Gender Stereotypes In The Film Boys Don T Cry

The film Boys Don’t Cry takes place in a lower class, small American town in Nebraska. The film is intended to follow the story of a born female, transitioned to male, transgendered person named Branden, once Teena, who wants so desperately to escape the restrictions of social gender and sexuality. In his hometown, he was scrutinized by many and evicted from his cousin’s trailer home where he was staying because of physical threats by other men in the town. Branden is forced to leave and ends up in a city called Falls City, Nebraska where Branden gets into a bar fight while defending a girl from violence by a man resulting in him being befriended by a group of locals. Branden meets Tom Nissen, John Lotter, and two girls named Candace and Lana.

He did it not just to make friends, impress Lana or run away from his other legal issues, but because he wanted to be seen as a true male, in all ways, so he had to mimic the behaviors of the males who were accepting him into their group. I think that also, he wanted to look and act as male so as to help his believability within the group. I think that Branden was driven to risky behaviors due to him wanting to fit into the world as he saw himself, not being accepted as such and lashing out in negative ways for attention. He may have also believed that since very few people in his world accepted him for who he truly was, that he had no reason to follow the laws and rules of “normal” society.
Just as the men had many typical masculine behaviors, the females in the movie also really showed how women tend to take a step back from the men. Many times throughout the movie the men who did have strong personalities, especially John, would find a way to put women in their place while they handled the manly stuff in a sense. When confronting Branden about his gender especially, the women weren’t allowed to speak or have any say in the situation, they had to simply sit back and watch the