6. In interview with John he reports that he has struggled with gender identity issues since childhood. He explained that he would experiment with presenting as a female. John stated that he became very confused by his feelings and emotions about his gender, and was comfortable playing with roles and adapt female mannerisms. He advised that once he commenced university studies that he felt that he ‘conformed’, but continued to emotionally struggle with his identity. This conformity continued through his career, and it was not until he posted to Sydney that he became more open about his feelings and emotional responses about being a female. John explained that in 2006/07 that he became affiliated with the transgender community and felt more
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.
By the time he was in his early 20's, Jamison knew he a part of him wanted to be transsexual, but he was afraid to acquire treatment because he was scared of what loved ones, strangers, and society would think of him. He believed the social mythology that one must be seriously psychologically imbalanced to perform such an act as actually changing ones sex (Green, 2004). Jamison did not want to risk losing all his social support that he had as an independent lesbian of his time. As Jamison later in life approached his mid-30’s he knew that he no longer wanted to live his life as a woman and he made the courageous step in seeking treatment for transsexualism. At the time Jamison was living
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
According to Jonathan Alexander’s chapter “ Transgender Rhetorics: Sex and Gender” he notes that “acknowledging the presence of the transgendered is useful not only for understanding those who are differently gendered or whose presentation … falls outside our ‘norms,’ but also for helping us interrogate the constructs of gender that we often take for granted as ‘natural’” (Alexander, 2008, pg. 130). Ways that the cisgendered public attempts to normalize gender roles is through literature where “male authors… depict a young woman as frightened and helpless, and the female authors… poke fun of the muscle-bound idiocy of a “macho” man”( Alexander, p. 137). The idea as the female being weak and terrified and the man as muscular moron help to reaffirm the cycle of “gender tied narrations” that are tied to society’s dominant public. This is important because society’s cisnormative narrative teaches that gender expressions have strict guidelines that are “innate” in us at birth. These instincts dictate a lot about an individual; however, the recognition of transgender individuals cause the cisgendered to think that “gender is not necessarily an essential and natural given, but rather a sociocultural construct whose repeated performances—as masculinity and femininity” (p. 131). The transgendered attempt to create a discourse to disrupt these social categories and show that there is more to one’s identity than what is socially constructed and self
Gender is defined as being male or female as defined by roles, social status, and attitude. The perception of oneself and what characterizes gender identity. Included in gender identity is hormone and behavior interaction, along with the examination of psychological, biological, and environmental influences on sexual separation.
I’m Dave, today at work, Mr. Disney made us work on the drawings of air planes coming down to attack, for the new Donald Duck episode on this war against Hitler, it’s tough to hear things floating around in the warehouse about how the teacher are teaching kids in Germany to hail Hitler. I was making a mosquito for the bombs and John was working on the Paint for the airplanes.
Throughout the past decades sex and gender have remained in major taboos and impacts within the transgender communities. Indeed, after participating in a Transgender Panel Discussion at Fresno State University, reading articles like Meet the Muxes, class discussions and the conclusion for all four sources lead to words like exclusion, discrimination, and oppressions because those define the lives of transgender, Muxes, and that for following their gender identities become the target for judgement and for countless . However, I never imagined that I could put myself in the shoes of these diverse identities until I visualized the challenges that fill their lives everyday for simply
Mark Yarhouse made interesting points as he presented his lecture over sexual identity and gender. The major conflict that was discussed was the tie between sexual identity and Christian faith. Yarhouse says society has three different lenses that we look through, such as integrity, diversity, and disability. All three of these views are expressed throughout the community and instead of singly looking at one we should look at all of them together while talking about it. A major question he asked during this lecture was: Is there something we can do to improve our Christian community dealing with sexual identity? Instead of being silent, a Christian community could be compassionate, care, love, be trustworthy, show God’s word and be a family.
Upon reading Minding Your Ethics there are four individuals in this story one of the main character goes by the name of John his story ends with the question “What should John do”? This question is in reference to John’s attention being drawn in by three men that are loud speaking in a bar about homosexuality and how these individuals are ruining the society. John is most bothered because he has friends that are of that homosexual orientation, he feels that the ignorance and non-factual statements that are being loudly spouted out by these men isn’t that its right, wrong or even forbidden but the morality is that John may want them to recognize is that it’s not our place as human beings to tell another individual how to live their life.
Social constructionism is pushing John to behave differently than how he wants to behave. In a way society was disturbing his normal growth as a child by changing who he thought he was, his gender identity. In the end, he knew he was a male, which relates back to gender essentialism.
What is Gender identity? Gender identity is the concept of him or herself as a gender. They may identity themselves either as a male or female or even neither. “Factors may include inherent or extrinsic environmental factors (Ghosh, 2017). “ A person may define themselves a particular gender, however, the reasons which follow may arise difference in opinions. Gender identity is usually discussed with issues relating to a dysfunction in both adults and children. Gender identity is not to be confused with gender role or gender orientation, as each term may be used diagnosis.
Many parents voice a fear about their child learning about gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation. They think that hearing, seeing, or learning these things will influence their child. According to research, however, no matter how often children are exposed to these topics they still will make their own decisions later on in life on the matter. Often parents are upset when they hear their children are learning about these terms because they do not know the dictionaries definitions for these words are. According to webster; gender is the state of being male or female, the word typically used to reference social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. Gender identity is a person’s perception of having a particular gender that may not correspond with the sex they were given at birth. Sexual orientation is a person’s sexual identity in relation to the gender to which they are attracted. Many times a person’s sexual orientation can be labeled as heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. Diversity is an important lesson to teach children especially at a young age. To understand how to best teach diversity about gender in a classroom background information, teaching strategies, and student’s understanding of diversity is important.
Living a life feeling out of place, with the wrong feelings, and in the wrong body, for a person with Gender Identity Disorder, this is how they feel day to day. According to the DSM-IV-TR, Gender Identity Disorder is characterized by a strong, persistent cross-gender identification, persistent discomfort with his or her sex or sense of inappropriateness in their gender role of that sex. According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), children, adolescents and adults who exhibit a preoccupation with getting rid of or losing their primary and secondary sex characteristics, associated with different mannerisms and actions of the opposite sex; while holding a belief that he or she was born the wrong sex are believed to be classified
The construction of a self-identity can be a very complex process that every individual is identity is developed through the lenses of cultural influences and how it is expected to given at birth. Through this given identity we are expected to think, speak, and behave in a certain way that fits the mold of societal norms. This paper aims to explain how gender perform gender roles according these cultural values. I intend to analyze the process in which individuals learned and internalized their respective gender identities, through their cultural background. I will be conducting a set of interviews with the intention to compare my experience as a self-identified male of Mexican descent, to the experience of another male character of Japanese heritage in order to understand how we come to self-identify as masculine in diverged cultures. In this paper, I argue that the construction of gender identities is a direct consequence of societal influential factors such as family values; values that reflect the individual’s culture. This analysis will not only utilize evidence from these identity formations, but also in explaining why and how these self-identities were constructed using both theoretical sources and empirical studies as a framework.
Throughout today’s society, there are multiple views and opinions on whether or not there are more than two genders or if gender is even just a social construct. Each person has their own individual preference on how they express their gender. Therefore, we can no longer assume what someone identifies as just by looking at them. Over the years I have learned more about gender expression and gender identity as I gained friends who were homosexual as well as transgender. I feel as if I was introduced to all of these ways of life at a young age, therefore I can, in some ways, teach those who are uneducated and do not know what to think. I have personally never really thought about the different gender identities I could label myself as but as of right now I identify as a cisgender female