Brandon's Performance and Normative Society
This film effectively portrays the effort and conscious decisions it takes to perform gender. Brandon tries so hard to fit in and he does things that he really doesn't want to do because he thinks that thats what men do, and this is what he says to Lana after skiing on the trucks. He doesn't know how to fit in and doesn't seem to fit in any place that he stays. Either he should just admit she's a dyke, or he does whatever it takes, doing anything the men say to try to fit in. He never seems to be good enough. Throughout the film, this inability to fit in or be 'good enough' portrays the difficulty of transgender and transsexuals to fit in or the never ending struggle to be good enough in the eyes of normative society. He is depicted as the 'lesser' and the 'other' trying to become 'normal.' Normal within the film is a reflection of attitudes within society. Normal men and women, no matter how many faults they have, are still superior to the 'gender confused'.