Media plays a tragic role in how we perceive gender and sexuality. What we view on television and images that we see in advertisements, ultimately shape our views. In our most recent discussions about what it means to be transgender, and who this category includes, we have many times expressed the complications of this category in that it includes so many stereotypes and pre-judgments. We have established that being transgender does not mean that you are gay. From this we have also come to the realization that transgender does not and can not rightfully express someones sexual identity. Valentine provides a list of those who he believes are included in this group of transgender individuals. The variety of his list, I believe, attempts to combat the typical and misconceived notion of what a transgender person is. As a class, we have also agreed that visibility tends to be the most problematic when finding a way to describe and name someone a transgender individual. This seems to be the most exclusively relevant to me because I believe that our general perceptions about some of the ways society systematically defines different things, are all perpetuated and confirmed by images and performance.
If you go to the edit post page, you can look at the video of isis on the Tyra show (unfortunatley im having difficulty tagging the video to this document). Isis was born a man, but with Tyra's help, she was able to change her body anatomically and be named a woman. What I find interesting about this clip which I hadn't seen before, was the part of the show where Isis's boyfriend comes on stage. Interestingly enough, Tyra asks him, how does he sexually identify himself. Is he bi, straight, or gay. He replies straight, because regardless of how Isis used to look like a man, she is now a woman and for him she was always a woman anyways, so he considers himself to be heterosexual. What I find important about his comment, is that the way that Isis's boyfriend justifies his own sexual orientation is through her visibility. How she looks on the outside, is how he perceived himself as a heterosexual male. In reading the comments on this video post, I found one particular comment extremely interesting, and it was actually a concern of my own. One respondent asked,if Isis was able to have sex. Or therefore how does she have sex. I think this is important to think about especially to justify her desires to change the anatomy of her body, and also how that change has affected her own sexual desires. Ultimately, I think this video kind of dramatizes her "life journey," as Tyra calls it. I think that it also leaves a lot of things unexplained that are really important;more important than just the visible changes the surgical procedures have given Isis. This surgery goes beyond her just feeling more comfortable because she can look in the mirror and see a woman, I'm concerned more about the feeling. Lastly, I wanted to point out another statement her boyfriend made, when he said that before Isis went through surgery she was still a woman to him because she acted like a woman. I find this justification problematic, because now identity has fallen into the traps of performance, expectations and stereotypes. What should make up identity? How can we speak about identity without conforming to stereotypical perceptions? I'm not sure how to combat this issue, but I think it will certainly be a process and not something that can happen immediately.
I understand your point ,when Isis’s boyfriend says he felt Isis was a woman to him because she acted like a woman, in his justification being problematic because of the traps of performance, expectations, and stereotypes.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I feel that because she identified as a woman she did act and perform in feminine ways. And being her friend he saw her as a female, which is what she is, even when her outer appearance was male, and she was not yet going through the transition of becoming female, and still in the “performance” of being male.
I agree that combating the issue of identity is not something that can happen over night, and getting rid of stereotypes is not an immediate reality...and it might not ever be. But I think being aware of how we identify ourselves and how we identify others is a good start.