Gwen Araujo is a name that stands out. Especially when there is a new documentary on Gwen Araujo entitled, “Trained in the Ways of Men”. The oddest fact is that Gwen Araujo was an actual male who lived as a female, but was brutally killed in 2002. The men that killed Gwen Araujo are serving about 15 years each. Why a film? The filmaker said it is to really present all the facts about what really happened to Gwen Araujo.
The defense of the men charged with murder was that Gwen Araujo made them think that He was a women and lead them on. Shelly Provost who made this movie is a former male. The murder was wrong and the men involved should definitely be punished, but the changing of gender is just sick. People are given a gender when born and should embrace it not try to be something else they are not.
boys dont cry brandon teena gwen araujo laramie project matthew shepard teena brandon
You say that “People are given a gender when born and should embrace it not try to be something else they are not” - well not everyone can embrace their given gender, and not everything is black and white. We are ruled by our bodies and the things inside our bodies. When you need to eat, your stomach tells your brain it’s in pain, so you eat, when you are in pain, your body tells you’re brain and so on. When part of you is one sex, and another part of you is another sex, there is an inevitable conflict that cannot be ignored. People have tried to with varying degrees of success and failure, and the one size fits all approach doesn’t work. We are all different, but we all need to live on the same planet, so let’s try doing that rather than constantly attacking each other.
Tell that to those born with 5ARD or 17BHDD. All babies with those conditions look female at birth. But the ones with xy chromosomes change, things descend and become external at puberty. The gender they are given at birth is not their true gender.
Please see
Zhou J.-N, Hofman M.A, Gooren L.J, Swaab D.F (1997)
A Sex Difference in the Human Brain and its Relation to Transsexuality.
and
Kruijver F.P.M, Zhou J.-N, Pool C.W., Swaab D.F. (2000)
Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus
Transsexuality is an Intersex condition. Male brain, female body, or in Gwen’s case, female brain, male body.
And what gender are those with Kleinfelter syndrome, not 46xx (female) or 46xy (male) but 47xxy? Or those with CAIS, who often don’t realise they’re genetically male until they go to a doctor to find out why their periods haven’t started?
Your view is common-sense, normal, what everyone knows, and from a medical standpoint, completely wrong.
” People are given a gender when born and should embrace it not try to be something else they are not.”
A persons Gender is in the brain. if the brain does not match the body a person is transgendered. people do not change their gender, they change their sex to match their gender.
How ignorant are you? Very, it seems.
A transgender person is not trying to be anything other than what they are. Changing one’s gender is not “sick.” It’s being true to yourself and living a life that is consistent with who you know yourself to be.
For a transgender person, their birth gender is not correct. Asking them to live as if it were is asking them to live a lie.
I hope you watch the documentary about Gwen when it comes out. You may learn some important truths about transgender people and, hopefully, lose some of your ignorance.
Unfortunatly, gender is not as easy a construct as the genetalia that is observed at birth. Embracing one’s “assigned” gender is what causes the condition because of the ambiguity felt by the person experiencing it.
Trained in the Ways of Men is a story about the four men that killed Gwen Araujo. Embracing one’s gender has little to do with cold blooded brutal murder and THAT is what this story was about.
People do not pick the gender they “feel” much like they are unable pick the gender theor birth anatomy presents. Nature is full of similar gender issues yet we as people have to make life bearable. Finding personal true and authenticity is important. Living a “lie” and not being who you feel like is a lie to yourself and the greatest sin. People change genders is not about sex.
It is not about the clothes one wears and it is not about YOU, it is about who “we” are and feel ourselves to be. Transgender people have the right of self-determination; to be who we feel ourselves to be. If you do not understand it, educate yourself but do not condemn us to a life of misery so YOU can feel better about who you are.
The film talks about this. It speaks to killing because someone does not live up to another person’s expectations of who they should be. These men had casual sex with Gwen and had an emotional melt-down because they found out that she was transgender and they felt themselves to have had “gay” sex. They did not take the time not show any responsibility in finding ANYTHING out about the woman that they were having sex with. Don’t they have the responsibility to do that, just as much as she in telling them that she was transgender? I would think so. They created their own fear; their anger and their outrage. these adults had sex with a minor and they did not think about that either. Blame depends on perspective. Society does not thing that it is acceptable to kill a person because that person or persons did not have the common decency to know who Gwen Araujo was. The movie, I think trys to help people understand that.
You clearly don’t understand the many components of transgender identity, particularly as they related to children and youth. To simply dismiss hundreds of thousands of people’s experiences as “sick” as a result of your ignorance on the issue is irresponsible and destructive.
Gender identity and “assigned birth sex” are two very different things, and in fact, they often have absolutely nothing to do with either each other, or genetic make-up.
Gwen Araujo was killed because of homophobia and trans-misogyny…and that says FAR more about the fragility of so-called “masculinity” in this culture that it says about why Gwen’s gender identity did not match her physical anatomy.
You should be ashamed of yourself. At some point, perhaps you will be…and that’s a step in the right direction.
Re: Gwen Araujo Documentary comments
To say that those who change their gender are sick is to be uninformed about the condition. Gender dysphoria is a condition that some people are born with, similar to a birth defect. It is recognized worldwide that the healthy way to deal with this condition is to embrace the gender that one knows in their soul. They are then being true to whom they really are. It’s hard for many to understand this because they don’t have to embrace who they are; they take it for granted that they are a man or a woman as it comes naturally. Many babies are born with birth defects: fetal alcohol syndrome, cleft lips, heart conditions, addicted to crack, autistic, and so on. Would you ask these children to embrace their conditions or would you welcome some help from modern medicine ?
Who posted that blog? “Those who change gender are sick”? And what rock did you crawl out from under to give us your expert opinion? Where do we start in the vain hope of enlightening those like you as if it was possible to do so?
More than ten years back the brains of gays, lesbians, heterosexuals, and transsexuals were sliced and diced in Norway. The results were posted in scientific journals and raised a cry of outrage from many in the medical and scientific community. The research claimed female to male transsexuals had the brain of a male. Male to female transsexuals had the brain of a female. Gays had male brains and lesbians had female brains.
After the publication several more research labs repeated the dissection of human brains and found the same results. It’s not any wonder some of us end up with the wrong brain in the wrong body. What is amazing is with everything that has to go right from conception to birth anyone is born with everything in the right place.
I’m glad your brain matches your body. I also like the idea boys are boys and girls are girls. Personally I wouldn’t wish my life on anyone. I pray those like me become a footnote in history when science finally figures out how to correct the brain-body design before birth.
One last parting shot across your bow before I go. Did you know we are doctors, lawyers, research scientist, engineers, NASA Scientist, show girls and beauty queens, and possibly the boy or girl next door or your favorite neighbor? That computer you are using talks to all the other computers because one of us designed the code for it.
In response to comments regarding Transsexualism, i.e. Gwen Araujo, gender dysphoria is NOT SICK or morally wrong. It is a certified medical condition. It cannot be “cured”. Ignorance such as yours can be remedied, and the cure is intelligence, with a prescription for reading.
Thank you for the support from those who responded as such. And I feel sorry for those w/ the scared, angry fears from those that can’t/won’t understand us. I am a transwoman, and I’ve been ‘dealing’ with is as far back as 4th/5th grade as I can remember…finally at 41 I get it right and my life has become so much happier and brighter since I transitioned. This is not only from my perspective but from all those around me…my family, friends, co-workers and the people I meet day-to-day. Our sex is triary at best…and gender, well that is a rainbow of 1000’s of colors that spans culture, society, cities, neighborhoods, families, professions and entire lives. How we see ourselves and wish to present ourselves it a very important choice we have in this life. We chose it by deciding who our friends/partners/mates are…by chosing the profession we enter into…by choosing how we wish to leave our mark on the world so it is a little bit better. So, why can’t we break the binary thinking that says if you have a penis your have to be a man and if you have a vagina you have to be a woman…and allow everyone to simply become what they chose. Not everyone will choose it, nor continue to follow it…but those that do…can become so much more brighter, lighter, whole and complete than before…and I speak of my own experience here.
Stop fighting, stop trying to control the world around us and learn to control yourself first. Learn who you are and what you are about in this life. Learn to love yourself, wholely and completely because only then can it flow forth freely and you then can change the world.
Live, Love, Laugh, Play…