A Response to “Oranges and Sweet Sister Boy”

                I found this essay both overly grotesque and appalling. While I realize that people do get sex changes and it can be difficult or confusing of their family members, this essay contained many overly graphic sections.  I believe that for this to have been published it should have been toned down, published in a book  relevant to other people dealing with these same things, or even simple contained a preface warning readers of what was to come. I did not like this essay because I don’t agree with anything found within it. I think that people who receive sex changes may not be bad or awful people but they are confused about how or why they were made.

Many of the feelings that her brother was feeling was probably a result of his twisted childhood. If someone is starved of the love that all children need that as they grow up they will continue to look for that attention in an unhealthy manner. This is what her brother did as he had an operation to alter himself. However, this is also what the author started to do when she states that she wanted every feminine part of her to die.

I saw this essay more of a cry for help then as anything else. The author writes in a crazy manner that makes you feel as though you are crazy too as the subjects continually change. Her writing style certainly aided in conveying her feelings on the matter as she would accept her brother and then wonder about him and even herself and then accept it all again. From the look of the essay the author way simply trying to sort out her own thoughts and she kept coming back to the idea that if her brother had called before the operation she would have told him about oranges.

While I did not like much of the essay, I did like what she says about support groups: “everyone is out in the water in the same boat, but no one has a paddle”. This brings up an interesting train of thought as you ponder how useful support groups really are. I think that “support” groups of people who all have the same problem at about the same stage in their life can be rather unproductive and fits her analogy. However, paddles arrive when these groups have people of differing ages and walks of life. More paddles and a rudder appear as the group gains people who have made it through whatever the situation happens to be and can guide others. This gives a group power and direction, making it more productive and capable of helping broken people to heal, even when the waves come. The whole point of a support group is so that hurt or confused people realize that they are not the only ones and so that they realize that they can continue on.