, must . . . elicit some sexual response programmed by the bigender rules” (101). This hypothesis is, by itself, problematic. It is based on the idea that we are socialized to associate certain mannerisms and body language to the opposite sex, so much so that we experience a Pavlovian response to them, regardless of who performs them. However, not all men are attracted to all women who flip their hair over their shoulder when they speak; not all women find all men who sit with their legs spread as wide as possible, or
After rejecting a butch woman’s advances, Molly questioned, “What’s the point of being a lesbian if a woman is going to look and act like an imitation of a man?” Her apparent disdain for butch lesbians seems to originate in her perception that butch lesbians uphold the gender binary she puts so much effort into resisting. Literature, however, argues that butch-fem relationships are much more than a personal preference (Davis). She argues that these relationships are a “powerful social source.” The visual representation given by women in these relationships establishes and announces to the public that they are in fact in a relationship, whereas fem-fem couples might get mistaken for close friends.
If I were to tell my father at this moment that I am a lesbian he will call the school I am at, the school I used to attend, my friends, and anybody else that is in my life. He would be convinced that somebody brought this upon me; that somebody convinced me. He will ask me if I am joking. If I dress like a boy (baggy clothing) he will say, “You are going like that?” My father, along with millions of other parents, and people, think that homosexuals and trans genders are a humiliation to our society. Likewise, society has made me feel that after mentioning being lesbian it is crucial that I say that I am actually not. Maybe these people should read one excerpt from the analogy, Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation by Kate Bornstein. Or maybe,
My intention here was to read both Janice Raymond’s cisgender polemic on sex-differentiated politics and oppression and Sandy Stone’s now seminal response back-to-back to better appreciate the debate they are engaging and explore the gendered demarcation they construct. Yet, by employing the queer feminist analysis that tracks the converges-to-divergences of seeming disparate identities as suggested by Huffer (2016), what becomes apparent to me is that, in arguing against the other’s gendered politics, Raymond and Stone return to similar outcomes. (And neither result in locating agency in transgender identities or bodies.) Raymond’s makes clear the pro-feminist stance that underscores in her anti-transsexual argument early on: “Transsexualism
Throughout Western civilization, culturally hegemonic views on gender and sexuality have upheld a rigid and monolithic societal structure, resulting in the marginalization and dehumanization of millions of individuals who differ from the expected norm. Whether they are ridiculed as freaks, persecuted as blasphemers, or discriminated as sub-human, these individuals have been historically treated as invisible and pushed into vulnerable positions, resulting in cycles of poverty and oppression that remain prevalent even in modern times. Today, while many of these individuals are not publicly displayed as freaks or persecuted under Western law, women, queer, and intersexed persons within our society still nonetheless find themselves under constant
Throughout history men and women have been put into the rigidly defined roles of feminism and masculism. This box that society has created has push back the true people and presented us with the societal image of what men and women should be. This is gender stereotyping. Through these stereotypes a feminist movement and a masculine movement have arisen to try to break those stereotypes.