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Amy Bloom's The Body Lies: Female-To-Male Transsexuals

920 Words4 Pages

The theme of societal acceptance in the LGBTQ community is a constant struggle to find. Conservative members of society have continued to reiterate the “heterosexual” idea of relationship. They use phrases like “It is just a phase” or “God doesn’t condone this”. In the excerpt from, “The Body Lies: Female-to-Male Transsexuals” author Amy Bloom writes about how important changing physical biological parts to match how they feel inside. Bloom conveys her supporting argument for transsexuals through showcasing Lyle’s experience and to shine a light on how medical procedures can affect someone mentally through both sides of the transsexual debate. By effectively using diction to convey her argument of acceptance for transsexuals, Bloom asserts …show more content…

This is shown when Bloom voices how she was, “horrified when I first heard the stories about this kid, and I imagined meeting his parents and clinically evaluating them as misguided, covertly sadistic, or perversely ignorant, acting out their own unhappiness on their helpless child. (3)” Bloom uses words like misguided, sadistic, and ignorant to connect to the opposing side of the transsexual debate. This is effectively carried out when by the addition of her own thoughts of questioning. However, this questioning narrative that is echoed throughout the first half of the excerpt is changed to accepting when she meets the Monelle family. When Bloom talks of Lyle’s life after surgery and how “he gives me a glossy friend-filled account highlighted by a two-year romance with an older woman (twenty, to his seventeen) and a successful football careers cut short by an ankle injury. (3)” Through Lyle’s experience, Bloom highlights the everyday aspects of life someone may have, connecting it back to the opposing time who may start to think that transsexuals are like them. she highlights the normalcy of being transsexual. She shows the reader who may think they are different and sinful that they are just like us, if you will. She communicates that they are in fact “normal” (in society standards of

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This emphasizes that she accepts her daughter any way she wants to be, and I believe that by showing this in her writing she relates to other people that have concerns or anxiety because of change, that have had to go through similar situations, and have realized that change isn’t all bad. I myself have trans, gay, nonbinary, asexual, etc. friends, so I know it can be difficult to be accepted, especially by people that would love nothing more than to waste their own time treating ‘anyone different’ like

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Her claim is that if we generally refuse to use the word “woman” in the accommodation of others, the concept of cisgendered woman is erased. The author uses pathos in her article by stating the fact that Rowling's tweet “excludes trans men, non-binary and gender fluid people by emphasizing the idea that only cisgender women can menstruate.” (Rogers,par.7). This prompts her audience to possibly understand the common feeling of exclusion. With Rogers using this controversial tweet as an example at the beginning of her article, she introduces her claim that gender and sex are not the same thing.

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