Connie and Carla

Connie and Carla definitely experienced the constraints of being a drag queen, although the context showed some margin of liberty: the shows, the community, the city. Nevertheless, it would be naïve to deny the most evident signs of it being a subject of difficult acceptance for people, and the proof was their friend’s brother, the brother’s girlfriend, the staring at the street and their own battling with talent and show business.

But I would like to point out their relationship with their femininity through their new masculinity with  one of the most eloquent dialogues in the movie:

Carla: “I feel like I can finally say what I think”

Connie: “I know, when we were doing the show in Chicago, when you would say, you know, dirty stuff, I could feel the audience going ‘Oh no! Don’t do that! Where’s my dessert?’ But now, dressed like a guy…”

Carla: “We can say anything we want!”

Even if Connie and Carla are acting as men acting as women, their power position is quite different than that of a woman’s.  Society has made its choice to allow men embrace their identity over women repeteadly, so power still transgresses their drag. These new found liberties are explored by still timid Connie and Carla during their time in Chicago until they have other kinds of dialogue and empowerment. There’s a scene in which Carla suggests Connie not to eat so excessively, but Connie responds sensibly that it is due to the fact that they’ve got a higher female self-esteem as men than as women that people go to see their show. What she is implying is that she isn’t worrying about that kind of body self-image restraints as a man and paradoxically that brings her closer to feeling more like a woman. Connie as a woman would worry heavily over Connie as a drag, because the sense of being a daring man that’s able to respect and celebrate femininity allows her certain liberties, such as accepting her own body. This reveals us that the weight women carry on their shoulders is not even leveled by men who like to appear as women, because on one hand, they’re men, and they have to embrace a certain feminine image but still accept what biologically cannot be changed, so they’re grateful; and on the other hand, again, they’re men: they’ve been empowered by society over women since forever, even if those are not the kind of men that will be highly accepted or celebrated.  So Connie learns from both ideas and her body responds consequently. It is very interesting how ideas can be embodied, literally.

Even so, Connie tells Carla that she was at the mall the whole day (waiting for her) and felt awkwardly observed. She says she cannot go on like that, and that she needs to “get out of that closet”. In the end, when they finally tell the truth and leave the closet, followed by a disconcerting bunch the public applauds and congratulates them on being true to themselves and welcome their outing.  And their answer is not cheesy: it is positive and political and coherent. It was necessary for those drags before them to see themselves in Connie and Carla, to ask and take but also give acceptance when the situation asked for it. 

Lina Cepero

Blog Entry 02

Dear All, Identities and more identities... How would you compare the identity situations that Connie and Carla went through with the generalized situation women and gendered minorities live with? Bestest, Harold

We've seen that masculinity, and in this sense male characteristics, are based on fisical streghth. Hence, a men is a 'real' men when he is strong, fearless, bulky, tough, when he can take care of everything, when he can provide food home, when he eats a loads, etc. On the other hand, femininity has been historical constructed by putting women into a dominated position. Ergo, femininity has been based on patterns that send us to the interior as been caring, polite, delicate, knowing how to cook, how to take care of a home, how to dress well, eat little, and so on. This is why, and also how the simbolic meanings keep reproducing, little girls play with the little kitchen, with dolls, etc. Because they remind her to keep in the interior as men are always encourage to the exterior. This is why little boys always play with cars, balls ( encouraging them to do sports) or constructing toys. These social construction of identities, which are directed towards the only to genders socially accepted, male and female; rarely provide equal conditions of expression. This is exemplified in the movie watched in class, Connie and Carla, in which a lot of dialogues show that punctually freedom of speech, and of thought, is not handed evenly to men and women. There is a scene where Connie tells Carla that they can say everything they want because they are drag queens; this implies that they can say everything they want because they are impersonating human beings regarded of the masculine sex, dressed as the feminine one. One could argue that females are regarded as inferior and thus, that this is rather quite a setback, but the fact that their openly declaring themselves as transvestites makes them be seen as men, even though they whole purpose of these people is to make believe they are the opposite sex. So bottom line, the only fact that allows Connie and Carla to express themselves as they seem fit, is that they are being seen as men, even though they are dressed as women, otherwise they could do it all the same being the girls they are behind the woman that is a man that is a woman. This somewhat confusing panorama only problematizes more the unequal factor regarding social construction of genders, for if one could assure that even men disguised as women (that are being seen as men nonetheless), are more freely able to express themselves than authentic women, one could accurately diagnose that something is horribly wrong with society. Verónica Noguera Ana María Bonilla Federico Osorio

Sex and Gender mixed in a social confusion

After a thorough analisis of the clases we've had for the past weeks and a brief glimpse at the experiences i've had in my life, I came to a conclusion that both of these are confused when we come to a social enviorment. The reality is that when we are faced to peer pressure and expecially family pressure alot of the definition of personality and gender are mixed up and confused. In the first reading we had we could conclude that Gender is created by these two factors, family pressure and peer pressure, but when we are faced upon the one thing that starts defining them (sexual organs) being mixed up like in the case presented by XXY we have a number of positive and negative situations as how to face sexual orientation.

For parents precisley it is hard to have a homosexual son/daughter because as a society we have taken into our hands the job of defining what is right and what is wrong that when we are faced with something that is neither wrong nor right we only deal with it by shunning and isolating it. The fact that we refer to sex as the one thing that makes a human male or female we notice how nieve our society really is. In XXY the difference between the main character Alex and the man she/he is going out with is that one of them has one sexual organ that defines his biological sex, yet they dont give him the liberty of being or acting the way he wants to because of this Gender situation that has been defined mainly by his father who tries to inforce on him who he has to be and how he has to act, in alex's case she/he has the posibility of definining what his gender is going to be and how he is going to act because of the freedom the father gives which by many is viewed as something out of the perimeters of normal.

To sum it all up, this rejection by the societies part to exclude all that is different from what they establish as normal generally leads in my experience and analisis to confusion and most importantly depression, not only for the sons/daughters, but for the parents who have to bare with the weight of knowing they are doing the wrong thing.


Camila Andrea Blanco
Ciencia Política

Sex and gender are both words that come unexplained to most of the people in the world and, even so, affect every single activity we make and the way other perceive such activities. As we have seen in class, “sex” has a biological meaning and “gender” has a social meaning, but both are oriented to give us a guideline about how we can difference and divide people in two big categories, according to their physical characteristics, these two categories, which are socially constructed, are “men” and “women”. There is a problem with categories in general: they are based on items that an individual has to accomplish to be set into that category, this way everything goes right for those people who have the physical structure and psychological behavior that is socially seen as adequate for their “gender”, but when someone does not strictly fit there, then comes rejection from others and confusion to the self.

Examples of this problem may be physical, when one person is born with characteristics of both female and male sexes (hermaphrodite), or psychological, when someone doesn’t follow the behavioral patterns that has been socially assigned for him or her. This is a problematic that must be taken in consideration, not only by the scientific disciplines that are directly related to it, but also by people as members of a society that builds subjectivities.

Lina María Restrepo

Sex and gender

The frames that appear to define gender from sex are far from clear. While its sensible to define gender as Judith Butler does, as “something we perform”, as a social matter more than a biological predisposition, one can highly discuss the limits where performativity can outsmart sex, or the biological conditions in which an individual recognizes its own "reproductive potential". This does not mean that sex rules the equation, but that forced performativity in language and gender elaborations can fail to produce gender, as seen in ‘XXY’, ‘Dr. Money and the boy with no penis’ and also, the documentary “Boys Will Be Girls”.

While some try to negotiate with traditional heteronormative ways of thinking, the real complexity far behind the role of social standards and language in gender can be neglected when defending it as a purely social matter. Intersex individuals end up adding questions and some problematic answers to the discussion. In these cases, gender ends up defining itself not only through sex nor language, but from a complex and organic relation between the two, in which only the individual may testify the experience of both intersex or wrongly decided gender. Gender cannot be fully embraced without taking into consideration the individual’s relation to their own body, therefore, performativity may be influenced but not fully determined by social standards.

Admitting the blurry boundaries when both undefined sex and gender are actually embodied may free some discussions from perspectives that still follow patterns of heteronormative thought.

Lina Cepero 

SEX AND GENDER!!
The main topics of the last lessons were gender and sex and how these concepts fit into intersexual people. Based on the lecture “Sex and gender” we defined sex as a biological categorization and gender as something we construct though life.
These two concepts come in conflict when we talk about intersexual people (persons who are born with both genitals). This problem begins when science gets involved in deciding the sex of a person – a boy or a girl. How does this happens? One out of 1000 babies are born intersexual and at the moment of birth parents get to decide whether the child will be submitted to a surgical manipulation to continue as a male or female, what they don’t understand is that this is a personal decision and not a scientific  choice.
When parents choose the life they want for their child, they usually base this decision on speculations and suppositions of gender.
This can be reflected in the movie “XXY” were Alex´s parents decide not to remove one of the child’s genitals at the moment of birth and to simply raise the child as a woman. They get away from people who talk about Alex as a different person and that Alex should be subjected to a sex change operation. At the end of the movie Alex talks with her dad and explains to him that she wants to be an individual, that corticoid was taking away her essence, she wanted to be a person and not be judge by her sex but because of her gender.
 In conclusion, on one hand, sex is not a personal but a biological condition but on the on the other hand gender must be a personal decision and not a social construction when we talk about intersexual people. They should have the right to decide whether they feel more comfortable in a male or a female body, whether they like blue or pink, or whether they prefer tennis or high heels.    
Parents of intersexual children should raise their child as a normal child and look at their behavior to see what their preferences are. When he or she, is capable of deciding in which body they would be more comfortable in and identified with then the family can consider sex change surgery. There should be no barriers coming from parents to prevent their child from the person they want to be.  
We should be judged as persons and not depending on our sex or gender.

Natalia Sicard

Luis Fernando Sierra

Maria Camila Torres

Isabel Villegas 

Expectations are constructed upon general social codes to enable social understanding toward specific dynamics. In this way, gender is just a way for letting people understand things as the individuals need to classify, in order to interact and fit in some way. Without classifications, we wouldn't be able to communicate with each other as we need a mutual understanding of things that enables social interaction. Many scientific approaches has been made to this topic, since it relates to the everyday of everybody in our chauvinist society as we can look to the work of the Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman in his book "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life " or to Harold Garfinkel’s Story of Agnes (which is a transgender guy-to-female and mentioned how she empirically investigate this specific social laws - we are talking about- like being "Ladylike") In the other hand, sex only refers to a “biological classification assigned on the reproductive potential” (classroom slides). This means that sex is just a physiological aspect while the gender approaches to a cultural and identity topic in society. That’s why there’s a particular case of the intersex human beings since the social criteria is really narrow while facing a mixture of both parallel identities. Hence, in this particular scenario one could arguably sustain the fact that gender is socially influenced, if not generated. Both films show how there’s an inner struggle to those who don’t fit into the social stereotype of the male/female role. Furthermore, our society is characterized for been so meticulously reluctant to a non-stereotypical person and this struggle is what happens when one does not “fit” to any role”. Ana María Bonilla Verónica Noguera Federico Osorio.

BLOG ENTRY 01

Dear All, After reading Eckert's article and watching Dr Money and the boy with no penis and XXY, would you say both gender and sex are cultural constructions? Why? Please remember not to exceed 250-300 words and use references where appropriate. Bestest, Harold