This week, we were assigned a documentary to watch and a reading. Both of which were very interesting to engage with. Paris is Burning, a documentary by Jennie Livingston looks into the lives of New York City drag queens, providing insight into their community and culture through the lens of a documentary. By interacting with each individual, Livingston gains a further understanding of their personal aspirations and of particular events. Livingston is able to grasp an emotional response from her audience by shining a light on the perspectives of New York City drag queens. By including interviews with the members in the documentary, Livingston allows her audience to engage with different viewpoints, to stand in the shoes of those who struggled under oppression. In this personal series of interviews, Livingston inquires about personal values and aspirations. She involves herself in this community and lifestyle so she can keep the relationship between the audience and the person being interviewed neutral and comfortable. In present-day society, cultural assumptions often dictate that sexuality and gender are mutually dependent categories and that one is a factor of the other. Societal norms imply that gender is divided into men and women, and that appropriate sexual behavior is thus determined through innate biology. This idea suggests right and wrong ways of being male and female, and furthermore denotes that interaction between the two results in heterosexual attraction. 

This documentary really made me think about another documentary I have been watching recently called “Major!”. In this documentary, it follows transgender and activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. Major is an African American male who later in her life came out as transgender. Throughout her life, she has faced countless acts of discrimination and abuse. She never had a lot of friends due to the reason that her thoughts are different compared to her peers. She liked things girls tend to like and also found it fun to cross dress. She quickly found out that that was not accepted by society. When should would be home alone, she would dress in her mom’s clothes and walk around the house. She would get a little gutsier each time. The next time she would walk downstairs and walk around the living room for a minute and then run back upstairs. Later on, she would walk to the garage and open the garage door and walk around and run back inside. This was where she found her pleasure and comfort. This all came crashing down, however, when one of their neighbors saw this and reported her actions to her parents. Her parents were obliviously furious. They gave her an ultimatum stating that if she could not become “normal,” she will be sent away from home once she is 18. Sure enough, when she was 18, she was sent away from home. It was, and still is, hard for a transgender person to land a job, therefore, she turned to dodgy professions such as stripper dancing, prostitution, etc. Later on, she was sent to jail because the police caught her in an act of prostitution and she was raped and abused in jail since she had already begun her hormonal gender reassignment treatment and had already developed breasts. Once she was release from prison, she has since dedicated her life to helping people of the trans community obtain a better life and fight for their rights. She has also started to fight to rights of inmates and reformation of of the correctional institutions in the US as she has seen countless acts of abuse and violence that would not fly in society.