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| Boys Don't Cry 2003, September 6 - 11:13 p.m.
I just finished watching Boys Don't Cry. What a powerful movie. When I was a young teenager, I used to brush off sexual issues that I had heard of like Homosexuality and transgendered people. I would make jokes and not give these people a second thought. As I got older, my mom intervened the first time she heard me use the word 'gay' in a demeaning way. I was 14. She informed me that a woman I loved, who had been my mentor in art was gay. I think it was that moment on that I stopped seeing gays as 'them' apart from the us as people. How could I think of gay as bad if my mentor, so near and dear to me, was gay? She was a part of my 'us' and could never be grouped with anyone on the outside again. Thus, of course, no one could really be grouped on the outside again for me. It was also the beginning of mature thinking and it lead to thinking about transgender and transexuals. By the time I was 16 I was really interested in what transgender meant. I watched any documentary on TV that was remotely related to the subject. When I was 18 I heard of the John and Joan case. A baby boy, whose penis had been mutilated was alterred with surgery was raised as a girl. The particulars of the story that really matter are these: no matter how much he was raised as a girl, inside he was a boy. He knew it all his life and fought against his female upbringing. His body had nothing to do with his gender. I think that hit it home for me. Sex and gender are different. And I think that this is why the movie was so powerful to me. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to come to terms with being gay. I can't even come close to imagining how scary and frustrating and despairing it must be to be a woman trapped in a man's body or vice versa. And to be persecuted for it. I can only feel lucky to have been born the way I am, without such a difficult way to make in life. Thank You - 2006, June 7
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