Breads, Breast And Bodies Summary

Cheryl Fynn is Maddie’s mother in the book. At the beginning, she can be described as uncaring, depressed, and addicted. For example, “ Still, it’s not like Ma takes care of herself. She smokes, drinks, but mostly doesn’t care.”, Maddie says. It also shows this trait when Maddie states, “ Ma won’t even answer the door for sweet Mrs. Duncan, who used to bring over cookies and baked goods all the time.”

Not only was her education affected, because she was unable to attend full days of class, but she also developed a need for drugs and sex. She began doing heroin and constantly cheating on her husband as a way to cope with her mother’s death. Cheryl did not know how to go about her mother’s illness since that was her favorite person in the world. She remembered the thousand things her mother used to compare her love to and all the times they shared together. Cheryl knew she needed to move forward so she made a life changing decision of taking her mother’s ashes into her own body in order for Cheryl to carry her mother with her wherever she was going to go. She later expresses, “Of all the things that convinced me that I should not be afraid while I was on this journey, of all the thing I’d made myself believe so I could hike the PCT, the death of my mother was the thing that made me believe the most deeply in my safety…” (Strayed, 59). Cheryl’s mother continues to play a huge role in her life even after she had passed away which shows how important she really

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

It is hard to imagine what it is like to lose everything, and Cheryl was not accepting her new reality. At the start of her memoir she viewed herself as the victim, along with the fact that she wished she had, “A father who loved you as a father should [that] was greater than his parts” (133). Her biological father was a really father in name only, and he was extremely vicious and abusive to the children and their mother. When a stepfather, Eddie came into the family, he was by no means a good father, however in comparison to their biological father Eddie was an amazing man. After her mother’s death, Eddie tried to move on and Cheryl was upset because she expected more from him. She wanted him to be there for her. She cannot imagine a good father because both men fell short of her expectations of what a father should do. In this painful time, Cheryl longed to find a way to run from all her problems:

Cheryl’s journey in life started with struggles at a very young age. From the time she was very young, her parents had a very violent relationship that resulted in her father leaving. In many cases this would be acknowledged as a good thing, and I’m not disagreeing, but that hardship of losing your own father is also a tragedy to

Elizabeth Blevins quoted Neil Carpathios in an article saying “’ [Stacey Waite] dares to explore and write about the often complicated terrain of gender, sexuality and societal perceptions of the self, the body and desire.’” Waite is slowly helping everyone break away from the idea that gender is a solid tangible concept. In “The Kind of Man I am at the DMV” written by Stacey Waite, traditional gender roles are being challenged by explaining that transgender people are the same as everyone else and pointing out the ignorance that some have towards less commonly recognized genders.

In Cheryl Strayed's Wild, she gives readers vivid exposure to her turbulent and harsh past. She tells her journey from the beginning of what was the turning page in her life- her mother's death. Strayed goes through a roller coaster with unfortunate events both in her control and out of her control. She makes several poor choices, and she shares all her triumphs with pure honesty. Strayed speaks of her past with a distant remorse, as if she is looking at her past in a movie. She doesn't come across as ashamed of her past, but why should she? As all humans do, Cheryl Strayed makes mistakes and suffers their consequences as well. Everyone handles situations differently, and the best anyone can do is learn from the mistakes and apply it to

Gender norms surround every person in every culture, even though they have variety in each culture, they are still real and still impact individuals who stand out from the norms. Leslie Feinberg's book “Stone Butch Blues” shows how hard it is to challenge gender in the 1960’s when homosexuality and the transgender movement was something that was just starting up. Leslie shows the reader that just by existing in a transphobic environment ze is challenging what it means to be a man or a woman, and more importantly, what’s in between. Leslie shows that gender isn’t just black and white, it’s a spectrum of colours.

The childhood of Cheryl Strayed was not a perfect one that every family dreams of. She was born in a dysfunctional family, her mother Bobbi, was a victim domestic violence and she had to experience the pain of seeing her mother suffer. After passing through a horrible nightmare, Cheryl mother had a second chance in life by remarrying a well men named Eddie, that provide them love and support, Strayed writes, “When she meet Eddie, she didn’t think it would work because he was eight years younger than she, but they fell in love. Karen and Leif (sister and brother) and I fell in love with him too…” (15). Years later,

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).

Scholars have been critical of the medical establishment’s and state’s involvement in constructing and policing of transgender identity. These kinds of pressing issues have occupied the small existing literature. There is not much information and studying what is being done on transgender in traditional areas, family studies research, such as their dating behavior and formation of intimate relationships in adulthood. There is little research on the issues around being parents, their children’s experiences with having transgendered parents, as well as relationships in the family as a whole, and relationships in work and school.

The textbook Women’s Lives briefly touches on the subject of intersectionality. However as you complete the assigned readings and watch the videos then you come to see the broader context of intersexuality. Each video or article enhances the concept

No one expects to be betrayed by someone they hold close and dear to them. Someone who has helped them, someone they have chosen to confide in, someone who the victim thought would protect them

She got deeper into an addiction, and unlike the “other” Wes she had no chance to get out, no matter how bad her situation got, including the time “[Cheryl] [laid] on the couch, saliva dripping… her pupils dilated and [rolled] to the back of her head, heroin still flowing in her veins,” (Moore 137). Through direct characterization, the author describing Cheryl’s habits which came from how she was cultured. Being culturized in a certain matter, in this case bad, affects how you react, even when in a Puritan society like The Scarlet Letter.

Each person in society experiences their gender and sexual orientation differently, as well as experiencing other people’s gender and sexual orientation. Redefining Realness tells the story and journey, of a trans woman, who ventures through life to finding her inner self. This biography not only delves into a personal story, but also bits and pieces of experiences people of the trans community may have in common in their own personal journeys.