Rhetorical Analysis Of Homosexuals By Sandy Stone

The term “trans” has been a poorly explained throughout history due to “studies” claiming that mental diseases were the explanation of trans behaviors. Sandy Stone attempts to change the way trans are perceived by writing a manifesto. She also uses a few examples of real people along with addressing Janice Raymond. Ultimately, Stones manifesto forever changes the view of trans in society, but at what cost? Stone begins her manifesto by sharing the story of Morris who enters the Casablanca explaining everything he is observing. Morris even explains how he looks at himself one last time before he is no longer known as James Morris and is known as Jan Morris. Jan is not going to have the issue of feeling like a woman she is going to fear passing …show more content…
Stone refers to this as “reading oneself aloud”, which Stone claims will lead to self-empowerment. Stones essay shines a light on a topic that at the time would be considered a radical gay-lesbian statement. Mainstream lesbian and gay activists in fear of disrupting the shaky liberal base during a critical period of a merger were suppressing transgender issues. Stone also believes sex and gender should not be blurred into one. Stone states, “transsexuals commonly blur the distinction by confusing the performative character of gender with the physical “fact” of sex, referring to their perceptions of their situation as being in the “wrong body”. For a matter of fact, Stone mentions in medical surgery there is no differentiation made between gender and sex. Stone continues, “Candidates for surgery were evaluated on the basis of their performance in the gender of choice. The criteria constituted a fully acculturated consensual definition of gender”(Stone). Stone mentions how there is no in-between in the medical world so how is it expected to be the same way in the “real” world. Stone finishes, “They go from being unambiguous men, albeit unhappy men, to unambiguous women. There is no territory between.” (Stone). Sexual pleasure is, however, part of the reason why some trans decide to go through with the surgery because, in the current sex that they are living in, they are unable to have any …show more content…
Through the act of “coming out of the closest,” Stone claims that the everyday lives of passing transsexuals become a location where gender is destroyed. Additionally, to calling for a movement in which individuals candidly identify their gender identity; Stone explores past biographies of transsexuals and how they have been used to maintain a stereotypical, heterosexual account of a changing process that transwomen are expected to conform