In the Kimberly Pierce film Boys Don't Cry, Brandon Teena, born female, changes gender to become a man within the context of Falls Creek, Nebraska, where he falls for Lana Tisdel. The group of friends he is surrounded by are a powder keg at best, with personalities ranging from lazy to volatile, the latter describing supporting males John and Tom. After some time with the estranged family, Brandon is eventually found to have been hiding his sex and background information from them. Lana continues to love him, but he is eventually killed by John and Tom.
After a reading of Judith Butler's Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, we can place the characters of the film into a kind of framework. Earlier on, Butler reorganizes sex and gender to be completely independent of each other, that sex is the body that one has, but gender is the historical and cultural form that is placed upon one's body. When behaving in the manner of a man as a female, this person is defying the cultural norm, rejecting the "strategy" of living society has taught. When Brandon Teena does this, it is not met with an open mind. Butler,"Discrete genders are part of what "humanizes" individuals within contemporary culture; indeed, those who fail to do their gender right are regularly punished." John and Tom couldn't wrap their heads around someone's sex not determining their gender (and in this case as well, sexual orientation), so Brandon became an "it" to them. He was totally dehumanized.
Something else I found interesting was the legal jargon Brandon had clearly been put into. We hear in the film and see in action that being a man "just felt right" and seemed to be a very conscious, if gradual, decision to transform. But in the interrogative police scene we hear that he'd been diagnosed with a sexual identity crisis, as if it was a sudden confusion of the mind. The words used in the "diagnosis" negatively define Brandon's choice.
I would be careful with saying that Brennan chose his gender, because that is not something that one chooses. This could be seen as a negative thing, and it's saying that he had a choice in how he felt about himself. He chose how he acted as a man, however, he did not choose how he feels. Otherwise, I'm glad that you brought up the fact that the word diagnosis can be seen as negative. Recently being transgender could be seen as a mental disorder in psychology, but luckily, it is no longer seen as such. People do not choose their gender. Butlers writing of how Gender is fluid, and completely separate from sex completely applies to this movie. Unfortunately people today still consider them to be the same thing, but hopefully in the future people understand the difference.
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