The Realm of Gender

In Alex Myer's Continental Divide, Ron often battles a sense of lost belongingness throughout the entire story. Ron needs constant confirmation that he indeed looks, acts, and lives like a man in order for him to feel completely satisfied with his image. Alex Myers discussed this in a few of his workshop presentation that this 'lost' feeling appears quite often in people who are in the transgender community. Instead of writing about the usual transgender topic of coming out (young adult/ teenage), he decided to talk about what authors seldom write about. That in which,  he mainly focussed on what happens after you have come out but still question if you fully present yourself as the wanted gender. Alex Myer's said repeatedly that his gender is what he "believed" himself to be. I believe that is a moving statement because he is passionate about finally being who he wanted to be. He casually yet respectfully encouraged the audience to understand who you are at the root.
Alex presented a diagram called the Genderbread Man. This diagram broke up gender into three different pieces. First of which is Gender Identity. Identity is how you perceive yourself to be. This means that gender identity is broken up into two subcategories, woman-ness and man-ness. Secondly, there is Gender Expression. An expression is how you publically display who you feel that you are. For example, people can express themselves with the clothes they wear. For gender expression, the outward display of gender is broken up into femininity and masculinity. Lastly, there is Anatomical Sex. Anatomical sex is the gender you are assigned at birth-biologically. There are three subtitles to anatomical sex nomenclature: male, female, or intersex. Another portion to the Genderbread Man diagram is dedicated to the attraction. In the diagram, there are two types of attraction: sexual, and romantic. The sexual attraction is "on the basis of sexual desire or the quality of arousing such interest". Surprisingly, romantic attraction is different because it covers the entire part of emotional and other psychological factors. The Genderbread Man truly assisted me in learning all the components that go into gender.
Recently, I had read the Laramie Project in Ms. Finch's Evil in the literature and Film class. Ron's story is quite different than Matthew Shepard, however, the proper addressing of gender is perfectly displayed and laid out in both stories. Although Ron was a transgender man and Matthew was a gay man, they shared similar struggles while living life as an LGBTQ+ member. Unfortunately, Matthew's story does not end happily for Matthew as he is murder, but both series reflect on how LGBTQ+ members are people too and they deserve nothing less than the 'average' person.