Reading Response #22

In the article, Transgender Rhetoric’s: (Re) Composing Narratives of the Gendered Body, Jonathon Alexander explores the concept of transgendered theories. He exams samples by students prompted with transgendered theories to prove the point that transgender theories inspire feminist compositionist pedagogical approaches to seeing gender as a social construct.

I think this article can be related to Smitherman’s article on Black English. They are both sort of trying to get their own race, gender, and way of writing across to the readers. Both authors are trying to teach these topics in the classroom.

3. According to Alexander teaching trans pedagogy in the classroom results in exposure to gender roles, social norms, and the intersections between gender and politics, although, he only exposes this to white college students.

4. I think he considers gender a construct because he explains it as a “tricky word to define” (200). Being that transgendered is merely a category for a wide range of many different genders. Alexander quotes Feinburg stating “Millions of females and millions of males in this country do not fit the cramped compartments of gender that we have taught to be “natural”… (200)”, when describing the implications of this construct being both “personal” and “political”. Alexander believes that being knowledgeable of such a construct is not only useful for better understandings, but to help interrogate the contracts of gender we are familiar with.

Reading this article, I didn’t really think the article was that effective or persuasive. I do not agree with the concept of teaching transgender topics to students as helping them be more well-rounded and knowledgeable.