Gender Discrimination In Frankenstein

In early hunter-gatherer societies, labor was divided based on sex. Women were the sole reproductive force, and thus needed to bare, breastfeed, and raise children, which confined them to the settlement for the majority of their lives—increasing their dependence on men for information and resources. Over time this led to the development of gender roles, or societal norms that dictate the types of behaviors which are generally acceptable for people based on their biological sex. Masculine behaviors are usually associated with strength, aggression, and dominance—while feminine roles are usually associated with passivity, nurturing, and subordination. It is important to note that gender and sex are distinct concepts: sex refers to the biological
Radical feminism rejects the notion of male and female identities, and thus can sometimes entail discrimination against transgender populations. Transgenderism is based on an individual not identifying as their assigned sex, but for radical feminists, that means that transgender men were trying to escape their female oppression, and transgender women are exercising the ultimate form of male privilege by commodifying aspects of the female identity without accepting any of the oppression that comes with it (Goldberg). The problem is that this idea directly invalidates the existence of transgender individuals. In My Words to Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix, Susan Stryker, a transgender author and professor, relates the transgender experience, to that of Frankenstein’s monster. She writes, “The transsexual body is an unnatural body… It is flesh torn apart and sewn together again in a shape other than that in which it was born. In these circumstances, I find a deep affinity between myself as a transsexual woman and the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Like the monster, I am too often perceived as less than fully human due to the means of my embodiment…” Stryker explains the disdain for the trans body by certain members of the LGBTQ community, notably, the editor of a popular San Francisco gay/lesbian periodical who wrote, “I consider transsexualism to be a fraud, and the participants in it … perverted. The transsexual [claims] he/she needs to change his/ her body in order to be his/her “true self.” Because this “true self’ requires another physical form in which to manifest itself, it must therefore war with nature. One cannot change one’s gender. What occurs is a cleverly manipulated exterior: what has been done is mutation. What exists beneath the deformed