American Swing Gender

The representation of the LGBT community in the film industry has long been a topic of much debate. In her article, “It Ain’t Easy Being Bisexual on TV,” Amy Zimmerman addresses this topic with specific interest on bisexual representation. By appealing to the logic of her audience, using an informal tone, and referring to relatable content, Zimmerman constructs an argument which persuades readers of The Daily Beast that the film industry is unfairly and inaccurately representing bisexuals. However, her argument holds little influence over those who are not movie fans or The Daily Beast readers.

As the years have gone by, you can see the change of how gays and lesbians are widely seen in mostly every tv show or movie in today’s society. This is something most of our own parents didn’t even grow up seeing gays throughout the media. Living in today’s time period, you’re able to see how the influence has changed the way people see gays and lesbians. The nation has become more accepting of the gay and lesbian culture verses back in the days of when our parents and even grandparents were our age. Not only was is rare to see homosexuals on television, it was portrayed negatively, and now you can see it portrayed positively.

One of Hollywood’s most typical scenes is contrasting men and women’s gatherings with their same-sex friends and discussing their partner’s behavior. It is easy to notice that while women tend to talk about their feelings, the same episode depicting men talk is less emotional and more logical. These stereotypes roughly reflect how gender differences works, which are actually not natural but rather nurtured. Personally, I believe that men’s fear to discuss their feelings is bewildering because ability to feel is one of key features that human nature. Yet, it is easily explained by gender stereotypes and the way men are brought up.

Ideas about sex, gender and homosexuality have been changing rapidly over the past several decades in the United States. There are several obvious reasons for this. The primary one is legal: various legal decisions by the United States Supreme Court have altered existing law on the subject of sex and homosexuality, and substantially affected matters of gender as expressed in law. But there has also been a social shift driven by medicine, largely based on response to the AIDS epidemic at its height in the 1980s and 1990s, but also in terms of other medical matters such as contraception and abortion.

Schwartz claims that Hollywood is setting standards for how you have to look or talk in order for you to express your sexuality. In reality, very few movies have the “macho man” like Bruce Willis or the “charming and perfect” Carmen Diaz as their main stars. Most of the movies I believe she is referring to are action movies that men typically want to see, movies with explosions and fast cars. These movies are more geared toward men instead of women. They are some movies that are designed around what women want to see, so some men may not like these movies either. These movies all have the lead roles picked because they are what the people want to see, not picked because they are what the companies want the public to try and mold themselves to look like. Other biases Schwartz displays is that she does not ever look at things from the eyes of one another, by that I mean she never looks at other people's perspective on sexuality. If Schwartz would have had someone with different views than her in the article then maybe she could have made more valid points, If she did that then maybe she could have made her argument stronger. Schwartz is biased because she only writes about her views, and says that those views are the views of the American people, but in fact, they are not everyone's views they are only

Stephen Mays writes an article,” What about Gender Roles in Same-Sex Relationships?” Mays explains how he overheard a conversation between two friends. The friends are gossiping about two gay guys that are walking ahead of them on the sidewalk. One of them ask “Who do you think is the girl in the relationship?” Mays said “ I couldn’t help but to frown at the girl and shake my head”(718). He did not agree with this question, he believes they are both men. I believe the two girls ask a question that most people want to know when they see two gay men.I recently was on a traveling page and a group of guys took a picture together. A lot of people were commenting on this post. Most of the comments were asking why aren 't there any women in

The American Dream is tougher for people to achieve because of their gender, where they live, or their race. Different perspectives of The American Dream include having a family, a supporting job with good pay, or just straight up success. But to achieve that success may be harder for women because it is clear that they make 80 cents for every dollar made by men. Also where you live may determine your success because there is a stigma for going to school in an urban area rather than a suburban area. Our society contains to many unnecessary roadblocks to The American Dream and leads to individuals who work really hard for something but cant get to the next step because of their gender, where they live or racism.

This paper will continue on, researching the societal change/acceptance in the gay and lesbian community as no longer being unorthodox and with the stigma coming from the gay community itself.

There are various perceptions of gay and lesbian couples that they represent a more egalitarian relationship. (Civettini 2015:1) However, when same-sex couples are observed there is still a tendency to believe that the relationship contains a masculine and feminine figure following the heterosexual model. So, it is necessary to address both how these couples deviate from society’s norms as gay individuals but might still be reproducing the same behaviors as heterosexual couples because the ideologies are so deeply rooted in social institutions. The stereotypical connotations of masculinity and femininity influence all aspects of American society and gender display relies heavily on meeting those given expectations. So, in the case of this article, the author Civettini views a connection between sex, gender, and sexual orientation when it comes to displaying

This is not meant to talk about the dichotomy between East and West, or everywhere else and the United States, but more so to make the point that, as far as human sexuality and gender are concerned in the general human context, gender and sexuality do not seem to have clear patterns of change and evolution so as to form an actual definition for them. Questions like, What does it mean to be a woman? or What does it mean to be queer? have different answers depending on where the question is asked. Even the lexical terms used to talk about those identities changes depending on geography (O’Connor).

Amy Zimmerman's position on the difficulties of bisexuality on TV presents an intriguing argument. However, Her use of pathos and ethos were rendered ineffective because of her select choice of audience and use of real-life examples.

During the early 20s to late 30s “Swing” dancing and music quickly became popular across America. The swing era was about dancing, without dancing there would have been no swing era. According to the video “Swing Thing” people thought said Swing was labeled as dangerous music white adults thought that it made you have sex with people. Swing has thrown up some of the most iconic stars of the 20th century. With people like Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, and George Gershwin, this music style developed into one of the catchiest and most popular style of the mid 1900s. Even though that was more than 70 years ago, Swing continues to influence modern music today. The catchy beats, improvisation, and scat are all still a huge part of modern Jazz

An article in the New York Times claims that all those feminist messages were lost to the audience that was just too consumed with the actress beauty to get the message. None the less Liz Taylor’s film kept pushing the envelope of socially acceptable topics and in movie Suddenly, Last Summer, the major taboo was ripped wide open on homosexuality and possibly delinquent/criminal behavior because most likely the male escorts were minor poor young boys. This movie portraits how far will the established social norm will go to keep containment , the clear message that a men was better off dead than be homosexual was not lost in this very turbulent movie.

In the 90's, bisexuals have popped up all over the place, from David Bowie to Angelina Jolie and Ani DiFranco.  I think that the gay and lesbian community is among the least tolerant of bisexuality, many homosexuals have gone through a serious identity struggle and they can't accept this "halfway" homosexuality.  Are we the queer of the queer?  Bisexuals aren't people who can't make up their mind in the same way that people who like both blondes and brunettes aren't called indecisive.  Sexual orientation used to be a black and white thing, you were either gay or you were straight.  During the 40's, Kinsey came up with a sliding scale of sexuality.  Suddenly, you could be somewhere in between, like a percentage.  If that wasn't enough, in the 70's Klien made things even more complicated with a multi-dimensional grid.  Now your sexuality ends up looking like the Nasdaq graph on a bad day!  But even up until the late 70's, there wasn't a single book written on bisexuality.  It's come a long way in the last 20 years.

Society should be more open minded with the topic of gender identity. Our society does not like rapid changes when they are publicly made; there is always a dispute or an opposition against those unexpected changes. The LGBTQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual) community is the “rapid change” that society finds difficult to deal with. Although, this community has always existed, but it has never been publicly recognized like it is today. Gender Identity is a very complicated topic to talk about because it has so many concepts that only those who find themselves as part of the LGBTQIA+ community can fully understand.