Transsexuals and Provocative Manikins

Last night my mom and I were watching a documentary on the Discovery Health channel called Sex Change. Though we have watched documentaries and read about transsexuals on several different occasions throughout the semester, it is still a subject that fascinates me and crushes me at the same time. Over the course of the show, we were able to meet five different people (4 females and 1 male) who went through with the surgery and the hormone treatments. While I was hearing each of the individuals’ stories, I kept thinking about how I never would have known that they were born as something different. I think it is so amazing that we have the capability to improve peoples’ lives like this so that they are able to live feeling “normal” and happy about themselves. The show ended with the camera focusing in on a bustling city street with the time sped up, and the narrator explained that at any moment in our day-to-day lives we might come in contact with a transsexual and not even know it. We then zoomed in on a man leaning against a building who we found out was the producer of the show and who is also a successful writer. The narrator then informed us that this man was born as a female. I loved the way that the show was filmed and produced. It showed that people who do get sex changes are able to live more normal lives without the daily stigma of feeling different or abnormal.

Something else I have been thinking about has to do with the manikin displays in store windows. When I went to the mall with Brittany and Kayse about a week ago, I felt like I was paying more attention to the ways that males and females are represented because of what I have learned in this class. Every female manikin had her legs showing (except for maybe one in the ENTIRE mall, which is strange—shouldn’t the stores be marketing winter clothes?) and she was placed in a pose that was both unnatural and unrealistic. Victoria’s Secret, for example, featured women in the front window in very provocative and sexual poses that were incredibly unnatural. Victoria’s Secret ads get to me anyway because I have trouble believing that they are geared towards their female customers…

This is an interesting article about how New York City is going to make it easier for transgendered people to change the sex on their birth certificates--even before they have surgery...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/07/AR2006110701262.html


Maybe they'll lead the way with this.

What is Feminism?

I just came from my sociology class, where we had a somewhat disturbing conversation about feminism. Our professor asked us to get out a sheet of paper and write "What is feminism?" at the top. Then underneath the question, he asked us to write whatever came to mind about feminism and to indicate on the back of the sheet whether we were male or female. He collected these papers and showed them to us on the overhead projector so that we could see our peers’ comments/opinions about the meaning of feminism.

Out of 120 students in the class, there were only about 15 of us who would even dare to raise our hands and identify ourselves as feminists or who, on our comment sheets, even knew what feminism was. One male student wrote on his sheet that feminism is "petty," and when his comment was shown to the rest of the class, quite a few people were upset. He attempted to explain himself by saying that he thought women who want to change the language are just being petty and that they should focus on larger problems. The example he used was the word "mankind." He could not begin to understand why a feminist would be upset by a word that describes the species (his exact words) and he thinks it is dumb that women focus their attention on such "stupid" things.

When he said this, it even got my professor (who is a male) riled. The student obviously has not been paying attention in class this semester if he couldn’t understand why words and the structure of our language could cause such a problem. One of the first things we learned about in the class was the Sapir-Whorf principle, which explains that language shapes how we think about and perceive everything in society. He couldn’t grasp that words like "mankind" or the pronoun "he" are the basis of male superiority and gender inequality in our society. These generalizations fail to recognize that something else exists and it creates a sense of otherness to those it excludes (like we talked about yesterday in class).

A female in the class suggested to this confused student that we use "womankind" to describe the species. I’m sure you can only guess what his reaction to that was…

Halloween Madness

Yesterday morning I caught the beginning of a story on the Today Show before I had to run out the door for school. The report focused on the change that has taken place in women’s Halloween costumes, and how the vast majority of the costumes out there are basically another contributing factor to the objectification of women.

There were two costumes that struck me the most. One was supposed to look like a correctional officer’s uniform, but really did not look like one at all. It consisted of a pair of disgustingly short booty shorts and a short sleeve button-up shirt that would accentuate a woman’s chest. Another costume was supposed to make a woman look like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. Honestly, if I had seen someone wearing this costume--Dorothy is probably the last thing I would have thought of if a person asked me to guess what they were trying to be. In the movie, Dorothy is a very conservatively dressed person, and there is nothing revealing about her. The costume was a completely different story. Besides being blue and white with ruffled sleeves, it was nothing like what was worn in The Wizard of Oz.

These costumes were terrible. I think that if I hadn’t been running out the door for class, I probably would have shut off the TV anyway. This class has really made me start to see the consequences of almost everything around me, and sometimes it can be too overwhelming and frustrating to take in—but I love it at the same time.

While I was out trick-or-treating with my 8-year-old sister last night, we passed a woman who was basically naked. She was standing with a large group of kids—I think some might have been her own children and the others were the kids’ friends, which makes what I am about to say even worse. Her husband/partner was dressed as Superman and I believe she was supposed to be Wonder Woman. Her costume consisted of a red, white, and blue skin-tight leotard that didn’t really have any chest coverage and then it also had a cape (thank God!). I was offended by this costume for several reasons. The first is because there were so many young kids around and I think it is completely inappropriate for them to be exposed to things like that—I don’t even think I should have to be exposed to that. Second, I don’t think she was wearing the costume for her own comfort. Its aim was obviously to appeal to men. And by wearing this costume, especially in the presence of so many impressionable children, she was demonstrating that women are supposed to dress in a revealing way in order to be seen as attractive in the eyes of men. I think it is another factor that will perpetuate the objectification of women and make the terrible cycle continue for years to come.