Reading Response #22

          "Transgender Rhetorics: (Re)Composing Narratives of the Gendered Body" is an article written by teacher Jonathan Alexander--for College Composition and Communications--that aims to figure out, or at least come up with, a easily identifiable version of "the relationship among gender, bodies, and politics," like the case of this article: transgenders (Reading About Writing, 196). Using composition that talks about "gender as a narrativized social construction," (196) a discussion of the narrative form, creating the core of transgender theory, and gender-based stories that were written by her students, using a form of writing (from Will Hochman) that allow "students collaboratively construct fictional stories through a series of teacher prompts," (203) making "'paired fiction writing'"--a reachable goal is. That developed goal involves pedagogues that "seek an expansive notion of gender that prompts us to question restrictive norms and categories," where anyone can "understand how gender is used as a politically and personally normalizing category" to "develop a deeper consciousness of the embodied nature of gender identify" (202). This approach, overall, can "expand students' sense of the multiple ways that women--and men--exist as gendered beings in the world," (210) resulting in the realization that "rhetorical dimensions" (212) are not defined by a specific discourse, but by the individuals, within the discourse, that, if possible, remind others of "the embodied and material self that is also written, composed, and narrated" (212-213).

          This idea of understanding some written theories, enhancing the self in ways that can extend the reality of the individuals inside a particular discourse community, relates back to the challenges of applying the concepts in Lisa Delpit's "The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourses." Looking towards the bright side, Delpit believed that if individuals learn the "superficial features" of dominant discourses, transforming their characteristics into controlled disciplines based on "significance of teachers in transforming students' futures," (183), then the "discourse-stacking" that limits the potential of students can be fully addressed, resulting in much needed discussion within the classroom in regards to their own thoughts on more social problems that define, to others, some of their communities. While Delpit would only sees those issues as a process to set up ideas on what exactly one community truly is by applying those ideals into another community (instead of trying to discover a method that allows each community to learn without political means), there is a possibility that interrogating "the constructs of gender that we often take for 'granted as 'natural' or 'normal'" (200) might result in discussion that "explore and interrogate the sociocultural articulation of gender." In other words, expressing the construction of one discourse community can reveal the attitudes most of the individuals within that community share with one another, and the only way to see it is to find methods of exposing those injustices and either use it for personal good or for better understanding for others.

             However, according to Alexander, the significance gender pedagogy all students within a classroom should focus on-- specially the trans community--revolves around the concept of binary relationships; "each displaying the appropriate gender characteristics of its half of the pairing" (198). The parings identify a concept--the student's identify--would be then be politicized, or manipulated, towards the greater power inside the classroom, leaving the writing of that classroom into a limited writing, where "a mode of exploration, communication, invention, and discovery" (198) is denied for fundamental reasons. So once that sense of exploration is open, that key moment of "normally" gendered students are aware of trans theories, everyone, including minority discourses, can think about their personal characteristics, along with their political background, to be "appreciated in a crucial dimension" (199) of the trans pedagogy and become dives re in their understanding of the community beyond their own gender.

          So what happens when gender is classified as a "construct" that is “deeply personal and profoundly political” (400)? Looking into "construct", as a noun, the definition explained in Writing About Writing, presumably written by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs, puts it as "mental frameworks that people build in order to make sense of the world around them," or on the same page, constructing ideas that "quickly begins to seem 'natural' or inevitable, rather than made-up" (Writing About Writing, 35). With this framing, the "construct" in Alexander's article can allow the "many self-identified trans activists and theorists are to create cracks in the monolithic structure of gender identify" (Reading About Writing, 200) and bring awareness of the imbalance specific gender communities have towards a surrounding. Once this "political" atmosphere comes to focus, the subject matter becomes "personal," creating multiple solutions to make their presence known seemingly aware, but not overtly. Because of this lack of presence, genders are only confined with the experience only known to themselves, and if they at least have a general idea on what makes the construct of others (which is where the synthesis of "personal" and "political" nature of awareness come in), then the expansion of text for writing classrooms work in favor towards everybody within and outside that discourse community.

          All in all, I appreciated the complexity on the viewpoint on how people like myself should view each gender, and I feel like I'm one step closer into understanding the various aspects of the concepts of what defines the characteristics traits of gender beyond male and female. As the Reading Responses begin to wrap up, I hope to encounter more article like this and further my knowledge on how to think not as simply as a man viewing a women, but what constitutes as man, women, and other, figure out what it is we do, and how we can use that knowledge to learn more about various communities around us.