In reading Focault’s idea about clinics and the acrheolgy of perceptions, initially I didn’t understand the point he was trying to make. After viewing the videos about transgenders and the problems in their identification it became clear to me that this has been a societal issue for so long. To my understanding a procedure can change the identity of a person but it is how society views them once they know the truth is where the real problem lies. If society believes that you are male or female based on gentalia than it will be hard to convince them otherwise when the truth is known no matter what procedures may have been done in a clinic. An example of this would be during prom of my senior year. There was a guy dressed in a prom dress. Everyone was well aware that he was a guy at some point and had a surgery during our senior year so that he could identify as a woman. At the prom there was mass confusion because administrators did not believe that he should be in a dress because they still considered him to be a male even though he had this surgery. At this same prom there was a girl in a tuxedo. She mostly identifies as a woman but everyone understood that she was the man in her lesbian relationship. Administrators said nothing to her and after awhile claimed they did not know that she was a girl in a tuxedo. This mass confusion became problematic for many reasons and because they mad the guy in a prom dress leave prom and not the girl in a tuexdo, the guy was furious. He sued the school system and settled privately because in the end he was later identified to be a woman since he did not have that genatalia part identifying him as a man.
-Shannon Dixon
Representation and the Body 