Making the Cut :: Women Gender Issues Essays

Making the CutIn response to the failure of the International Bill of Gender Rights to pass congress in the fall of 2010, I evoke a film that challenges society to examine the controversies surrounding gender identity construction and transgender the great unwashed (Phyllis Randolph Frye, Esq., 1.) My film, Making the Cut, is based loosely on the true fib of Johns Hopkins Hospital case study Joan/John, and chronicles the life of athlete Carla/Carlos Garcia (Diamond, 1). The film uses the example of sport as an indication that society is not yet ready to fully accept transgender individuals into its community. The film begins shortly after the protagonist Carla/Carlos has been born. The doctors immediately realize that the child has been born with a micropenis and determine, as is done to approximately cytosine to 200 US children annually, that the child should undergo sex-selection surgery and be raised as a girl (Diamond, 1). The doctors attempt to explain this to the babys moth er, but as she exclusively speaks Spanish their words are lost on her. Not being able to afford prenatal care, the mother has had no expectations for the sex of her child and rejoices when the doctors bugger off her a baby girl, whom she names Carla. Carla grows up in Harlem and throughout her childhood is inclined to participate in activities that society has historically associated with boys sports, building furniture and vie in mock-fighting games. Carla feels more comfortable in the company of boys and often finds she identifies more closely with their lives than those of her female peers. As an athlete, Carla excels at basketball and earns the recognition of her high aim coach and local media as being a basketball sensation. In her senior year, Carla is recruited to play basketball for the University of Connecticut on scholarship. Excited at the cyclorama of leaving the projects and being the first member of her family to attend college, Carla joins the basketball team. Wh ile studying at UCONN, Carla attends a lecture about sex-selection operations for a class. Immediately, she identifies with the stories of people whose sex was decided by their doctors at birth and begins to question her own gender identity. She starts an investigation into her childhood and discovers the medical records recounting her sex-selection operation. Nervous about the importee of her discovery for her future, but relieved to learn that her inclinations towards feelings of masculinity had biological backing, Carla decides to live her life identifying as male.