Women In Orange Is The New Black

Media often reflects the ideas society has about certain minorities, such as transgender individuals. This is a significant motive to analyze the treatment of transgender in such communications in order to reveal society’s true assumptions and judgments about this marginalized group. The lack of involvement of the LGBTQ community in media and the stereotypical depictions of queer sexuality leads us to believe media has become a negative platform. This matter is perceived in the episode “Lesbian Request Denied” from the television series Orange Is The New Black as it captures Lavern Cox’s struggle in prison as a transgender individual. As I considered the impact of cultural gender definitions on transgender people, I further wanted to discover
A masculine woman in a female prison adopts a social role as well as a sexual role as what is termed the “aggressor”. Since the identity of transgender differs across prisons themselves, the authors state that research done on the treatment of transgender individuals in prison can only be conducted when this is understood. The authors argue that not recognizing the different status of the transgender population in women’s prisons will render them invisible instead of the assistance we think we are providing by labeling them transgender. The methods used were qualitative, utilizing focus groups of prisoners to question them about social concepts. This method is used properly for the hypothesis the researchers sought to prove, yet encounters translation issues. The basis of the author’s argument if that transgender people in women’s prisons are seen as aggressors, a separate social standing. However, we only see this through their transcriptions of interviews, as the participants never explicitly state it. This exposes a level of bias in the researchers although the structures of the focus groups were thoughtful and controlled. As this article was written in 2015, the data retrieved is current and relevant to the issues being researched. As we continue to study the treatment of transgender peoples, it is important to recognize these author’s findings that the term we use is different depending on the environment and would thusly affect the research. This study exposes the novel idea that being transgender in a women’s prison can actually be beneficial in many ways, opposite of the treatment seen in men’s prison. This new outlook is vital in analyzing the representation of transgender people in media as well as properly observing and finding