My paper is a gender exploration on the idea of “we build who we are” vs. the social construction of gender identity. Day-to-day laws will become the main focus instead of military laws as I want the paper to analysis how the former affects people on a daily basis. Transgender people will be the main subject that will be focused on this paper. The reason is that compared to straight men and women, transgender are transition into a different identity than the one that they were born into. For countries in South-East Asia, like Malaysia and Indonesia, it is criminal for a person to step outside of the public realm. The criminalization of identity is what affecting Transgenders, but it is not only limited to them. It is also affecting those who do not identity their social orientation as being heterosexual. Exploring these ideas, I will look into the legal analysis the modern laws that dictate the limitations placed on those part of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender as well as the laws that came before.
From this paper, I want to be able to gain an understanding where prejudices concerning gender come from. This paper is going to explore how these laws influence people’s limited understanding of community consisting of minorities such as the LGBT community. The idea of the “public realm” is an idea that has interest me, and will most like be the focus for this paper. Even though I come from a country that promotes individual rights, compared to countries where membership matters, I’m finding that a person stepping out of the norm is not receiving different kind of response from either area.
My starting point for the paper is the examination of Transgenders and their role in society. As move along in the paper to the GLBT community to women, my plan is present an examination of the views of masculinity and femininity. As a transgender is a person who transitions from one gender to the other, the lack of knowledge that the average person has is able to reveal their views on the different genders. Even though it will be a hard task to achieve, I want this paper to showcase an understanding towards how those who differ from heterosexual males somehow threaten their masculinity. I hope that from this paper this new information will be able to change the perspective on what we do not understand.
Bibliography
- Paris is Buring and The Celluiod Closest -> documentaries that gave me the basic idea for the paper
- Peletz, Michael G. 2009. Gender pluralism: southeast Asia since early modern times. New York: Routledge.
- Peletz, Michael G. 1996. Reason and passion representations of gender in a Malay society. Berkeley: University of California Press
- Spiegel, Anna. 2010. Contested public spheres: female activism and identity politics in Malaysia. Wiesbaden: VS Research.
Michael,
ReplyDeleteI think you've made a good start on thinking about the larger issues. The ideas here are definitely interesting, and sophisticated. Focusing specifically on transgenders seems like a smart move, in at least two different ways. First, it makes the project more manageable because it is a very particular identity you're dealing with. Second, the particularities of transgender, as an identity which is neither of two primary gender identities but one that operates in transit between the two, function to challenge the accepted permanence of male and female. At least at first glance, this makes transgender even more of challenge than variations in sexual orientation.
Beyond that, oddly there seems to be surprising amount of work done on Asian cases and the politics of sexual identity. I'm going to paste a couple of citations that I've found from a quick search that seem potentially relevant:
Vade, Dylan,(2005). Expanding Gender and Expanding the Law: Toward a Social and Legal Conceptualization of Gender That Is More Inclusive of Transgender People; Michigan Journal of Gender & Law. Vol 11
Misra, Geetanjali, and Radhika Chandiramani. 2005. Sexuality, gender, and rights: exploring theory and practice in South and Southeast Asia. New Delhi [etc.]: Sage Publications. (especially the chapter on Mak Nyahs in Malaysia.)
THIRD SEX IDENTITIES AND TRANSGENDER RIGHTS: POLICIES IN ASIA AND THE WEST
SOUTH ASIA LGBTI PARTNERSHIP BUILDING
WORKSHOP, KATHMANDU, NEPAL,
SEPTEMBER 3-4, 2008. http://thaiis.co.th/inis/References/Asia%20Pacific/Sanders%20D.%20(2008)%20Third%20Sex%20Identities%20and.pdf
(That link is from a UNDP sponsored site that seems to have a number of other relevant articles and papers on the site. Goto http://thaiis.co.th/inis/internal-asia-pacific.html )
Best,
Dr. Cocozzelli
This sounds like a really interesting paper- well mostly because I have not read anything on this topic before- can't wait to see the final work!
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