Blog 10

            This week we watched the move Boys Don’t Cry staring Hillary Swank as a transgender teenager. In the movie she plays Teena Brandon a young girl who believes she is a boy. She dresses like a boy and often pretends to be one and have relationships with women who believe she is a boy. Brandon has a sexual identity crisis he is a boy stuck in a girl’s body. The movie shows how difficult it is to be yourself and how close-minded some people can be. Brandon is in a difficult position because he wants to have gender reconstruction surgery but cannot afford it. So he is stuck in a girl’s body when he knows he is a boy. The movie portrays the struggle that he goes through in his life and what it is like to be a transgender person. Brandon grows as a person when he meets Lana his last girlfriend before he was killed. They fall in love and even after Lana learns the truth she still loves him. Brandon was a good person and was always looking out for others. Brandon just got himself into trouble for trying to be who he really was. The area that Brandon was from was not a very open minded place. People who knew who he was would beat him and be cruel to him just because he was being himself. When Lana and her friends find out that Brandon is really a girl they do not react well to it. Jon and Tom who are mentally disturbed people attack Brandon. They assault and rape her when they find out she is a girl. Then they threaten her to keep it a secret. When Brandon goes to the police Jon and Tom become even more violent and murder Brandon and their friend.  Brandon was murdered out of hatred and misunderstanding. He was not treated like a person just because he believed to be a boy. Society puts standards on us to be a certain way and a certain gender. Brandon was different and did not fit into these strict standards of what it is to be a girl and a boy.

            In the article written about Boys Don’t Cry written by Melissa Anderson, all of Brandon’s lovers were interviewed and they all had nothing but great things to say about him. When they found out he was a girl they still had good things to report about him. Even when Lana found out she still loved him not because of his gender but because of the type of person he was. “Lana’s comments reveal that her love for Brandon, regardless of gender was the only thing that mattered.” Brandon was loved for who he was not for his gender, and a lot of people could not understand this. They just thought that Brandon was a lesbian. They wanted to make sense of what Brandon was going through. Billy Tipton was another transgender girl who was a man. She was only discovered to be a girl after she had died. Billy had a full life and was even married to a woman. In Telling Tales by Judith Halberstam she tries to find out what defines a transgender person and what it means to be transgender. So many people want answers and explanations about being transgender because they believe that it is the same as being gay. But it is completely different because they believe they are the opposite sex. So what defines being a girl or a boy? Why does just our body parts define us? Being transgender is being who you are no matter what. That’s what it means to me. Teena Brandon and Billy Tipton lived their lives trying to be men and that’s what made them happy.