The Wire: Chapter Analysis

In the late 1950’s to mid-1960’s, the transgender community faced discrimination such as physical and verbal harassment, denial of social spaces, and alienation in the media. This matters to us today because transgender individuals are still existing and are a part of our human population today. The community is also still struggling to find their representation in the media and in society. The transgender community is still facing a wide array of types of discrimination, from nasty looks to denied access of education. Gender identity should not be taken into consideration when determining another person’s worthiness of respect.

Scholars have been critical of the medical establishment’s and state’s involvement in constructing and policing of transgender identity. These kinds of pressing issues have occupied the small existing literature. There is not much information and studying what is being done on transgender in traditional areas, family studies research, such as their dating behavior and formation of intimate relationships in adulthood. There is little research on the issues around being parents, their children’s experiences with having transgendered parents, as well as relationships in the family as a whole, and relationships in work and school.

“Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She” is a documentary that shows a brief explanation on human sexuality. It shows how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people fit in society in various places such as U.S, India, and Thailand. Most transgender people have been struggling to define differences. Most of all, it is not a choice they made to be a transgender, rather it comes naturally. Transgender people face severe discrimination in every day aspects of their life. Based on the documentary, I would like to focus on the discriminations that is happening on transgender people. I would like to see transgender people in at work place, at schools, and at the public.

In a recent podcast regarding a transgender high school student being forced to change in the nurse’s office instead of in the locker room with other students addressed the controversy regarding the treatment of members of our society who identify as LGBTQ. Throughout the podcast, multiple individuals have voiced support for the school’s decision to isolate the transgender student when changing. Do to the opinions voiced in the podcast regarding this case, I realized that the treatment of the high school student is only one example of the existing discrimination towards those who identify as LGBTQ. As such, I intend to explore the controversy of LGBTQ and our obligations that we have as members of the same society. Throughout this paper, I

Hispanics, mostly Mexicans, are not being treated equally because of their different culture and lifestyle and people need to treat them fairly and enforce laws against discrimination. In the book, Crossing the Wire, Hobbs displays what a Mexican has to go through when they are crossing the border to the United States for a good cause. Hispanics have been discriminated ever since the Mexicans gained independence in 1821 from Spain. In recent years African Americans have been receiving the most attention in America because of so much racial discrimination, but they are not the only big race being discriminated. Mexicans are getting just as much hate. This problem is going to continue because the Mexican population in the United States is rapidly growing. Humans need to figure out a solution to stop this hatred, so all races can unite with each other. If we unite we can try to agree with each other on things and make the earth a better place to live.

American society today is not any different from the past, except today people are apt to discuss everything publicly on various social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram just to name a few. Transgender persons happen to be one of those subjects that have become the hot topic of the new normal. Nowadays there are blogs, tweets, and pictures posted online of people’s transition “coming out.” Like the past, society is still tough when it comes to judging each other. Although transgender might not have had a recognized community in the past, it is prevalent that society is becoming more accepting of their community, and aware of issues their community faces. In this essay the names, nouns, or pronouns used will be in accordance to the individual’s preference.

In the documentary Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She, the prejudices towards transgender and intersex individuals, as well as the fear they experience because of these prejudices, are underlined. A transgender individual is one that identifies with a gender that is not associated with their biological sex. An intersexual individual, however, is one that is born with indefinite sexual anatomical characteristics, making it difficult to identify as a male or female (Croteau & Hoynes, 2013). In addition, this documentary emphasizes the impact of cultural expectations on sexual orientation and gender identification.

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community has never received as much attention as they are right now. Much of this attention is stemming from this population struggling to obtain the same rights given to the remainder of the population. The LGBT community faces many challenges in their personal system, social environment, and then in the public system. In working with the LGBT population, the social worker needs to examine how the individual views themselves, not only through sexual identity, but as an individual. We need to look at the prejudices and condemnation they have encountered which may have led to further uncertainty or confusion.

The oppression that the LGBT+ community faces even though is not as prevalent in the past century, it is still a problem that many people experience. As shown by Woodford, Kulick, Sinco, & Hong, (2014) who observed the stress that microaggressions and discrimination from subtle heterosexism can cause for LGBT+

Grossman, Arnold H. Anthony R. D’Augelli. “Transgender Youth: Invisible and Vulnerable.” Journal of Homosexuality. Vol. 51, No. 1 (2006): pages 111-128. Web. 25 June 2015. Arnold H. Grossman, a professor of Applied Psychology at New York University, and Anthony R. D’Augelli, professor of Human Development at Pennsylvania State University, did a study of Transgender youth from ages 15 to 21. The study was designed to determine the factors that affect the youth, who either identify as transgender or their gender does not fit the normal gender descriptions. Focus groups were used as nonthreatening environment to examine the youths’ social and emotional experiences. The study not only provided insight on their emotional and social experiences but

The struggle for equality has been intense, and still continues to this day. With this being said, much progress has been made in establishing respect and external acceptance for all individuals sense of identity. For example, in 2015 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Same Sex Marriages, marking a pivotal point in the civil rights movement for the LGBTQ community. For many, this act helped to support their sense of self, a right that been denied for so long. The United States effectively validated the LGBTQ community, giving this group all rights granted to all other citizen’s, However, the creation and acceptance of this community has not had positive benefits for all members. The Gender Binary has been changed, but many distinctions

Not many people realize, but there are many social inequalities shaping our everyday lives. Sexual orientation discrimination discriminates against transgender and homosexual people, and many people in America are affected by it. Whether someone is transgender, gay, or a lesbian, they are looked upon as an oddball or a freak. It is important to bring awareness to the topic of social inequality and persecution, especially sexual orientation discrimination, because various genres of literature can be used to help change society's views of tolerance and acceptance, it impacts teenagers in modern America, and affects readers when learning about social inequality.

In this essay, I will be looking at the way LGBTQ status, Disabilities, and Gender affect development. Depending on the culture there can be many ways in which development is affected. Each culture’s view on the previously mentioned areas will determine what happens next. Keep in mind the ways different cultures view these things will have an impact on SES, Education opportunities, and access to Medical care and these can all further impact general health and development at any stage of life.

Argued in Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003:15), living up to our gender is learning through a life-long process of socialization. Further supported in Kulick and Schieffelin (2006:352), one’s gender emerges over a lifetime through interactive process in which one accepts, rejects, or modifies the cultural and gender norms they are socialized in. These two arguments supported the idea of this essay’s research question in which cultural and social factors do contribute to gendering an individual, and in turn implicating the creation of a boundary that exclude transgenders from the society.

Gender and sexual orientation is a topic that has been and still today is not talked about in such a way it should be because of how society has chosen to structure and control it. Social stratification is a system in which groups of people are divided up into layers according to their relative privileges (power, property, and prestige). It’s a way of ranking large groups of people into a hierarchy according to their relative privileges (Vela-McConnell 2016). People, who deviate from the norm of the “accepted” gender and sexual orientation that society has placed upon us, are stratified below the norm of a dominating binary gender and sexual orientation. People who are queer face the struggle of mistreatment and an unaccepting society that has been socialized to see and act on gender and sexual orientation to being a dualistic system.