but it was not threat to their parents or my parents because at that time nothing like homosexuality existed or nothing like a third gender existed. Furthermore, since I have a vagina, I kind of assumed that I had to end up with a man because that was what everyone in my culture did, they ended up with the opposite sex, despite if they dressed like guys or not. It never occurred to me how many of my friends were intersex in Nigeria because it was never spoken of in Nigeria. This made me realize that gender changes across culture but it all comes down to the same idea that intersex is not recognized in most cultures, not only in the US but in Nigeria.
The movie Zerophilla specifically addresses intersex. It shows that even if Luke was a guy, he still got hot flashes when he talked to a female he liked, and turned into a woman when he had an orgasm, he loved a female but he also was attracted to Max, his male friend. Max was also Zerophilla and Luke and max ended up being together in a relationship. I like how in the movie, even if they changed to females when they had sex or had an orgasm , they still changed back to guys, at the end of the movie it was never clear if there were male or females. In the movie, there were no difference in the way Luke’s best friend and Luke’s girlfriend treated Luke because he was intersex, they accepted him for who he was. However because the gender of Luke and max was not determinate, it showed that gender is not determinate; gender is something that could change overtime. In the film, Luke told Rebecca which is also max in public that he was a Zerophilla in front of people and did not really care about what people would think. I think this could be related to how queer movies have come along, f...
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...ome intersex people grow up and feel very worthless, telling a intersex child she does not have a normal body like the doctor did to bonnie can make intersex kids not love and appreciate the body that they have, and categorizing intersex kids as special and having some kind of disorder in their sexuality make them feel like they are different from anyone else. If surgery is not enough to mess with the physical and mental minds, words like I just mentioned should not be mentioned around kids that are intersexual because it does make them feel some kind of not having self worth. According to preventing suicide among gender and sexual minorities, lesbian, gay, transgender and intersex are the specific high risk groups for suicide in annual senate report, however transgender group have been singled to be recognized as having high rate of suicide (Paumier, 2014).
...mosexual culture of the 1950s did everything to help keep their sexual status a secret.Homosexuals were looked at as a disgrace to whatever community he or she lived in. It was not acceptable for a couple of the same sex to be in public displaying affection. In addition, movies and tv shows brought about a lot of sexual wondering. At this time, teenagers were also being very disrespectful toward their parents.
Based on her 2004 book Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-variant People and Their Families, Arlene Istar Lev developed two models to describe sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. The first is a binary model. According to Patton et al. (2016), in this binary system “sex, gender identity, gender role (the enactment of gender), and sexual orientation are assumed to align and lead to the next” (p. 176). As Lev (2004) states in her book, the binary model assumes that “if a person is a male, he is a man; if a person is a man, he is masculine; if a person is a masculine male man, he will be attracted to a feminine female woman; if a person is female, she is a woman;
In her article “Should There Be Only Two Sexes,” Anne Fausto-Sterling discusses the implications of this genital surgery. She states that infantile genital surgery “causes extensive scarring, requires multiple surgeries, and often obliterates the possibility of orgasm” (80). Fausto-Sterling explains the consequences of these surgeries in order to argue against them. She instead says that intersex individuals should be allowed to make their own decisions regarding their bodies after being well-informed about the choices they have. The individuals interviewed in the documentary confirm the consequences Fausto-Sterling discusses and her conclusion. One person discusses how doctors had removed her clitoris and performed multiple surgeries to widen her vagina during her youth; however, these surgeries have caused sex to be painful and eliminated the possibility of orgasm. Another individual talks about how multiple childhood surgeries had led to significant pain and infections, resulting in scarring. These stories are not uncommon among the interviewed individuals, and all of them express the belief that genital surgery should be a choice made by the intersex individual later in life rather than by others early in life. While they concede that some intersex individuals may feel differently,
While some families are just as accepting as Skylar’s family was, not all families will like one of their members identifying as transsexual. According to Anita J. Catlin and Bethany Gibson (2011) , there are two kinds of responses towards transsexual teens and children from their families. One response is “acceptance using mental and physical health measures to ease the transition, and waiting to see what develops in the future.” This benefits the child and family more by the family accepting the child as they are which then in turn opens up the eyes of the family. The other possible response is for the family to “consider feelings as a treatable disease and attempt to treat the child by reprogramming.” This response hurts the child a...
Many television shows have transgender characters portrayed offensively, which clearly demonstrates a widespread problem. Transgender characters are being portrayed as “victims”, cast as killers, and working as sex workers. The first thing that writers in the media think of when using a transgender character is prostitution. This is the immediate preconception because in reality sometimes the only job a trans person can get is in sex work. As we saw in Screaming Queens, the transgender community was forced into prostitution among many other degrading consequences of being trans. This idea has stuck and is more likely to be portrayed in media when it comes to assigning roles for transgender characters.
In the past Johns Hopkins was a center for patients with a gender disorder. John Money, PhD worked in the Psycho-hormonal Group as a head. He had a very strange theory. He would apply his theory to actual patients, not knowing or expecting what would happen. The experiments he attempted on children and adult literally had no boundaries. One of well-known cases of gender identity disorder was about a boy. He was inducted into the Johns Hopkins center because of what happened during a normal ‘surgery’. The boy’s penis was accidently burnt during the circumcision. He underwent a surgery that made him have female body part. The little boy was raised as a girl. The boy raised as a girl felt as if he was a boy. When the family decided he was old enough to know they told him about what had happened during his circumcision. Once he had heard of this he decided to not be living as a female anymore. He later committed suicide. What we have learned from this experiment is that it comes with a lot of depression. Van Meter stated, “Because of the failures that began to materialize from Money’s ideology, the Psycho-hormonal group was abolished and Money was forced into retirement.” (239.) They are steps being taken to provide the best medical treatment and social environment with those who are suffering GID. I added this piece of information because I thought it was something we all show know about how the past has
In today's world there are many different sexual identities a person can adhere to, instead of just being heterosexual or homosexual. What a sexual identity is, is how one refers to think of oneself in terms of whom one is romantically or sexually attracted to. A type of sexual identity is when a person both male or female feel like they are inside the wrong body and they wish to have a sex change. Individuals who identify themselves as transgender aren’t usually adults, in some cases it is children who go through the stages of feeling out of place with there bodies and wish to change it. Some people in today's society would find it very odd that children would wish to be in a different body, in order to understand why this is happening you would have to know what exactly is transgender and transsexual, what causes transgenderism, and the early signs of transgenderism. This phenomenon has been around for a very long time and due to the fact that there is a large misunderstanding there is much confusion when faced with it. In order for one to understand how children become transgender or transsexual one must know what transgender and transsexual mean, what causes transgenderism, and the early signs of it and be mentally prepared for what is to come. Most of the responsibility in understanding transgender children falls on the parents of transgender children.
Treatment of intersex individuals was motivated by psychosocial problems, such as sex categories that may make socializing uncomfortable. John Hopkins University wanted to make each child’s body, upbringing, and mind align as much as possible. John Money 1953, believed that people with intersex should be surgically and socially engineered in a healthy psychosocial way. Cheryl Chase was the founder of the Intersex Society of North America. The women’s health movement, and queer rights movement, and Intersex Society of North America, allowed intersex individuals to become more open about being intersexed. Since 1993, the internet’s growth has allowed intersex individuals to meet others like them, and since then, education has allowed others to
In the United states during the 1920’s, or roaring twenties, through the 30’s was a time of vast African American musical and artistical expression. This movement called “The Harlem Renaissance” gave way to new ideas about homosexuality and transgenders. This movement was also, “Marked by the attitude that homosexuality was a personal matter”(Gibson 52). In other words, they thought that being gay, lesbian, or transgender was a personal choice and should not be against the law. Although a lot of attention was being given to gays and lesbians during this time, not much was written about transgenders until later on in
Not everyone may realize that sexual behavior and sexual identity are two distinguishable ideas, though they are closely related. Sexual behavior is, as it sounds, the way one acts out sexually. Sexual identity is how one interprets themselves in regards to sex, gender, and sexual orientation. Sexual identity has more so to do with performativity, than physical sexual acts. This paper aims to identify the ways in which sexual behavior becomes known as sexual identity and how the queer theoretical insights of Marinucci and Mottier lead to the understanding of this development.
There is more to gender expression, gender identities and biological sex that can be seen. The reason we do not go out looking for the differences between them is because some individuals are afraid of any difference that breaks their social norm. Each person is unique in their own way by having vast differences and challenges that they may face to become themselves. These differences and challenges is what bring us together and make up the communities we live in. They could be one someones teacher, best friend, sister. or brother, they could even be someones role model. Those “different people,” such as the interssexed, transgendered, or even biological males/females that differ from our social (daily) norms in the end are not that different.
Many of us have been reflecting on questions about intersex and what it actually is. I’ll be explaining the definition of intersex, how common it is the conditions of intersex and what is basically considered to be intersex. Intersex is when a person is born with a sexual anatomy or reproductive system that doesn’t quite fit the description of male or female. Some examples are, a person could be born with an outer appearance as a female but could have male anatomy on the inside. Also a person can be born with what looks to be as both male and female genitals, such as, a boy can be born with a small penis or a scrotum that’s divided forming what can look like a labia or a girl can be born with a very large clitoris or even not having a vaginal opening. Then there’s the gene mix up. A person can be born with mosaic genetics which means that some of her cells have xx chromosomes and some have XY chromosomes.
Gender and sexuality can be comprehended through social science. Social science is “the study of human society and of individual relationships in and to society” (free dictionary, 2009). The study of social science deals with different aspects of society such as politics, economics, and the social aspects of society. Gender identity is closely interlinked with social science as it is based on an identity of an individual in the society. Sexuality is “the condition of being characterized and distinguished by sex” (free dictionary, 2009). There are different gender identities such as male, female, gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual that exists all around the world. There is inequality in gender identities and dominance of a male regardless of which sexuality they fall under. The males are superior over the females and gays superior over the lesbians, however it different depending on the place and circumstances. This paper will look at the gender roles and stereotypes, social policy, and homosexuality from a modern and a traditional society perspective. The three different areas will be compared by the two different societies to understand how much changes has occurred and whether or not anything has really changed. In general a traditional society is more conservative where as a modern society is fundamentally liberal. This is to say that a traditional society lists certain roles depending on the gender and there are stereotypes that are connected with the genders. One must obey the one that is dominant and make decisions. On the other hand, a modern society is lenient, It accepts the individual’s identity and sexuality. There is no inequality and everyone in the society is to be seen as individuals not a part of a family unit...
...e then affected by hormones which cause the child to begin questioning their assigned gender. Because intersex children are able to understand this process of gender identity as an adolescent, it is selfish of the parent to be assigning the gender of their child. However, there are more effective solutions for both the parents and the child. Within the United States, New Jersey recently passed a new bill that “would grant citizens the right to change the gender on their birth certificate without having gender-reassessment surgery” (Greenhouse). Solutions have also gone beyond the United States. In November of 2013, Germany allowed a “third gender designation: X, for…intersex” (Greenhouse). This bill would then start to refrain doctors from having the parents to force choosing the gender of the child and having the child undergo surgery before their adolescent years.
The question fundamental to the philosophy of sex is the question probing into the nature of sexual activity. What is sex? Many have postulated on the subject, but have only further clouded the waters surrounding the subject. There are a multitude of philosophical answers addressing the question of sex ranging from the natural to the phenomenological to everywhere in between. It is essential to the discussion that a proper definition of sex be established before addressing any other issues. I plan to establish a proper definition of sex with an account of sexual perversion and then continue on discussing the nature of cybersex, infidelity, and love.