Transqueer Representations and How We Educate

This article examines the representations of transqueers (specifically female to male transsexuals) in popular media and how these representations shape attitudes of transqueers both with those outside the LBGT community and those within the community. The article discusses how these cultural images of FTM transqueers imply that being accepted often means surgery and hormones in order to “pass” as male, and it challenges educators to work more overtly and diligently to educate toward critical consciousness regarding the sex/gender system and the rigidity of the binary that removes transgendered people as nonentities. The article offers an argument about how to approach these discussions with students and what texts will complicate the sex/gender binary as it is presented to us via the media representations of transqueers.