Film review #1 Middle Sexes (correction)

Justin Orndorff

SOC 360

Film review #1

Middle Sexes

1. The thesis of “Middle Sexes” is how society perceives and determines the transgender life style.  Transgender has nothing to do with being gay or straight, it’s about how a person or transgender person wants to live their life.  Biology creates sexual diversity.  Biology gives birth to children born everyday with both sexual organs.  As I watched Middle Sexes it bothered me when they described how an Army soldier was beaten to death because he was dating transgender women.  
2.  Transgender is described as a transsexual or transvestite who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that differs from the one which corresponds to the person's sex at birth. (1)  The film Middle Sexes discusses transgender as the brain not developing along with the sex organs.  The main arguments that support the thesis would be the death of the soldier, the two young men that killed Gwen and the way young Noah is treated by peers. Gwen was beaten, strangled and her head smashed in so bad that her face was undeniable. Society perceives transgender as deviant.  Noah the young boy who lives in the Midwest and is very feminine and enjoys playing with dolls and wearing girl’s clothes is ridiculed as and asked repeatedly if he is a boy or a girl or gay or straight.  Even Noah’s dad states “I hope when his hormones kick in that he’ll change and start acting more like a young boy should.”  (1) (2)
3. This film relates significantly to this course by just the subject of transgender.  Transgender itself is seen as deviant or a deviant lifestyle hence the course entitled Social Deviance.  But being born with both sexes termed “Intersex” isn’t deemed as deviant as being transgender because it’s more biological related and something that is considered ascribed meaning you were born this way while transgender is something achieved meaning it’s a personal choice seen as a more deviant act in societies eyes.   
4. What I found most convincing of the film Middle Sexes was the devotion of the Hindu women who sacrificed her male genital organs.  This Hindu women’s mother, father, and family was beaten and thrown out of her home because her parents believed that her transition would bring shame upon their family.  This Hindu women graduated College but had only two choices prostitution or begging and she choose prostitution over begging.  That’s how important it was to this Hindu woman to be who she knew she had to be, a transgender.  This entailed losing her family and a life of prostitution.     
5. What I found least convincing of the film Middle Sexes were the laws set by the British government in pre-colonial times of life in prison with homosexual acts with a transgender person.  In a way it demonstrates just how far society has come since those times.
6. As I watched Middle Sexes I reflected on the notion why would a transgender woman get breast augmentation, Adams apple augmentation, facial reconstruction, and other body modifications but keep their male penis?  Why not get the complete sex change surgery and have the penis removed?  I would enjoy finding empirical data on this subject, and interviewing transgenders who have not fully committed to the full sex change operation.

(1)   http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transgender Feb 2012

(2)   Thio, Alex, Thomas C. Calhoun, and Addrain Conyers. Readings in Deviant Behavior. 6th ed. Boston: Pearson Education, 2010. Print.

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