E L I Analysis

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.

Furthermore, a few of his plays are written about drag queens and others about being gay. Mr. Fierstein grew up in a time when being gay was a very hard lifestyle to be open about. Over the decades the support group lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community or better known as LGBT, has supported the mass movement worldwide. Mr. Fierstein set out to illustrate to the world that it is ok to be yourself, and that the LGBT community will not accept anymore bigotry. His plays focus on the hardships faced by the oppressed and by the tyrants.

1) Opposing Forces This film displayed two opposing forces which were represented as the transsexual community verses society. The weaker force in the film was displayed as the transsexual community while the stronger force was society. The goal of the weaker force was shown as a desire for equality within all culture and fair treatment of these individuals. This goal of the weaker force highlighted a weakness in the stronger force which was seen as fear.

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

Edward Theodore Gein was born on August 27th in 1906 in the city of La Crosse, Wisconsin. Even at the beginning, it seems as though he had a troubled home life. Upon moving to a small farm outside Plainfield, his father was always working-whether it was as a carpenter and tanner, or at the farm. When he isn’t working however, he is drinking. As such, he is not around for the major family decisions, leaving them to Ed’s mother Augusta, whom was very religious. Ed’s father died in 1940. Four years later, his brother Henry died whilst battling fires. That left Ed and his mother. But sadly, that was shortly lived as his mother died from a stroke that same year. This caused doubts for Ed. He has considered multiple times to get transsexual surgery, but turned against it because he thought there were better ways of ‘turning female’. For this, among other odd personality traits, he became secluded, never talking to those in the community.

Chase Ross, a twenty-six-year-old transgender male, creates YouTube content focused on promoting LGBT issues along with educating LGBT youth. His content deals primarily with transgender informative videos, most being for transgender men, and he works as a major educator within the community. His stance on how he used to bind within his life demonstrates the power of the structures of masculinity in addition to how the habitus creates guidelines which those who bind must follow, while also depicting an internal rejection of his own initial habitus of being socialized female in favor of identifying as male, thus creating a new set of structures.

Through Jack's death, the novel illuminates the intricate web of injustice and oppression that LGBTQ+ people face in their tireless pursuit of social justice and equality. The story challenges readers to consider the interconnected factors that affect one's experiences and chances in a world full of prejudice and discrimination by utilizing themes of gender identity, sexual orientation, race, and class. The exploration of Jack's experiences within the novel and their parallels to real-life struggles faced by LGBTQ+ communities highlights the urgent need for systemic change. Jack's oppression as a transgender individual, exemplified by his struggles to access gender-affirming healthcare and his encounters with discriminatory laws, underlines the profound implications of legal gaps and intersectionality. His intersectional identity as a transgender man navigating societal norms and power dynamics significantly influences his fate in the book, illustrating the interconnected nature of oppression.

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

“Who you are isn’t up for debate. You are who you say you are.” A line Ian Harvey referred to Tuesday night October 27 that I will forever remember. This simple statement reminded me that no matter if you weren’t born into the body, gender, or life that you want to live that doesn’t mean it’s the end, actually its only the beginning. We all have the God given right and privilege to be whomever you choose to be in this world. Whether you’re straight, gay, bisexual, transgender, or however you classify yourself isn’t everyone’s ultimate goal in this lifetime to find the person they were meant to be and be the happiest version of that person possible? Like he said, “we are who we say we are.” If we don’t define who we are and what we believe for ourselves how can we expect others to treat us that way. Ian’s passion for being your most authentic self reminded me of a quote from the movies The Curious Case of Benjamin Button that stated, “I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”

In identifying a concept for this film, the topic of ‘Girl Meets Boy’ was interpreted as a point of discovery or realization of another existence. For this reason, it was decided that the concept of ‘SHe’ essentially circle around the idea of ‘exploring the effects that the transgender transition process has on an individual and their family’. This means that our storyline will revolve around a person going through these experiences and facing the conflict that this brings. This relates to

What if you had a child who was experiencing gender dysphoria? A child who didn’t feel that they were comfortable being the gender that they were born into? What would you do if your child wanted to become the opposite gender? In the documentary “Growing up Trans” (TV Episode 2015) Children who are experiencing gender dysphoria tell their stories about what it’s like growing up transgender. The documentary offers insight on the issues and complications the children and their parents face while transitioning.

Jess has presented herself as transgendered, even though she exerted to act as female/girl and later on as male. But the penalties of all that were not good for her as she was ridiculed everywhere and stripped by gang of disreputable boys in neighborhood. In her teenage, first, while coming from a gay bar she was harassed by cops, later, on another day she was beaten and gang raped by football team members at school. Through this narrative, Feinberg tried her level best to exhibit inner and outer struggles and challenges in squatting and altering her body for happiness and inner satisfaction; Jess was going through. Such queerness of female/masculinity is, not acceptable in the society throws transgender persons to “face huge discrimination in access to public spaces like restaurants cinemas, shops, malls etc.”

The depiction of transgender women characters in mainstream television has been offensive, insulting and derogatory. An article from GLADD called “Victims or Villains: Examining Ten Years of Transgender Images on Television”, examines 102 episodes and storylines on mainstream television that contained transgender characters since 2002. Of these, more than half were characterized as containing negative representations of transgender. In 2007 only 1% of television series had a recurring transgender character, which has slowly increased to 4% in 2013.

In the article Agnes Goes to Prison Authenticity, Transgender Inmates in Prisons for Men and the Pursuit of “The Real Deal” (Jenness & Fensternmaker, 2013), deals with transgender men living in the California Prison System. The lifestyle and daily struggle to survive as a woman trapped in a man’s body as well as emotional consequence of such a lifestyle is traumatic at best. These men not only have live as women in prison but they have lived their lives as women in their communities as well.

This reading discusses transgender people in the Jewish community. The person undergoing transition and witnesses (closest family) participate in a ritual. This ritual takes place when a person wants to change their gender. A room with a covered mirror is set up for the ritual. The person in transition, wearing a white robe known as a kittel, is washed as if preparing for a mikveh (ritual bath). The person in transition and the witnesses recite verses. Then the person in transition tears his/her clothes, followed by the witnesses. The reciting continues and the witnesses pour three buckets of water over the person as if for a taharah (purification of a dead body). The ritual ends with the person getting a new name and the family welcoming the new form of their child.