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Male or Female? Issues Transgender People Face


            In “Aligning Bodies,” Judith Lorber and Lisa Jean Moore bring to light the burdens endured by people in our society that don’t necessarily fit into preconceived notions of sex and gender.  On a daily basis there are issues they must consider:  when filling out forms that ask for their sex, when going to the restroom and when showing legal documents that may not match the gender they identify with.  Transgender people may or may not have surgery on their chest and/or genitalia and/or face or other surgery and may choose to use hormone therapy.  Some people are born with ambiguous genitalia or with genitals or chromosomes of both sexes.  Yet others may identify as a gender different than their birth sex and choose to not alter their body physically.  There is a wide spectrum of people in our world that don’t neatly fit into the “F” and “M” boxes.  Society and individuals need to work on becoming more accepting or people that don’t fit into a “box” will continue to become victims of hate crimes or suicide (Lorber and Moore).
In Ian Harvie’s Ted Talk “Everyone Is Trans,” he purports that we humans are all the same.  We all have things that we would like to change about ourselves.  People are changing their bodies all the time that aren’t transgender.  For example, many women have breast implants or breast reduction surgery.  I enjoyed this talk and it definitely made me think about our preconceived notions about what it means to be transgender and how we view changes people make to their own bodies (Everyone).


Works Cited
"Everyone Is Trans | Ian Harvie | TEDxDirigo." Youtube, 15 Dec. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YeVt2kp_So. Accessed 5 Oct. 2018.
Lorber, Judith, and Lisa Jean Moore. "Aligning Bodies, Identities, and Expressions: Transgender Bodies." Women In Culture An Intersectional Anthology for Gender and Women's Studies, Second ed., Wiley Blackwell, 2017, pp. 226-31.


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