Relationship Between Sexuality And Identity

The very first item in the Measure of Sexual Identity Exploration and Commitment asks to evaluate on a six-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 to 6 how firm of a sense I have of what my sexual needs are, penciling in a 4 where 6 delineate “very characteristic,” I begin to think of how much certainty is in my beliefs about sex and sexuality while knowing that the survey questions to follow will surely not be easy to answer with an absolute degree of confidence.

In Alison Bechdel 's Fun Home, there is a focus on a sculpted perception of gender roles produced by society and a great emphasis on how Bruce and Alison challenge these strict gender specific characteristics. Through Bruce’s femininity and Alison’s masculinity along with their homosexuality, they are able to go against the norms and the collection of rules set by society. It is also through their struggle with gender roles that one is able to understand their sexual orientation. Although Bruce and Alison seem fairly different from one another, there are elements that pull them closer together revealing their similarities.

Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir, “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic”, frames the development of her own sexual identity as she “comes out” as a lesbian and masculine woman. While sexual identity is how one thinks of oneself in terms of to whom one is romantically or sexually attracted, to represent the process of establishing sexual identity of Bechdel, Queer Theory is the best for demonstrating the development of one’s established sexual identity. According to Butler (2011), Queer theory builds both upon feminist challenges to the idea that gender is part of the essential self and upon gay and lesbian studies' examination of the socially constructed nature of sexual acts and identities. However, Bruce, the father of Bechdel, has struggles in his sexual identity. He does not acknowledge his sexuality, which fluctuates within the LGBTQ sphere. By declining to occupy his space within the queer community, Bruce denies his own identity, as a bisexual man and a feminine male (Eleanor, 2014). This article is going to explore the presentations of the sexual identity of Bruce and Bechdel represented in the graphic novel.

In Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, the author enlightens us with her struggles in determining her gender identity and sexuality. She does this in a very unique fashion. Alison, throughout the novel, uses specific pieces of literature and writing in order for the reader to decipher her true emotions and feelings toward her sexuality. On top of that, Bechdel writes her story in order to show how these objects play a much deeper role between not only comprehending her sexuality, but her understanding of her choppy relationship with her father. The end result is a series of connections that bring the two closer together than they ever were.

In Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Alison Bechdel composes a graphic memoir to inform readers about her journey of coming out as a lesbian to her parents. To add to this note, Bechdel also gives details about her family and how she discovers her father’s true sexuality – he is attracted to males. She builds the story around the tragic event of her father’s mysterious death.

In the novel “Fun Home”, the main character and author, Alison Bechdel, struggles to identify her sexual orientation while discovering that her father is a closet homosexual pedophile. The theme of sexual and gender identity is very apparent throughout the novel mainly due to the fact that Alison is struggling to identify that she is a lesbian and the fact that her dad is also gay.Alison and her dad struggled to assume the “proper” gender roles because they all yearned for something more, but in the end they both came to terms with their true identities and accepted their sexual orientation.

Alison Bechdel, a literary and queer theorist herself who would go on to coin the Bechdel test, grew up in close proximity to theory. In a family of academics, with her teacher father and former actress mother, Bechdel was always surrounded by literature, so when it comes to self discovery of her sexuality, it’s no surprise that she turns to the literary realm, from Rubyfruit Jungle to the Oxford English Dictionary, to understand herself. Bechdel’s first graphic memoir, Fun Home, examines her upbringing in a funeral home with her cold mother and her closeted bisexual father, who commits suicide soon after Bechdel leaves for college. It engages in frequent literary and theory illusions, beginning from the mention of Icarian Games on the very first page. While Bechdel’s work seems like it could be easily situated in structuralist theory, the work easily lends itself to a multiplicity of meanings, an inherent feature of deconstruction work that allows readers to veer into feminist theory, queer theory, or even Marxist theory. Just as Bechdel rewrites and reframes the events of her formative years multiple times throughout the novel, the novel particularly lends itself to structuralist, deconstruction, queer, and feminist theory, which all lead to particularly illuminating readings that compliment each other.

Fun Home is a graphic novel by Alison Bechdel. Fun Home is a complex autobiography which talks about the Alison relationship with her father and the understanding of her own homosexuality. Alison lives with her mom (Helen), dad (Bruce), brothers Christian and John in Pennsylvania. While growing up Alison and her father both had the issues with gender roles. For example Alison denied to grow her hair, wear dresses/ skirts, etc. Alison and her father both struggled in their life with the issue of the gender roles. Alison wasn’t completely aware until she was in college. She realizes that she is a lesbian at the age of 19. Alison feelings towards other woman and her father feelings towards other men was a common bond between them. When Alison

All her life, where her father failed to be who he was, Alison proved she would be her true self and question her father on any threats he made to her own self discover. It made her become the person she believed she truly was on the inside. Without these challenges with her father’s denials, Alison may not have been able to embrace her sexuality in the manner she consistently displayed in the novel. Fun Home is a novel that must be revered in society for its ability to attack society’s normative societal structure, especially in an era when society was not willing to listen to people with different behaviors. It’s a novel about the struggle to discover one’s sexuality and the battle between reality and fiction in our

She is able to show the reader the effects of her father’s artificial behavior on her upbringing and her life after his death. Bechdel is able to convey the toxicity of gender roles and stereotypes within her life, and how they effect the way she was (or in this case, was not) received after she came out as a lesbian. This memoir is highly effective in bringing these issues to light in a digestible way, enhancing the reader experience. On the contrary, because of her emotional bias, Bechdel also creates an atmosphere of ambiguity surrounding the experiences of her life, forcing the reader to examine these encounters without knowing whether or not to accept them as fact. In conclusion, Bechdel’s skillful use of a comic-book style memoir successfully recreates the experiences of an upbringing in an emotionally abusive household, conveys the toxicity of gender roles and gender stereotypes, and tackles the role of point of view as an unreliable

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, is a graphic memoir written and illustrated with an elaborate process by Allison Bechdel. It depicts Allison’s childhood and understanding her sexual identity. As she is figuring out her own, she experiences a complex relationship with her father, who struggles with his own sexual identity but in a separate way. By incorporating themes such as sexual orientation, community, and communication, Allison created a story about understanding herself and her father. In this paper, I demonstrate how the literary allusions create a connection between Allison and the reader; this community established between herself and the reader, reflects her desire to be included in the gay community. I also will

It's early afternoon and I'm watching daytime television which leaves you with limited options. I could probably be doing something better with my time however it is summer break. So as a guilty pleasure, I relish in the antics featured on the Maury Show. Normally his show deals with life changing paternity shows. Occasionally, he veers away from his usual format to a once popular format: Is she a man or woman? This is a show that allows the audience to guess the gender of the person. It seems rather straight forward; the entertainment value is that it's difficult to tell at first glance. It forces you to carefully select which phenotypical traits are most appropriate for the gender you select. We all think we can innately tell the

This article analyzes how Bechdel’s work can facilitate queer youth gender establishment, while pointing at specific parts of the text that may be useful to those also struggling with finding their own identity. I find that this article is useful by providing a general outline for how one establishes identity and connects this to Bechdel’s visually important scenes in her text. Bauer also describes the use of other well-known literature as an attempt for Bechdel to relate her struggles internally and externally to something tangible. Connecting this literature to artifice, as well as the extremely difficult representations of Alison’s identity versus Bruce’s identity, will support my arguments and relay Bruce’s preference for fiction over reality. Bauer explains the different levels of versions of intimacy that both Bechdel and her father attribute to these renowned texts, while remaining unspoken in reality.

Bechdel mentions her extensive reading and how she discovered her sexuality first through books and the accounts and wisdom of her forerunners before she had her own experiences to judge from. In writing this novel detailing her coming of age story, wrestling with her father’s suicide, and exploring her sexuality often in graphic terms and illustrations, Bechdel transfers her knowledge and expands on this literary legacy of representing and giving a voice to the LGBTQ+ community and experience. Similar to Sexton, Bechdel recognizes in her writing that she is entering a discussion which has very few participants, both due to limited information and resources and further, from the shame perpetuated by social stigmas and ignorance. Arguably, American literature strives to educate its readers, not merely academically, but also socially and emotionally. Thus, by providing and illustrating their personal experiences, writers such as Wright, Bechdel, and Sexton teach their audiences about greater discussions, diverse opinions and traditions, and ultimately recognize the value in conscientiousness. Perhaps knowing every individual experiences and views the world in their own way may also empower every individual to live better

The sexual orientation identity development is a theoretical model that conceptualized the resolution of internal conflict related to the formation of individual sexual identity. For sexual minority people, it is commonly known as the coming-out process (Bilodeau & Renn 2005). There have been many different models elaborated to explain such process. All of them share similar stages: awareness, crisis, and acceptance (Loiacano 1989). When individuals become aware of their queer feelings and attraction, they try to block these homosexual feelings by constantly denying and minimizing them. This mechanism of defense leaves negative sequelae in their overall psychosocial well-being (Bilodeau & Renn 2005). Individuals tend to pass by a