According to "Eldis" (2013), “'Gender' refers to the socially constructed roles of and relations between men and women. , while 'Sex' refers to biological characteristics which define humans as female or male.” (1) Gender and sex are similar but they are not the same thing. I say this because a person can have the sexual characteristics of a man but still have the gender of a woman e.g. transgender. According to Lesbian & Gay Community Services Center, Inc. (2013),”Transgender," at its most basic level, is a word that applies to someone who doesn't fit within society's standards of how a woman or a man is supposed to look or act e.g. "Transgender" may be used to describe someone who was assigned female at birth but later realizes that label doesn't accurately reflect who they feel they are inside. This person may now live life as a man, or may feel that their gender identity can't be truly summed up by either of the two options we're usually given (male or female). (1, 2)…
I believe we need to treat transgender people equally just like we treat heterosexual people. It’s not by choice they assigned a gender at birth. For them their own inner gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned at birth. The essay, Transgender Portrayal Representation in Media, shows that more than a half of people mentally got effected by the influence of the media. Misleading of media hurts transgender people.…
When infants are born, the first words uttered from the doctor is the sex of the child. As soon as the sex is announced, the baby is already perceived a certain way. By categorizing human beings into two different genders, male or female, you are limiting these people by gender roles and societal expectations. When doing this it causes harm to anyone who strays from their gender or sex assigned at birth. A term to describe these people is transgender. A transgender person is someone whose identity is not the same as their gender assigned at birth. Many other identifying people fall under this category.It is time to deconstruct society's views on gender and provide necessary rights to transgender individuals. Transgender people not being accepted into society is a significant problem in contemporary culture that challenges the traditional norms of the gender binary.…
Bornstein (1994) states that “But the need for a recognizable identity, and the need to belong to a group of people with a similar identity-these are driving forces in our culture, and nowhere is this more evident than in the areas of gender and sexuality” (3).Transgender people face discrimination because they are not being accepted in society because of their sexual orientation. Also, they are not classified as men or women. They are categorized as unknown .Borstein (1994) states that “In most cultures, were assigned a gender at birth .In our culture once you’ve been assigned a gender, that what you are” (22).The changes that should reduce and eliminate inequality is by accept transgender as a sex category. Therefore, unknown category should be elimininated.Trangendered should be treated equality by integrating them in workforce and providing them opportunities .Also, there should be no limitation based on their sexual…
Unsurprisingly, transgenders, those who believe they are the opposite gender than their biological gender, have an increased rate of depression and anxiety, as well as substance use. The two mental illnesses go hand in hand, which just increases the chance of both being diagnosed. Transgenders are commonly bullied at school, and have no support from friends and family. They are consistently judged by their peers, and in the religious world are judged as going against the will of God. They have even been told that they are suffering from a mental illness, which also affects the likelihood that someone will seek treatment. Many transgenders tend to not go to therapy, or seek help because they wish to not direct attention and discuss their gender dysphoria. The question still remains whether being a transgender is actually a mental illness. Many transgenders are commonly diagnosed gender dysphoria, rather than depressed. They are continuously pushed to change their gender, and in this sense they are more commonly undiagnosed as having major depressive disorder, and thus also have a higher suicide rates than non-transgender people. So because of the psychiatrists who still view this gender dysphoria as being a mental disorder, many trans are being misdiagnosed as being co-diagnose, rather than the larger matter of the one major illness, major depressive disorder. This as well is shared with the idea of substance abuse. So many…
I never really thought about gender besides that we are born either a man or woman. I’ve worked with transgender individuals before and I didn’t think much about it except that they are who they want to be. The main thing I learned from that lesson is the dangers in how you handle gender with your children. In the McGraw-Hill site, we learned about a child named Storm and how his parents are raising him genderless. I talked about this in the discussion on what did we think, but it is just something that has stuck with me. The American Psychological Association’s Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Concerns Office stated that there is no research available that says weather being raised a “genderless child” is harmful or not. To me, that just means that what they are doing is an experiment that can go horribly wrong just because their oldest is a transgendered child. I will use this information in my family life, if we decided to have children I plan on not overemphasizing gender. I think that will just confuse them if they do not know their gender. If they decide later to change who they are, we will accept that and love them for…
Parko, J., Levy, D., Spears, S., (2015) Transgender Military Personnel in the Post-DADT Repeal Era: A Phenomenological Study. Retrieved from afs.sagepub.com…
There is a difference between a “transgender,” “transsexual,” and a “non-gender conforming” individual. A transgender is a person whose self-identity differs from their ascribed status. To clarify, an ascribed status is something that is assigned to a person at birth which cannot be altered such as skin color— in this case— sex; meanwhile, a transsexual is a person who willingly undergoes plastic surgery to actually alter their birth sex. A non-gender conforming person is someone who does not abide from society’s stereotypical views of how they should appear or behave based on what their ascribed status was originally. For example, in society the average female should appear as delicate as a porcelain doll with hair below shoulder length, pastel…
Transamerica is an example of how Hollywood portrays transgender people in film. The movie gets rolling when Huffman who portrays Bree a conservative pre-operative transsexual woman tells her therapist she discovered she had a son named Toby. She has to bail him out of jail in order for her therapist to allow her to have her procedure done in a week. The plot unfolds as they get to know each other driving back to California. However, Toby doesn’t know that Bree is his father. Transamerica reinforces a number of transgender stereotypes, and portrays both main characters with stereotypical feminine traits.…
Gender is the most important function in our society today. There are some many people out in the world that struggle finding their true identify. Transgender is a term for those who feel different because of their gender. Some people may define the word Transgender differently; some would like to be called Trans, or Transsexual. As a society we need to educate ourselves more on transgender people because it a process of change that impact them mentally , physical and socially.…
Swabb, D. F., & Hofman, M. A. (1995). Sexual differentiation of the human hypothalamus in relation to gender and sexual orientation. Trends in Neurosciences, 18(6), 264-270. doi:10.1016/0166-2236(95)80007-O…
Transgender people are some of the most ostracized people in our society. Many people claim that transgendered people have a mental disorder and they are constantly presented in media, not as actual people with real lives, but as punchlines to a joke. When we view people as jokes or freaks, we dehumanize them. This perpetuates a cycle of culturally validated violence against trans people, especially trans women. A national study discovered that 50% of transgendered people suffered sexual violence in their lifetime, which is a staggering amount. A large percent also suffer from non-sexual violence as well. Social scientist hypothesize that most of these rapes and attacks stem from transphobia, and these crimes are also overlooked. In many…
During last century, our society has changed a lot in terms of accepting minorities LGBTQ, despite there are still people who do not accept them. One of these minorities who had suffered more are the transgender people. They had to change their genders, usually late in life and hiding from the rest of the society. They had to live the entire life being someone who do not fit with their minds and personality. For this reason, Transgender kids should be allowed to start cross-sex hormones before puberty, because it facilitates their lives and it does not carry any further complication later, and they will not have problems during the complex period of adolescence.…
According to Dara Hoffman (2013), who has worked with transgender children, teens, adults, and the elderly, the common thing about transgender awareness is that it comes at a very young age. “There’s just an innate sense of gender, even before they know that boys do this stuff or girls do this stuff’ (p.1). Kevin Everhart, PhD (2013), is a clinical psychologist and early childhood specialist. He explains of transgender children that they have “an unshakable conviction and a knowledge that they are the sex they believe they are. (p.2).…
As someone who is gender fluid and has many transgender friends I understand what it can be like using a public bathroom. There is always someone there to tell you that you do not belong that and that you're not really the gender you are. Not only are transgender people being verbally abused in bathrooms there are also cases of physical abuse as well. There have been transgender people killed just because people can't learn to accept them. I have had friends who refuse to use a public restroom because they fear what could happen to them. No one deserves to live in fear of what could happen to them just because someone does not believe that they are who they are.…