Taylor Castaneda
She/Her
LGBT200-0401
Professor Mosley
September 27, 2022
Hardships and Experiences Faced While Living Life as a Transgender
During this week we were assigned different readings and articles which all helped
explain gender, sex, and lots of issues regarding passing and living life as someone who
identifies as queer, specifically transgender. The two stories I will be responding to are
Redefining Realness
by Janet Mock and
"A New Hope": The Psychic Life of Passing
by Riley
Snorton. The article and excerpt both are utilizing a narrative style in terms of writing. They are
expressing their experiences as transgender people within society. For the most part while they
both are dealing with similar topics, they clearly had extremely different stories. On one hand,
Mock was able to experience life with slightly more privilege just because she was able to pass
as a cis women vs a trans one. Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being obviously
identified as a transgender woman but there are transgender individuals who would rather be
seen as the gender of which they identify. In contrast, Snorton becomes vulnerable and expresses
how his story with being transgender was different in terms of people misinterpreting his gender
more frequently than not. In his case, he was not considered "passing" and at the beginning of
his excerpt he explains how when deciding which barber shop to frequent, the one he ended up
going with "read my [his] gender as female" when he arrived for the first time (pg. 85, "A New
Hope": The Psychic Life of Passing by Riley Snorton). When it comes to people who belong to
the transgender community, there are a lot of daily challenges and hardships that they must face
because of how dated society is including instances of misgendering. No one can just be who
they want and love who they want too nowadays. Although Mock was able to be seen as
"passing" within the transgender community, there were still plenty of challenges and societal
problems that are faced daily as a transgender individual. There are lots of "social aggressions
