Miss Representation Analysis

In Miss Representation, many female actresses, news anchors, politicians, directors and producers talk about how females suffer a lot of social, political and economic inequalities in today’s society. There are double standards against women in magazines, on TV, in movies, the news, politics, and the workplace. The media is an influential part of modern culture. When women are portrayed as objects for men to use -- never as the protagonist or president -- and when female news anchors are objectified, this will cause girls of all ages to begin viewing themselves as objects. Girls grow up in a world where their voice does not count; where our culture does not embrace them in all of their diversities, where

Moses Kaufman is the producer of the successful play “The Laramie Project” after a horrific incident that occurred in Laramie. Members of the artistic group of Kaufman 's, traveled to Laramie to find out more about the horrific incidence. The main aim of the whole project was to find the emotions, reactions, and reflections that the people of Laramie manifested concerning the beating and subsequent death of a twenty-three-year-old college student (Gale, 2016). A lot of questions were raised concerning the death as people had different point of views. Some thought it was a hate crime, others thought it was just a brutal assault or a form of robbery. Four hundred interviews were conducted so as to come up with the reasons behind the brutal murder straight from the town folks. The main issue was how homosexuality was defined in the crime. The Laramie Project, questioned the rights of the LGBT+ group. For example, why were Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and Transgenders discriminated by the community and the society as a whole even though their rights were constitutional?

As I have mentioned, for the first time and one of the first recorded, everyone at Compton’s Cafeteria riot that night unite to fight back against police discrimination. 50 years ago, LGBTQ community of the Tenderloin District has been abused and targeted by the San Francisco Police Department with unlawful arrest (violating the city’s anti-cross dressing). The film ends on a high note. Even though time has changed, however, they still suffer and face discrimination. But, it shows the transformation of transgender activism in just two short years.

I attended “Queer Brown Voices Platica” at the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center in San Antonio, Texas, on October 10, 2015. “Queer Brown Voices, Personal Narratives of Latina/o LGBT Activism” delves into the personal discrimination experiences inflicted upon them not only from the population at large but also from within their own Hispanic communities and their struggle to disrupt the cycle of sexism, racism and homophobia. One of the three books editors, Letitia Gómez (Leti), is my sister-in-law. To fully comprehend their fights to survive and be relevant in mainstream America is awe inspiring. Their activism was not only to negate the prejudices but also for equal access to healthcare particularly during the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980’s.

I relate this back to highlight problems with various LGBTQ+ movements which actively dis-include and erase the experiences of trans people of color. It seems almost like through these movements, people had and have forgotten those history forgets in its plea to whitewash and create a “good” cishet society. This is especially true of LGBT POC’s such as Bayard Rustin, Langston Hughes and Marsha P. Johnson in that either they or the facts that they are people of color or a part of the LGBT community are written out of

After reading “Rev. Sekou on Today’s Civil Rights Leaders: ‘I Take My Orders From 23-Year-Old Queer Women” and “The Soapbox: On the Stonewall Rebellion’s Trans History”, it’s very interesting to see what has and hasn’t changed in terms of who the public sees as the “leaders” of a movement. The piece on the Stonewall Riots and how they are remembered and represented in media (as lead by white, cis, gay men) reminded me of the comment Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou made on the demographic that the “majority of the black leadership” has tended to be. When remembering the Stonewall Riots, many people either choose to ignore or are not aware of the queer, trans, black women who were on the front lines. And although Rev. Sekou brings forth the knowledge

I have recently watched the movie called “The Laramie Project.” The Laramie project is about a young gay student named Matthew Sheppard, who was murdered in Laramie, Wyoming by two boys from the town named, Aaron McKinley and Russell Henderson. The evidence and testimonies from the case suggested that Matthew was attacked, because of his sexuality as a gay man. Matthew was beaten, tied to a fence and left dead in Laramie, Wyoming in 1988. This movie captures the reaction of the murder and draws on hundreds of interviews conducted by the theatre company with the inhabitants of the town, company members, own journal entries, and published news reports. After watching this movie, I reflected on my own perspectives and thoughts about a few issues in the movie, such as hate crime, the phrase “Live and Let Live,” and “flaunting it.”

Sylvia was electrified; after years of harassment and discrimination, the LGBTQ community was finally waking up and expressing its rage. As the crowds swelled and began to fight back against the police reinforcements that had arrived, Sylvia howled through the streets, “The revolution is here!”

Paris is Burning is a film directed by Jennie Livingston, and Livingston attempts to introduce/popularize the drag & ball culture to the world. In her documentary, she explores underground drag queen bars where individuals go to escape the world and cross-dress down a runway, where they are facing no judgment and receive a round of applause for their courage/act/costume. In Bell Hooks’ commentary on this documentary, she dives into the idea that being transgender is “always constructed in the patriarchal mindset as a loss” (Hooks 146). I think that Bell Hooks is undermining the mindset of the “patriarchal” point of view. The year is currently 2017, and the rights that the LBGTQ community has earned/achieved in the last hundred years is an accomplishment that I feel people like Books neglect.

There are certainly various points in history that can be construed as trailblazing for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. One event in particular, however, sparked awareness and a call to action that previously could never have been conceptualized in the United States. This unforgettable incident, the Stonewall riots of 1969, altered the public’s view of the gay community and arguably jumpstarted the next revolution in an entirely new civil rights movement.

Many workshops and event mirrored this theme, including a talk from the young trans activity Jazz Jennings, a workshop hosted by Sadiya Abjani of SAGE about housing rights and discrimination among LGBT seniors and the highly popular midday showing of the award-winning new documentary about trans activist Ms. Major Griffin-Gracy, entitled MAJOR!

Oppression of minorities has had a detrimental aspect in the associated individual’s lives. History has demonstrated that as a western society, we devalue minorities’ rights and values through legislation and societal views. Today, this remains to be an issue for many individuals of many stigmatized groups. Although efforts to reach a more unified community have been taken, many minorities still fight oppression. Through activism, social and political movements, the LGBTQIA community have progressed immensely throughout the past few decades. History has demonstrated a slow, yet vast amount of success in this marginalized group. Activists endured a long journey toward gaining rights for the community which lead to a modern day civil rights movement for the LGBTQIA community. Although there has been a great amount of successes, non-heterosexual individuals still do not have full equal rights as their heterosexual counterparts. There are still adversities that are being faced in this population that hinder these individuals from thriving. The issue is even greater when the individual has an additional identity that is also marginalized. Specifically, individuals who identify as people of color (POC) and LGBTQIA still encounter prejudice from society.

Cheng appropriately commends United in Anger’s diverse representation of AIDS activists by contrasting its portrayal with those of other documentaries. He references many other films that revisit the AIDS movement, and notes that United in Anger is the exception to the portrayal of AIDS activism “through the lens of white male heroes” (Cheng 73). He correctly identifies the void that focusing selectively on white gay males causes, and many elements of United in Anger support his claim that the film faithfully represents diversity. For example, we can see this in United in Anger’s footage capturing ACT UP’s protest of the noninclusive drug trials at the NIH; Hubbard specific focuses on those protests led by minority groups, including African

The film depicts the camaraderie among the group’s members, and the empowerment resulting from their collective sense of belonging. However, given the group’s diverse membership, it is unlikely that this fluid narrative put forth by Hubbard tells the whole story. Taking this into consideration, how does United in Anger portray the makeup of ACT UP, and what impact does its depiction have on understanding the larger AIDS movement? Jih-Fei Cheng offers his viewpoint in his article “How to Survive: AIDS and Its Afterlives in Popular Media.” He condemns the precedent of cherry-picking AIDS movement coverage “through the lens of white male heroes” at the expense of “women and queers of color” (Cheng 73). However, Cheng argues that United in Anger is an exception to this widespread oversight, and takes into account the “multiracial” and “multigendered” diversity of AIDS activism (Cheng 76). He commends United in Anger and how it “carefully [portrays] how AIDS activists have countered capitalism, racism, sexism, and transphobia” (Cheng 78). Like Cheng, Alexandra Juhasz, an activist who took part in the AIDS movement, addresses the issue of misrepresentation of the AIDS movement in her article “Forgetting ACT UP.” Juhasz similarly criticizes the media and public’s focus on white gay males, a phenomenon that downplayed the numerous races, genders, and sexualities that comprised people with AIDS (Juhasz 72). However, she adds that there was an unacknowledged sense of exclusiveness in ACT UP that fostered the underrepresentation of minorities such as herself (Juhasz 70). She argues that United in Anger omits important minority members of the AIDS activist community left unrepresented by ACT UP, and thereby discounts the barriers they faced (Juhasz

Anne Tagonist’s zine, Unapologetic #3, goes over the trans-misogyny that is prevalent in the feminist and transgender rights movements. The author visited feminist and transgender scenes around the country that have been gaining momentum in recent years. When Anne visited each scene she witnessed rampant trans-misogyny, where trans-women were not accepted because of their inability to pass as female, and unproven theories that trans-women may be violent. These same meetings and organizers were much more accepting of the trans-men who came to the events. Female to male transgendered individuals were accepted because if the did not pass as a man they were still seen as a “dyke”. The example that Anne gives about an organizer banning a trans-woman,