I had a hard time finding picture directly related to my blog because it focused mainly on the gender reveal in the movie The Crying Game, so I found this picture intriguing because it gave a sense of where transgender people stood in the US, which is not too promising to our culture today.
From the readings assigned over the past few
classes, I gravitated more towards Bornstein's, Gender
Outlaw. This reading as a
whole focused on some key concepts such as gender defenders, gender outlaws,
and gender terrorists. Bornstein writes as a transgender herself, so the reader
sees through the eyes of a transgender person, about why the public is afraid
of breaking the gender binary, and just how strong the gender binary is in
culture today still. The section I particularly found enthralling was that pertaining
to the movie The Crying Games and how secretive the movie became because
of its content. This portion pulled me in because it really had me asking the
question “why”. “Why” questions came in my head for almost every sentence I
read from the reading, but these ones stuck out more to me. The part of the
reading that also goes along with the whole secret of the movie is the vomiting
of the character Fergus when he finds out the woman he was attracted to had a
penis and was actually ttransgender This section can be found on pages 72-74.
While reading through
this, I had a lot of ideas and thoughts racing through my mind. The first
question I asked myself was, why keep this part of the movie a secret, for the
reasons that people did? If the character in the movie was transgender why
did the public not want people to know about it? Were the viewers themselves so
repulsed by the thought of a transgender person that it was worth keeping the whole movie under the radar to the public? This thought process by the people watching
the movie at the time just confused me. However the reading cared to explain
the “secret” in words of transgender people as a whole, Bornstein writes, “I
think the ‘keep the secret’ response on the part of the public was more a reflection
of how the gender defenders of this culture would like to see transgender people: as a secret, hidden away in some closet” (page 74). In a way this made
clear sense to me, because we as a culture are uneducated about anything or
anyone that lies outside of the gender binary, or even still people who are gay
confuse the majority of the public today (although I personally believe we have
come a long way with that from where it started at). However, once I put more
thought into it, and broke down what it was that Bornstein was saying, it made
more sense to me. Not in a good way, but in a way that made me disappointed in
the public, and our culture back when the movie was popular, and even now.
To further understand
this quote I’d like to try and define gender defender as Bornstein does. After
finishing the reading I thought that gender defender is any person, group of
people, or anything particularly in general that keeps the gender binary. For
example, a few gender defenders we named in class were gay bashers, some religious
organizations, pop culture, family heritage, etc. Each one sticks to the idea
that there are two genders and no more, and if you do not fit into one of those
genders you are truly an outcast. This helps the reader to understand the quote
more because now they know that “gender defenders” of this culture do not want
to see transgender people at all, because transgender people threaten the
binary that they all know and have known their whole lives. This correlates
with the movie in a sense that the majority of the public were gender
defenders, and for the most part still are gender defenders, and they did not
want to spread awareness of the transgender people by addressing the movie to
anyone. My thoughts on this are that if they had in their minds that if they were
to address the movie to friends or family it could possibly bring awareness to
the public at the time, about transgender people, which could POSSIBLY lead
to the acceptance of transgender people, and that would just be far too much
for anyone to handle, especially the gender defenders. Because if they public
knew more about transgender people alone, this could start to shatter the
gender binary, and too many people today in culture are afraid of change, small
or large, and to people this would be too big of a change.
I honestly think
change is the main reason we as a whole are in the dark about those who do not
fit within the gender binary, because as a people we are afraid of change and
new things. New means we do not yet know what it can do to harm or hurt us, and
we are less educated about it. The public likes to know exactly what is going
on all the time, which is just how it works, or at least my opinion on how I
believe us as a culture handle change. Especially since this change which has
been occurring for a long time but no one cares to surface, is about a subject
matter which has been around since the beginning of time: boys and girls. Something
that has been so solidified (at least we thought), and this change could completely
destroy that sense of comfort for our culture of something we know and are used
to. Another contributing factor to the lack of change in our gender binary is
that most men would feel threatened if women were to become men and have the
same power as a “real” man. Or vice versa, if a man becomes a woman it is more
so downgrading because why, if you are born a man and have powers and dominance
as a man has and is born with, would you want to become submissive and lose all
the “power” (for lack of a better term) that you have? It does not make sense
in the eyes of people who disagree with change, or who do not understand that
people are born the way they are, and they cannot change that.
My question is, does
anyone think we as a culture will we ever be accepting of not only
transgender people, but to everyone who disrupts the gender binary? And if
so, why has nothing been done to change the harsh negativity towards these “gender
terrorists”, since they have been around forever almost (based off of previous
readings we learned transgender people have been around for as long as time)?
The article I found online to contribute to my blog is based off of the movie The Crying Game, and I found it interesting because it says the "secret" was kept for the hype of the movie... and that "the secret is something that has caught on in a way in America", which I believe is a discrete way of agreeing with the fact the world is not ready to break the gender binary. I could be wrong though, just my opinion I thought it was interesting because it addressed "the secret" directly.
I also really liked this cartoon because it hits home for the fact that our culture has not yet accepted transgender people, and how against it the US really is.
Pictures:
First one- http://jmuwomensstudentcaucus.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/trans-characters-take-the-mainstage/
sccond one- http://wtfpoliticalcartoons.tumblr.com/post/21708993637/tw-transphobia-this-comic-can-be-read-in-two
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