major factions in village life. But except for our landlord and the village chief, whose cousin and brother-in-law he was, everyone ignored us in a way only a Balinese can do. As we wandered around, uncertain, wistful, eager to please, people seemed to look right through us with a gaze focused several yards behind us on some more actual stone Judith Jarvis Thomson: A Defense of Abortion. From Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall ). (Reprinted in "Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics," 5 th ed., ed. Ronald Munson (Belmont; Wadsworth ). pp ). Most opposition to abortion relies on the premise that the fetus is a human being, a person, from the moment of conception Nov 06, · The essay automatically assumes that this is the same as criticism. I would say the church’s actions against Galileo are a little stronger than mere criticism. What saves this essay from a sub is the final sentence, which discriminates between the person with the idea and those who only have an inkling of that idea
GRE Issue Essay: Strategies + 8 Real Student Essays with Scores - Magoosh Blog — GRE® Test
Maybe I just want to feel pretty, or to look pretty. Some of those goals seem impossible, or incompatible, or prohibitively difficult; not worth what I would have to sacrifice. Given my tastes, at the moment, it might be better to say that I like dressing up as a girl. I like to wear costume jewelry, and pastel nail polish, and I do that all the time.
I like to wear skirts and tights, or dresses, too, in private sometimes, in public fewer times, and in company when I can find an appropriate occasion, which I rarely can. Then my favorite club closed. Then Jessie and I got married and moved to Minnesota, and my space for cross-dressing dried up. I minded, but not very much, because I liked the rest of my life. I even stopped wearing nail polish and sparkly rings for a while, whose life is it anyway essay the poetry I published made its commitment to girlish identities, feminine alternate selves, all but unmistakable.
It has to do with sexual feeling, but it says almost nothing about sexual acts. I also refer to poetry, since Whose life is it anyway essay care far more about poems—and think more often about them—than about how I look. I am a literary critic and a writer of verse, a parent and husband and friend, before and after I am a guy in a skirt, or a guy in blue jeans, or a fictional girl.
This essay is a substitute, not so much for a memoir, but for an unwritten, overlong, awkward, over-literal poem. Recently I went shopping for a denim skirt that I could wear to an open house for trans people and cross-dressers, the venerable Tiffany Club in suburban Boston. Also, it turns out, whose life is it anyway essay, I like being addressed as Stephanie. Some of the folks I met there whose life is it anyway essay learning to live full-time in their preferred gender with or sans surgeries.
Others are more like me; they enjoy dressing up. I found almost exactly the skirt I envisioned at the Gap: a thin blue-jean fabric, knee-length and slightly flouncy, with double rose thread near the hem. On my way to the cash register I also saw a pair of shorts, for men, in a color somewhere between bronze and mustard. I picked them out and tried them on and liked how they looked on me and bought them too.
Other prized girly whose life is it anyway essay, recently acquired: opaque white tights; opaque bright blue tights; a micro-thin blue belt it goes only with shorts or skirts ; a black Maidenform padded bra, which converts a 36AA like me to a 36C; a cotton white-and-magenta circle skirt, which I have worn around Harvard Square; a sleeveless black top with small ruffles and white polka dots, which I have as yet had no occasion to wear.
Ten years ago I lost, among other girl clothes, a pair of black and silver opaque tights. I still miss them. But if I had them, I would only rarely wear them.
Wearing a suit and tie, on the other hand, can make me feel as if I were a Disney World employee stuck wearing a Goofy head. According to current medical criteria, trans people have gender dysphoria: our gender does not match our biological sex, and the mismatch makes us unhappy. Several therapists have now agreed that I have gender dysphoria, but how badly do I have it?
Not so badly, as these things can go. The stories transsexuals tell about life pre-transition, in which they are discontented to the extent of becoming suicidal, because they are biologically male or female and feel they should not be, do not describe my life at all. shares military stories with others her age, and defends her politically conservative views on questions unrelated to gender.
At least two folks Whose life is it anyway essay met at Tiffany Club are undergoing divorces. that she and her wife, who prefers her in male garb, have been together for decades, and remain close to their kids and grandkids, whose life is it anyway essay. used to organize annual outings to Provincetown, where club members could spend the weekend en femme ; L.
dressed as a man. Yet in order to think about that body, about that distance, I keep going back to some books. When I first read it inthis book lit up my sense of myself both when I saw myself in her and when I did not. If I could have pulled this off, I would have. Like almost every trans writer, Boylan remembers feeling awkward, wrongly placed, in the body with which she grew up. For instance, I used to love hosting college radio: on the radio I was not a body, but an expression of musical taste, words, and a voice.
Like many folks about my age, I first learned about trans people from television, from the episode of St. Elsewherefirst aired inin which Dr. But not that. Not close. My strangest and loneliest hours arrived in Charleston, West Virginia, where I knew no one and there were no tourist attractions we ended up leaving it out of the book. I was like that, but not that. Melody was esteemed; virtuosity was downplayed even for bands that possessed it.
When we were twee we were all of those things: The styles were girly-girl for the girls, with sparkly barrettes, Swiss dot, large prints from thrift-store expeditions, and Hello Kitty additions. For the cross-over boys, epicene or fade-out-of-sight wear was the way, along with striped T-shirts or T-shirts with names of bands. Not all the pop whose life is it anyway essay involved were overtly feminist, though the best were.
But nobody wanted, or tried, to be a real man. Without twee pop and the social circles it built, I would certainly never have met Jessie. We were at the same shows, the same clubs.
One of my favorite indie-pop groups was Blueboy, named either for a song by the proto-twee group Orange Juice or for a gay porn mag.
Most of their music came out on the leading twee label, Sarah Records, of Bristol, England. I never dressed up as a girl, in public, whose life is it anyway essay, when I was an undergraduate. Why the heck not, since I moved in queer-positive circles?
At least one of those men dated women, though others were gay. Nor did I belong anywhere near the old-school wigs-and-flounces drag of the Hasty Pudding Show, with its all-male company.
Nor, certainly, could I pull off anything like the immaculate and masterful drag of Thomas Lauderdale, now the leader of the band Pink Martini, with his perfect black cocktail gown. Why are other people shocked, or distressed, when they see femininity poorly, or inexpertly, performed?
And why do I care—since I do care—about what they see? Are costume jewelry and nail polish, accessories and ornaments, a skirt and tights here and there on a weekday afternoon, a sustainable compromise, or a way station of some sort?
Sometimes I feel I should have been one—or wish that I were one. How different is that wish from other escapist wishes, such as a trip to Japan, or a Karmann Ghia?
The trans writer and performer S. But where would we go? Are there such camps for adults? If there were, would I go there? I have no desire to write a straightforward memoir about my gender and my wardrobe. For one thing, there would not be enough to report. I want instead to find a way to think about gender and appearance that accounts for my body, whose life is it anyway essay, my emotions, and my images of my body—as it is, as it can be, as I wish it could be.
My body feels unfinished, undeveloped, more often than it feels like a real woman or a real man. It feels, sometimes, as if it wanted to become a woman, whether or not it will get the chance. What article of clothing demonstrates that feeling best? I may be wearing one now, as you read this. Auden used to say that he always imagined he was the youngest person in any room. I have often felt the same way, and still have dreams in which I fear that my colleagues and friends will learn that I am really sixteen … or twelve … or fourteen.
Within a few years, I had most of what I wanted. All I had to do, I thought, was to pretend I did not have a body, whose life is it anyway essay leave my own body behind.
I wanted breasts, or the promise of breasts. I can, though, repeat the trans slogan that being transgender is about who you want to go to bed as, not who you want to go to bed with. I first met people who had been genderqueer as we say nowthe cross-dressers and postpunk post-gender folks, when they were not long out of their teens, and I was not long out of mine, when I saw rock shows and read fanzines and wrote, a bit, on the far fringes of the Riot Grrrl phenomenon, in — Had I been a few years younger back then, who would I be now?
Would I go by Stephanie regularly? Or by ze? It seems unlikely, but who knows? So much has gone right with the rest of my life. Did I want to be a girl, or just to be like one? Both groups struck up a conversation but I just sort of sat there and stared. It seemed so obvious to me that I should be one of those girls rather than one of those boys. It was so sad because nobody could see it but me. So I decided to get a sex change operation.
Gender, we hear from various intellectuals Judith Butler, for examplemust be a performance: Some performances announce themselves as such, while others disappear, whose life is it anyway essay. If gender in all its permutations is an acknowledged or unacknowledged—consciously or unconsciously learned—performance, no wonder that some of the most insightful people on trans experience have been actors, directors, performers: Bornstein, Bergman, Daphne, Gottlieb—or the stand-up comedian Eddie Izzard, surely the most famous male-to-female cross-dresser.
Treehouses seem important to trans self-conception; they are fake houses, pretend and private houses, where children can be themselves, but almost nobody sees them.
But all the time up in that tree, I never looked down. Why am I so, so much more comfortable—and frankly more fluent—writing about the lives and the art and the words of other people than writing about myself?
Have I just had more practice? As much as I want to be pretty, I want more often—and more often get—to live in a world of sounds and words, whose life is it anyway essay.
Braceface - 119 - Whose Life Is It Anyway
, time: 21:25Self-Reliance - Wikipedia
"Self-Reliance" is an essay written by American transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains the most thorough statement of one of Emerson's recurrent themes: the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his major factions in village life. But except for our landlord and the village chief, whose cousin and brother-in-law he was, everyone ignored us in a way only a Balinese can do. As we wandered around, uncertain, wistful, eager to please, people seemed to look right through us with a gaze focused several yards behind us on some more actual stone 5 You also learned the difference between moral temptations (right vs. wrong) and ethical dilemmas (right vs. right). In LDRS you were introduced to four different ethical dilemma paradigms: truth vs loyalty, short-term vs long-term, individual vs community, and justice vs mercy. Truth vs Loyalty: Contrasts telling the truth or being honest with the values
No comments:
Post a Comment