Exploring Transgender Troubles Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Exploring Transgender Troubles - Essay Example Over the years many people have thought and associated transgender to gays or lesbianism. Being a gay would therefore mean that one is transgendered, deep study has however proved otherwise. Since the formal definition of lesbianism and gay, reports have claimed both contemporary and historical transgendered people as gay and lesbians. It is worth noting that transgender people have for long been unclaimed or unrecognized as homosexual. Since time immemorial, transgender troubles has been a topic of discussion with many arguing that, even homosexuality was not personhood until the late nineteenth century. Although transgender is a good term, not everyone talks good about transgender people, different societies, cultures and institutions have continually viewed it as an immoral and non acceptable. There is therefore, a lot of criticisms and hatred to individuals who exhibit transgender traits. How then can we define transgender people? Through many writers, a comprehensive understandi ng of the term has been made and thus transgender people are individuals who in one way or the other may fail to develop their gender identity that keep up a correspondence to identity as to whether male or female. In these people, it is not a surprise to find a male who exhibits a female characteristic and vice versa. These people may not as well respond to their gender roles appropriately as imposed by the society in which they come from. This aspect has thus lead to transgender troubles with many societies considering transgender behavior as a serious crime which ought to have a capital punishment, a good example is a country like Saudi Arabia. Transgender troubles are also apparent in its contents. It is unclear about what is contained in transgender. According to the general understanding of transgender, it is basically gender variance. Therefore, the question remains, what are factors considered in gender variance. The answer remains unclear and contradictory. It is therefore not easy to establish who is to be included in the transgender bracket and who is to be left out. Transgender behavior has sparked troubles in many countries, take for example, European and in North America, there are certain forms of violent behavior against these group. Many people have even gone ahead and considered this behavior as one of the major psychiatric illness is so serious that even justifies institutionalization. In trying to avoid all these discrimination and transgender troubles, communities with these restrictions have forced victims with transgender behavior to conform to their birth sex norm to avoid stigma and social violence surrounding them (Meyerowitz and Meyerowitz 24). Their attempt to achieve a new sex reassignment will not be allowed or supported. For authorities which only accept heterosexual marriages, official transgender changes can result to serious implications related to privileges and rights like inheritance, medical decision-making or even child c ustody. Another transgender trouble appears during classification. It becomes very difficult to classify these individuals because generally many countries or organizations only recognize two classes of people: male or a female. Doctors, transsexuals and journalists