In her article, “A Scar is More than a Wound: Rethinking Community and Intimacy through Queer and Disability Theory”, Karen Hammer examines how Jess’ traumatic experiences in Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues becomes the foundation for her and other transgenders to find “community and intimacy” (160). In doing so, Hammer expertly highlights Jess’ constant need to establish a home of acceptance to combat the violence she faces throughout the novel. Therefore, Jess uses her traumas to form connections with other transgenders to provide a sense of community. However, Hammer fails to acknowledge the consequences of forming a community based on shared experiences of violence. Jess expresses these consequences in her willingness to give up on the …show more content…
In this moment, they both recognize the hardening within them evident in their strong emotional responses toward each other. For example, Jacqueline has “tears just start spilling from her eyes” coinciding with Jess having the same euphoric feeling she had the night she “dance with Yvette” (Feinberg 37). In a sense, Feinberg uses these reactions to highlight the impact their shared memories have on both characters. Therefore, both characters recognize how much they have changed since he horrifying experience of their night in jail together; they have become defined by those violent experiences effectively rendering them speechless in response to the realization of this devastating reality. Moreover, Jacqueline quickly retreats from the scene to protect the pureness of her shared memories with Jess. In this action, Jacqueline’s empathizing her willingness to give up on regaining a past version of herself to protect its meaning for Jess; she doesn’t want to taint the experiences of the summer in Niagara for Jess with the aftermath of the violence experienced in jail. Therefore, Jacqueline doesn’t want to destroy the meaning of Niagara for Jess, expertly described by Hammer, “she enjoys for the first time a sense of social location, community, self-respect, and sexual love”(161), with her own downward spiral; a decision Jess accepts without resistance effectively providing a commentary on violence’s horribly remarkable ability to separate bonds born out of shared traumatic
On the second night of March in 2016 in the quaint city of Burlington, Iowa, the body of 16-year-old Kedarie Johnson was found stuffed in an alley with two gunshots to the chest, a plastic bag shoved down his throat, and a bottle of bleach by his side. His murder in cold blood triggered a cascade of events that led to the murder trials of two men, questionable and controversial federal involvement backed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and new light shed on continuing debates of gender identity inclusivity policies and legislature in the justice system. The Victim and His Murderers: Context A “popular junior, known for his infectious laugh and dazzling grin,” (Davey, 2017) Kedarie was an admired member of his community whose sudden death shook the inconsequential city he’d lived in. His family moved from the West Side of Chicago in hopes of a better future to the predominantly white area.
A person’s fundamental beliefs and attitudes can be greatly influenced by the people in their lives. As an illustration, the presence of parents in a child 's life can influence them greatly. Parenting goes far beyond the care of the child, as parents also have a significant influence on the child’s personality, emotional development, and behavioral habits. Like in Karen Thompson Walker dystopian novel The Age of Miracles, the protagonist 's parents also have a crucial impact on her self-discovery. The novel is an inventive story, combining classic coming-of-age themes with the horror of a natural disaster of apocalyptic proportions.
Marsha P. Johnson was a Black actress, drag queen, sex worker, and trans woman who lived from June 27, 1944 to July 6, 1992 (Born; Parker; Pay It No Mind). She is best remembered for being at the center of the 1969 Stonewall Riots (Tungol). In fact, some claim that she started these riots on June 28, 1969 after racist and homophobic police officers raided The Stonewall Inn, a known gay club in New York City’s Greenwich Village (Born; Gossett). Additionally, with the support of Sylvia Rivera, who she was mentoring at the time, she founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in 1970, which provided a safe space for homeless transgender teens and drag queens and advocated for the inclusion of transgender rights in the gay rights
Danielle L. McGuire’s At the Dark End of the Street, “an important, original contribution to civil rights historiography”, discusses the topic of rape and sexual assault towards African American women, and how this played a major role in causing the civil rights movement (Dailey 491). Chapter by chapter, another person's story is told, from the rape of Recy Taylor to the court case of Joan Little, while including the significance of Rosa Parks and various organizations in fighting for the victims of unjust brutality. The sole purpose of creating this novel was to discuss a topic no other historian has discussed before, because according to McGuire they have all been skipping over a topic that would change the view of the civil rights movement.
Even to this day, shame about one’s sexual orientation remains a prominent topic. Whether one identified themselves as gay, lesbian, and transgender, society viewed them and their actions as a sin, a crime, and a disease, which only increased the amount of shame–a painful feeling of distress or humiliation caused by the consciousness of wrong or fooling behavior–they saw within themselves. Then changes began to occur as a group of gays, lesbians, and transgender people confronted police in an event known as the Stonewall Riots or the Stonewall Uprising, which became a turning point for gay liberation. Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home is a 1980s, family tragicomic-graphic memoir that addresses this perspective turning point through the use of the labyrinth
Crenshaw (1989, 1993) argued that race and gender are not mutually exclusive social identities that a Black woman experiences, the intersection of race and sexuality go accordantly with each other. Similarly, hooks argued that they are equally congruent values to the lives of those affected by such identities (2000). Crenshaw (1989) criticized the feminist movement for its failure to consider and promote the voices of women in the margins; the women who occupy more than one oppressed space and hold more than one oppressed status because of their race, sexuality, class, as well as gender. She noted, in “mapping the margins,” as did hooks, that some women are so oppressed in ways other than their gender that they do not see the feminist movement
Greendale review talks about how the story helps “raise awareness about the unprecedented level of violence inflicted on transgender people.” This story is set to show the need for representation of the transgender people. The scene in which the reviewer uses to describe the mistreatment of the agender community was the scene in which Richard sees Sasha sitting on the bus.
In the book,”The Program.” by Suzanne Young, Young begins with the protagonist,a seventeen year old named Sloane Barstow, who witnesses her classmate, Kendra Phillips, being taken away by a handler during school. Kendra Phillips is terrified and barely hanging on to reality. Two years ago, Sloane's brother, named Brady, committed suicide and six weeks earlier, her friend Lacey was taken by “The Program” as well as her father because she was “sick” In an attempt to manage with the constant monitoring of their reactions to all of this, Sloane, James Murphy, and their friend Miller try to cover their emotions and act normal.
There is a sharp contrast between shame and self-acceptance. One must psychologically determine which they will let dictate their actions. Shame tends to impede one’s own progression of this self-acceptance. This is an apparent feature in Dorothy Allison’s “Trash”, as she navigates between the two interchangeably by giving the reader a taste of her personal life. In this autobiography she allows the reader to delve into the personal and dark times in her life.
Katherena Vermette’s novel The Break, is centered around a sexual assault. Through the perspective of eight narrators the story unfolds over the day leading up to the attack, memories triggered by the assault, and the recovery of all those involved. The novel’s two strongest themes are a juxtaposition of gender disparity and the strength and resilience of the women and girls involved. Gendered performance is common throughout the book, for both men and women, although the focus is on the female characters.
Pauli Murray’s Proud Shoes tells the story of Murray’s family as they developed through segregation. After the death of her parents, Murray is taken to live with her grandparents, Robert and Cornelia Fitzgerald. Proud Shoes focuses on the life of Robert and Cornelia and how they experienced life differently due to their individual situations. This book discusses how race and gender played key roles in the life of Robert and Cornelia. Through this discussion, readers are able to understand a broader American life based on individual experiences and express topics on gender identity and gender difference.
In Ross Haenfler’s book, Straight Edge: Clean-Living Youth, Hardcore Punk, and Social Change, he discusses and evaluates the many aspects that are present in straight edge (sXe) culture. Straight edge individuals define themselves as being members of the larger punk subculture. Furthermore, in addition to being “punk,” they refrain from alcohol use, drug use, and premarital sex. In chapter six of this book, Haenfler examines the obstacles that straight edge women face, specifically in the Denver punk scene.
Title: Brown Girl Dreaming Author: Jacqueline Woodson Some background information about this book is that the author is the main character, Jacqueline Woodson, She writes this book using free-verse poems which all tell the story of her life. The plot: Jackie is born in Ohio, where she has lived her entire life.
The queer historical past has been characterized positively, with aspects such as identification, desire, longing, and love highlighted (31). In contrast, Heather Love seeks to focus on the negative aspects that characterize the relationship of queer history amid the past and present, in her work, “Emotional Rescue: The demands of Queer History,” the first chapter in her book, “Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History” (31-32). According to Love, some queer critics have failed to include the harsher accounts when studying queer cross-historical relations. The negative aspects of the past that queer figures can relate to makes it relevant. In her article, Love critiques various works to identify the negative aspects present within the queer history.
The space to express their own feelings, thoughts, and needs spends a good deal of time with kid’s parents and peer groups. It shows the difficulties the trans youth face in making themselves understood by those around them, the obstacles closest to them must be defeated to take a big step about their lives. For a child to change their identity isn’t easy nor is it for the parents to accept the change from being ‘he’ to be a ‘she’ or vice or versa. To accept for the child’s happiness families, move to different towns to start a new life so the child can create a new social