Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues

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

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.

Perhaps not the same way that a transgendered person does, but his identity as a man is complicated because of his inability to reconcile his insecurity, I saw insecurity because his confidence in his own identity seems to be down right hostile in the opening sentences of his essay. He calls “manly” a “... hideous and crippling lie; it not only insists on the difference and connives at superiority, it is also by its very nature destructive—emotionally damaging and socially harmful.” Harsh words from someone who is secure with who they

A self-described “bitch on wheels”, Sylvia Rivera was a teenage runaway who became one of the world’s earliest and most passionate advocates for transgender rights. “In many ways,” one writer noted in a Village Voice obituary following her death in 2002, “Sylvia was the Rosa Parks of the modern transgender movement, a term that was not even coined until two decades after Stonewall.”

Through out her book she continues to raise questions to make you think such as: “What does it mean to be a man?” and “What does it mean to be a woman?” In her circumstance she is a male to female transsexual who is also a lesbian, whose girlfriend actually ended up transitioning from female to male. And she raises the question, “What does all of this mean?” she also talks about those who define themselves as neither gender (Bornstein). Through her book she strives to make readers think about their life and the people around them. The overall questions she asks are: “What is Identity?” and “What is your identity?” She uses personal experience, stories, theories, political activist, television shows, and humor to back up her theories and arguments while continually raising questions about gender, orientation, desire, and why we as a society are so attached to a dualistic gender system. She does a great job of achieving her goal in teaching readers about the basics of the topic while making readers think.

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.

In the article “America’s Transition” Steinmetz reports that George traveled to Denmark to begin his transition to a woman named Christine Jorgensen (40). In the 1950s the transition from male-to-female was very rare. The subject of transition from an assigned sex at birth to the opposite was taboo. After Christine’s story was published in the New York Daily News and Time, American society began to question the definition of gender and why George was now Christine. Deceptively like today, as Time magazine mentions, “history is filled with people who did not fit society’s definition or gender (40).” Media talks about transgender, and it seems new, but it is not. Transgender is not something that just occurred today and had never been heard of before. This subject is just now coming out into the open more often than usual. In parallel to the “coming out” from transition, society is not far from the 1950’s because there is still stereotypes and discrimination against the transgender

Leslie Feinberg’s “Stone Butch Blues,” narrates protagonist, Jess Goldberg, through hirs bodily transformation as a transgender. Jess, born as a woman, went from identifying as a “he/she” to passing as a man, until ultimately identifying as neither male nor female. Jess’s journey as a trans was far from easy, due to the violence, from the police and peers, ze often fell victim to. Moreover, when growing up Jess never felt as if there was a place for hir in society. When Jess was around 16 years old, ze finally begins to search immensely for hirs “type of people.” Through the referral of a co-worker Jess was able to find a bar, Tifka’s, which possibly contained hirs “type of people.” Once inside the bar Jess describes it as “everything [ze]

Kidd and Witten define the term transgender vaguely, stating it “describe[s] people who transcend the conventional boundaries of gender, irrespective of physical status or sexual orientation” (Kidd & Witten, 2007, p. 36). This term is a reference for the ‘other gender’ that is not particularly male or female. Currently, within the American society, there is a growing awareness of individuals who are transgender. Much of this awareness comes from LGBT movements and

Judith Butler (Gender Trouble, 1990) argues that rather than sex determining gender-gender determines sex. Sex is shaped by gender discourses which give us scripts to perform according to whether we are biologically classed as male or female. The continual performance of these scripts on a daily basis is what makes us male or female. The classic example of this is the third sex, yes, the third sex and that is the transgender( born male in a female’s body or

The most obvious example is the differentiation of “transsexual” and “transgender.” In the article, “transsexual” is used to refer to someone who has specifically had treatment to physically change their body to match their gender identity; “transgender” is someone whose gender identity does not match the gender they were assigned at birth, regardless of whether they have made physical gender-related changes to their body (155). Today, the term “transsexual” is almost obsolete. Interestingly, however, Halberstam briefly presents conflict between “transsexuals” and “transgenders” that is mirrored somewhat today in informal conflicts between “truscum” and “transtrenders/tucutes” (154-155). In today’s transgender communities, people called “truscum” (generally by other people) feel that people they call “transtrenders” or “tucutes” are not truly transgender; they feel these people are merely pretending to be transgender for the sake of attention. On the other hand, those called “transtrenders” or “tucutes” (generally by other people) feel attacked and policed by “truscum” and insist that they are transgender regardless of whether they meet the standards set by truscum. Halberstam cites some identity politics (154-155) that are reminiscent of this, which suggests that even as terms change, identity policing remains a consistent issue in transgender

My Biological sex is female, my gender identity is female, but is my gender expression what I am starting to question. It was after I read Janet Mock’s book and I listened to an interview with Joy Ladin that I became aware of the similarities transgender women undertake in their process to come out, and my own process of redefining the expression of the woman that I am. I feel that the coming out of transgender people is encouraging us, especially women, to deeply question our woman expression. Trans-women like Joy Ladin and Janet Mock are raising a new conversation about gender identity and gender expression…..

Viviane Namaste is a Canadian transsexual woman, an activist, sociologist, and a women’s studies professor. In her book, “Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity and Institutions”, Namaste reveals the limitations that only focusing on and questioning identity may create. In addition, Viviane Namaste provides an alternative ‘framework’ that would allow transsexual individuals to converse about the circumstance they encounter on a daily basis. Although Namaste agrees that questions concerning identity, gender, and sex are important, these questions seem to denounce the issues that transsexuals endure on a regular day-to-day basis. This is because the questions concerning identity fail to concentrate on the restrictions imposed onto

In Trans Politics and Theory, we have had an ongoing conversation about the constructs of gender. Specifically, we have talked about Riki Wilchin’s ideas of gender as both a system of meanings and a system of regulation. This essay will attempt to define those phrases and describe their implications, as well as connecting them to what we have read for class, to current events, and to my own experiences. Wilchins speaks about the construction of gender in her book Genderqueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary. Our class read and discussed the second chapter, entitled “It’s Your Gender, Stupid!”

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