This paper examines the 1999 film Boys Don't Cry as a case study in social psychology, using the real-life story of Brandon Teena to explore key concepts including gender identity, prejudice, discrimination, interpersonal attraction, and aggression. The paper focuses particularly on how the film illustrates the distinction between biological sex and socially constructed gender, drawing on the World Health Organization's definition of gender and cross-cultural examples from Ancient Rome, Native American traditions, and modern India. It argues that Brandon Teena's story reveals how rigid binary gender norms produce suffering and violence for those whose identities fall outside society's accepted categories.
The movie Boys Don't Cry is a compelling example of how film can illuminate social psychological phenomena. This should come as no surprise, because the movie draws its material from the real-life story of Brandon Teena, a young pre-operative transgender individual seeking to have his female sexual organs transformed through sex-reassignment surgery so that his outward appearance could match his male gender identity. As a film that deals with transsexuality, Boys Don't Cry touches on many of the major issues in social psychology, including prejudice, gender, discrimination, attitudes, attitude change, person perception, the self, social influence, interpersonal attraction, personal relationships, helping behavior, and aggression. Equally interesting is the way the movie demonstrates the interplay among these different factors.
In the film, Brandon is depicted as a runaway youth who arrives in a small town. His outward demeanor is male, though a scene in which he shoplifts tampons from a convenience store provides the viewer with information about his physical sex. He begins to spend time with a group of young people who, while their ages are never specified, appear to be just out of high school. Socially, they do not appear to be upwardly mobile. They continue to live with their parents in lower-middle-class housing, and their recreational activities seem somewhat aimless — suggesting they are not looking to change their circumstances. Two of the group, John Lotter and Tom Nissen, are ex-convicts. Despite this, Brandon finds himself very much at home among these friends, who accept him as male, seemingly without any knowledge that he is physically female.
Brandon falls in love with a young woman named Lana, who appears to fall in love with him as well. The two become sexually intimate, seemingly without Lana realizing that Brandon is physically female. Life continues without major disruption until Brandon is arrested for a petty crime and placed in the women's jail. His friends discover that he is physically female. His girlfriend is distraught; Brandon explains that he was born a hermaphrodite and will be having corrective surgery. His male friends react with even greater anger. After Brandon is released from jail, they attack and rape him. Later, fearing that their assault will lead to their arrests, they kill him. The film leaves audiences questioning whether Lana was, to some degree, complicit in those crimes.
One of the more thought-provoking scenes in the movie is the scene in which Brandon and Lana make love. Up until that point in the film, nothing has indicated to Lana that Brandon is not male. This speaks directly to the concept of gender. Is gender about genitalia, or is it about something more? Physically, there is no question that Brandon is female — he has breasts, female genitalia, and, if the stolen tampons are any indication, is not taking male hormones. Despite this, Brandon is able to convince Lana that he is male. Furthermore, the film makes clear that Lana is heterosexual; she displays no sexual attraction to women, and she appears genuinely shocked when Brandon's biological sex is revealed.
All of this leads the audience to wonder about the role of perception in their relationship. The film tastefully portrays the two lovers being intimate, yet audience members cannot help but wonder how Lana does not notice that Brandon has breasts, or that he lacks an actual penis. This scene raises an array of social-psychological issues — perception, attitudes, social influence, interpersonal attraction, and personal relationships — though all of these are secondary to the central role that gender plays. Crucially, the love scene is not filmed or depicted as a homosexual encounter; it is portrayed as two heterosexual partners making love.
The film also shows Brandon stuffing his pants with socks, stripping away any illusion that he might use a device to simulate a penis. Later, a dildo is discovered among his possessions. Even had he used a sex toy, it is highly unlikely that their lovemaking felt identical to conventional male-female sex. Lana, however, does not seem disturbed by this — on the contrary, she appears quite satisfied. Brandon, too, seems satisfied by their encounter, despite the fact that, physically, he was not the recipient of any activity one would typically associate with male sexual gratification. How both parties respond is revealing: Lana reacts like a heterosexual woman who has made love with a man, and Brandon reacts like a heterosexual man who has made love with a woman. Both fulfill their gender role expectations entirely on the basis of Brandon's identity as a man.
Gender is one of the more complex concepts in social psychology. For years in Western society, gender was considered fixed at birth. People were either physically male or female, and gender could be determined simply by examining genitalia. The presence of a penis signaled male; the presence of a vagina signaled female. The fact that not all people have such clear-cut genitalia was a relatively well-kept medical secret. Intersex individuals — people born with both male and female characteristics — were often directed toward one sex as children. So much emphasis was placed on the penis as a determinant of male gender that one unfortunate child, whose penis was largely destroyed during a routine circumcision, was raised as a deeply confused female (NNDB, 2010). David Reimer, as he was known as an adult, never embraced his assigned feminine identity despite being raised as a girl. As a twin, he provided a natural control for his situation, and his persistent dissatisfaction as a female led many psychologists to conclude that while gender may be partially a social construct, there is more to gender than socialization alone (NNDB, 2010).
Yet while gender is more than socialization, it is also more than biology. One of the World Health Organization's health initiatives is to focus on gender and health. According to the WHO, "Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a particular society considers appropriate for men and women" (WHO, 2010). One of the obvious implications of this definition is that modern society rarely considers it appropriate for individuals to trade gender roles. These societal expectations ignore the fact that gender and biological sex are distinct concepts. As one source explains: "A transsexual person, born to all appearances within a given physical sex, is aware of being of a gender opposite to that physical sex. This conflict between gender identity and physical sex is almost always manifest from earliest awareness and is the cause of enormous suffering. It is common for transsexuals to be aware of their condition at preschool ages" (Reitz, 1998).
While Boys Don't Cry does not depict Brandon Teena as a preschooler, it does accurately portray a person whose self-identified gender is at odds with sex-based gender expectations.
"Transsexuality as disorder and social stigma"
"Ancient Rome, Navajo, Sioux gender traditions compared"
World Health Organization. (2010). Gender. Retrieved February 23, 2010, from WHO website:
Wyndzen, M. (2008). The banality of insensitivity: Portrayals of transgenderism in psychopathology. Retrieved February 23, 2010, from All Mixed Up: Perspectives on Transgenderism and 'Gender Identity Disorder' website:
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