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Boys Don't Cry

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Submitted By ilazcano
Words 428
Pages 2
Itzel Lazcano
General Psychology
Professor Anna- Marie Rudek Spinos
!7 November 2015
Discovering Self-Identity As we grow older and become more aware of the social world, we often find ourselves learning and changing different preferences. Often times, this includes small quirks such as different foods we might have enjoyed at some point but grew out of or deeper insights such as self-discovery and learning what we stand for in life and tough situations. The complexity of this experience may vary for different people and is often a harder concept to fully grasp for ourselves but leads to shaping who we are and what differentiates us as human beings. To demonstrate, sexual orientation and gender identification has been a complicated journey for some to overcome. In the movie, Boys Don’t Cry, Brandon Teena struggles with these notions since he is biologically a female but would rather identify as a male. Teena undergoes a self makeover and ultimately changes her name into Brandon Teena from Teena Brandon. Although there are a variety of factors that attribute to his decision, including living in a small town with virtually nothing to do and no room for growth as well as having a carefree attitude full of law breaking and making poor choices, he ultimately just identifies as a male and is interested in women. In the film Brandon meets a woman, Lana, he begins to feel attracted to and who he deceives until one day he is discovered after he has been arrested and is put into the women’s jail raising many questions. Eventually he is discovered and is then raped and killed with no remorse by two male characters that envied Teena for his relationship with Lana. In psychology the development of gender is often looked at as a controversial topic mainly because of its complexity. It is evident in Teenas case that the resources were not there to help her through

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