The American Psychology Association defines transgender as a "term for persons whose gender identity, gender expression, or behavior does not conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth". Gender and sex are not the same thing. Gender refers to the "levels of masculinity or femininity" (LGBT Resources) a person exudes. A transgender person expresses themselves in a way that is heavily strays, or is entirely opposite, from the usual behavior of their anatomical sex. For exapmle a person may be born a woman biologically but prefers to dress and behave like a man. Trangender is a term used to identify people in this category; however it "is not a sexual orientation" (LGBT Resources). A transgender person "may have any sexual orientaion".
Personally, I did not understand the difference between gender and sex until it was clarified today in class. I thought the two terms were interchangeable. In addition I always thought a transgender person was a person that had surgery in order to have physical features of the opposite sex, so this definition definitely helped to dispel my confusion.
ReplyDeleteDoes that mean tomboys are transgender?( random question). I found this very enlighting because of how the media always associate transgender with homesexuality I always thought they related. I find it very interesting that the world has it set ways on how females and males are suppose to act. If a girl like to play basketball and dresses in male attire it makes her strange?
ReplyDeleteSince I had the word gender, I was immediately drawn to this blog. I to believed that the word "gender" and the word "sex" meant the same thing, however through my research I found that the word gender was simply a category which places items with similar characteristics within. It makes sense when that word transgender means the changing of original characteristics of a person.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read this blog post I automatically thought back to the article that we read on the first day of class. The article discussed whether boys should be limited to buying blue toys and girls should be limited to buying pink toys. IIn order to elaborate on your definition of transgender you say, "For exapmle a person may be born a woman biologically but prefers to dress and behave like a man" thus once raising the same question that the article alluded to. I struggle to grasp the concept of what is the "norm" of dressing and behaving like a man? Why in society do we place these stereotypical characteristics upon men and women. Surely if society did not view men as the alpa males and women as the princess then when there would be no usual behaviors for them to stray away from and no need for these labels.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I just read Chelsea's post and I realize how similar our points of view are.
ReplyDeleteI don't think someone who is transgender is merely someone who dresses like the opposite sex. It is someone who "finds that their gender identity does not match their biological sex." So if a person feels that their anatomy does not match the gender that they feel they are, and they think or act in a way that is typically expected of the opposite gender, and one way they choose to express that feeling is through clothing, then that is someone who is a transgender. Someone who likes to behave in a way that does not always line up with what is expected of their gender does not make them transgender unless they also beleive that they are a different gender than their sex suggests.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everyone's point that transgender means that dress like the opposite sex. However, in modern-day society we have stereotypical views of how a man should look and act, and of how a woman should look and act. These stereotypes are deeply rooted into our society, and have existed for many years. Any deviation from these stereotypes causes society to see you as different and ridicule you for it. To answer Chelsea's question, if a woman plays basketball and dresses like a man society will view them as strange because they are not acting like a stereotypical woman should. While just simply dressing like the opposite sex is not technically transgender, the fact that they are deviating from stereotypes means that they are different, so society classifies them as transgender.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ally. From my findings I believe that though the way a person dresses may indicate that they are transgender, it is much deeper than that. It goes past just being a 'tomboy' to the way the person identifies themselves and I believe that the cross-dressing and other similar things come later.
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