Anders Peterson

English 355
2/27/2016
Group Presentation Reflective Statement
Our group was pretty lucky in how our readings broke down. We had three readings for a
group of four. This made dividing the presentation into sections pretty easy, with three of us each
taking one reading and Olivia doing a general overview and history in order to give the class a
frame of reference and the tools for discussion. We did not do much organizing as a whole group.
This was in part due to our section dividing so easily and also because we organized our
presentation somewhat close to the date.
In deciding on what readings each member was going to present on, we easily agreed. I
was always interested in presenting on the Spade piece because I found its premise fascinating
and immediately upon reading it I connected the ideas of normative gender performance to
representations in the media, especially representations I had seen recently. Tamara really liked
the Stryker piece, so she got to present on that. Tristian and Olivia did not have specific pieces
they wanted to use, but Tristian was leaning toward Wilchins.
Based on how we divided up the work, there was little collective work to define our
topics in general. Because the readings we were presented on were three separate pieces united
under a broader theme, breaking them down into what could be called three mini-presentations
was the most obvious and effective organizational strategy. Our group chose to use videos as key
parts of our presentation. Many of these were to give the information we were sharing a personal
side. All of the pieces we were presenting on deployed personal narratives and our presentation
looked to incorporate this use of narrative in several ways. The videos, especially those that
featured trans people discussing their pronouns or experiences were a utilization of narrative to
both explain basic concepts to the audience and to ground them in the reality of these issues.
Our group assumed that the audience would have limited understanding of the topic.
Trans issues have received increasing attention recently, but general understanding has not
reached a large amount of people. For our presentation to be successful, the audience had to have
more of a framework than Lavernes scenes in Orange is the New Black. This is why Olivia
took on the opening section of our presentation to educate the audience about trans issues and to
give them the tools to have an open discussion on the issues brought up in the readings.
For my portion of the presentation I assumed that the audience would have knowledge
surrounding medical transition that they got from Mutilating Gender. I assumed there would be
little other knowledge surrounding medical transition. Based off of the other sections in our
presentation I decided that a base of knowledge would be created by the time it was my section,
and therefore I could focus on unpacking Spades discussion and looking at the recreation of
norms through the media instead of spending further time explaining the basic concepts. I also
wanted to pick high profile media representations to share, in part because they do the most
amount of work in the creation and reproduction of normative narratives, and because the
audience would likely be aware of some of the works that were displayed. I also wanted to utilize
narratives that we did not discuss in the presentation. I chose not to show a clip from Free CeCe
because we were at the time limit, but it showed Laverne Cox in a different role than we showed
her earlier in the presentation. This would have shown prominent trans people working in

multiple contexts and multiple forms of activism. Unfortunately, I did not want the presentation
to run too long.
The most important point that I wanted to convey was that normative narratives are
created through multiple channels but are often self-enforcing and self-replicating. The
medicalization of GID with childhood behavior being a major symptom is both based on a
created normative experience and also is a justification for continued repetition of this narrative
in none medical contexts such as popular culture, where the presentation of this narrative further
ingrains it in society and works to amplify its medicalization. I also wanted to show how trans
representations often fall into the same tropes, but also how there is a recent increase in positive
trans representation that moves past these. I was happy with my discussion of tropes, but I wish I
had gotten the class more engaged, however, I at least heard discussion while the small groups
were talking, even if they did not volunteer their comments to the whole class.
I do wish I had shown more clips to further flesh out my points. I would revise the
presentation to include these and with them include discussion of reaction to each to increase
class participation. I also would have dedicated more time to each of the tropes I presented. This
would result in a deeper discussion of trans representation in the media. Another improvement I
potentially would make to the presentation would be a more in depth discussion of the basic
tenets of Spades argument. I jumped in with an assumption of a base level of knowledge from
the reading and Im not sure if that was as effective as it could have been. A more substantial
introduction may have been useful for the audience.