Beauty Queens Beauty Queen Quotes

Instead, the article further educated me on the inner thoughts and experiences that are associated with being FTM transgender or transsexual. As a cisgender individual, or someone whose gender and biological sex are the same, I am unable to empathize or related to the experiences of transgender and transsexual people. The inside look that the article provided me was appreciated and granted me a deeper understanding of what it is like to be transgender or transsexual, especially regarding how they are socially perceived. Before reading the article, I knew that transgender and transsexual individuals did not feel that their gender matched their biological sex. Through the article, I learned that while that may be true, they do not always feel pressured to change how they physically appear to identify as a gender other than one representative of their biological sex. There are many factors they consider when choosing to transition or not. The factors include: how they want to be perceived in social interactions – as a man or not as a man -, family and friends, loss of their trans or queer identity, and feeling like their gender and sex match (Dozier, 2005). However, regardless of if they transitioned, once the individuals were accepted as their desired gender, the individuals felt more comfortable breaking gendered norms, like presenting as a male but wearing nail

Imagine, you go to work in your dress shoes, black suit, buzz-cut hair, red power tie, and nobody pays you a second look. But, the second you get home, you kick off your shoes, and don high-heels, the suit is replaced with a dress, your short wig is taken off, and you let your long curls fall, and your tie is in the closet, with a necklace in its place. Such hiding of true feelings is not an unheard concept in the transgender world. Millions of transgender people will never express their true feelings in their lifetime. This is similar to The Intruder by Andre Dubus, Kenneth Girard a

The phrase “Why fit in when you’re born to stand out?” (Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl) is false in the context of how Stargirl acts. Throughout the novel, Stargirl acts differently from her classmates, which has negative effect on her classmates. During the novel Stargirl cheers for the opposing team- encouraging others to do so as well- and acts in a manner that other students see as desirable. The way that her actions affect the Mica High students is discouraging and competition and causing students to abandon their self-identity, respectively.

Critical Analysis of “Sisterhood is Complicated” by Ruth Padawer In her essay, “Sisterhood is Complicated”, Ruth Padawer illustrates complications and triumphs women and transgenders experience while living in the same society. Padawer goes into detail about how the women feel towards the transgenders and how the transgenders feel being in a college centered around women. Often throughout the essay, she talks about how women make up Wellesley College who want to have the greatest power and strength, by defying social norms and creating their own place to learn. This has been the motto of the college since its beginning, but now, there are transgenders who are entering the college as women, just to gain entry into this environment.

The main setting of Trans-Sister Radio is within the small town of Bartlett, Vermont. The primary focus is set on Dana, a chromosomal-male college professor who is in the process of transitioning into the female gender. As a male, Dana is well-received by her community, even though she is perceived as strange and effeminate. She forms normal romantic relationships with women, has a fulfilling career, and is admired by those surrounding her, however she still feels incomplete. Unfortunately, what is missing from Dana is not externally noticeable, it is intrinsic happiness. From a young age, Dana suffered from gender dysphoria, a mental disorder that causes individuals to experience serious distress due to frustration with the sex and gender assigned at birth (APA, 2013). To alleviate the traumatic pain that has burdened her for decades, Dana makes the bold decision to partake in complete gender reassignment surgery. Trans-Sister Radio challenges the prototypical ideologies of character growth, morality, and relationships through its descriptive insight on transsexuality and thus gender.

All in all, the documentary The Middle Sexes covers many controversial topics. Some of these topics include the biology of middle sexes, the dangers of being a transgender, and societies outlook on transgenders. With much analysis, I’ve realized that this film has too narrow of a perspective on transgenders and middle sexes. The restricted perspective prevents the audience from being

In her book “Gender Outlaw: On Men, Woman, and the Rest of us,” Kate Bornstein goes over a lot of the major issues regarding gender awareness and identity politics. She talks about the ideas of labeling ones self, understanding gender differences, how people view laws, behaviors, and the medical and scientific privilege that make transitioning challenging for a lot of people. Bornstein touches on many of the issues today that affect trans people. She includes poetry, pictures, quotes, essays, and a play to raise questions and discuss the idea of gender. This is a great book to introduce and discuss the issues that affect the lives of trans people as they navigate and explore the lines that define gender.

The portrayal of many stereotypes in a cliche set of fake, made up, pageant girls within Libba Bray’s novel, Beauty Queens, surprisingly moves away from this idea of satire when looking at the bare bones of the storyline. It’s a simple story of women, moving past the patriarchy they’ve been raised where beauty is everything, growing into who they truly are and celebrating their differences as humans, all while surviving being stranded on an island.

Everyone goes through changes in life, especially ones that define who you are. In David Kaplan’s short story “Doe Season,” he portrays a young tomboyish girl that metamorphosis into a young woman over a short hunting trip. Not only does the young girl enjoy spending time with her father, but she enjoys the things that he does – shooting, camping, hunting. This is not typical of your average girl, or even a 9-year-old girl. Throughout the story there are symbols that show the audience Andy’s conflicts with herself and her gender or sexuality. It is also clear that she struggles with herself and her gender role in society.

Mary Lee Johnston, the mother of Precious, is an abusive woman who despises Precious for “stealing her man.” She weighs over 300 pounds and rarely leaves the house. Her “arms seem like giant arms” and “her legs which she always got cocked open seem like ugly tree logs.” She never tried to stop Carl, her sadistic boyfriend, from abusing Precious. She never encourages Precious to do anything with her life by telling her that “school can’t help you none.” Mary defrauds the welfare system without guilt and fails to provide care to Precious in any way.

Throughout the book, Becoming Nicole – The Transformation of an American Family by Amy Ellis Nutt, there were many topics and vocabulary that were semi new to me. With that in mind, there was a lot that I learned from the book itself, relating to what it actually meant to be transgender, and the glossary in the back helped to even further my understanding of different vocabulary.

A book called, Stargirl, by Jerry Spinelli, is a novel about a boy and a unique girl that have issues being together because of their companions. The novel, Stargirl, is about Leo Borlock, the narrator, and a unique girl who calls herself, Stargirl Caraway, thus the name of the book. Stargirl is falling in love with Leo, a boy at Mica Area High School (MAHS). The catch to this story is that Leo and Stargirl are having trouble being together because MAHS is full of conformity. Leo conflicts between being a conformist and his desire to be with Stargirl, as she is a non-conformist. This conflict drives Leo from a conformist to an individualist. Leo changes in the story by his inner thinking, dialogue, and revealing actions.

Prosser (1998) enters the gender-identity conversation with a rather counter-intuitive project. At a time when poststructuralism is busily deconstructing the sex/gender linkage in ways that transcend the materiality of the subject, Prosser wants to bring the “ontological” trans body back into the dialogue by charting the arc of the changing body within transgender narratives. Only by mapping these transitions in this frame can he describe a complex transsexual experience that breaks free from the political binaries used by essentialists and poststructuralists, such as “literal/deliteralizing, subversive/hegemonic” (16). If the former has been guilty of a dogmatic reliance on a narrow understanding of biology to describe transsexuals, Prosser argues, then the former is equally guilty of deconstructing gender to the point of reducing the material body to an inconvenient concept (13).

The first section of the novel is a great way to start the story. The main detail is that 14-year-old, Mia Thermopolis (a quirky, street smart girl) gets the news that she is now inheriting a generation of the Royalty of a small nation called Genovia after her father had announced that he can no longer conceive children. Her princess name in Amelia Renaldo. Mia tries to juggle that shocking information with her school problems, like how she is failing algebra, social dilemmas, like how Mia has a huge crush on a boy that doesn’t even know she exists or how Mia’s mom is dating her algebra teacher, and emotional issues, like how she feels she does not fit the perfect teenage girl description. Everything in her life is turning upside down as she continues unearthing her destiny.

Culture and society shape and mould us into who we are in today’s world, and it is apparent that the fluidity of culture and society is held responsible for one’s gender to change over time. In the East, most transgenders in countries such as India and Thailand challenge cultural and social norms to claim alternative gender in this world. In the West, however, most transgenders define themselves as the opposite gender than the one others would consider as matching the one they were born. Looking at the example of a male identifying as a female, Lewins (1995:48) mentioned the tensions intertwined to the culture one was born into to the confusion of one who