Boys Don’t Cry is a story about Brandon, a trans man, who is from Lincoln, Nebraska. The movie follows him as he meets Lana and her group of friends, and the two fall in love. Lana, throughout the film, notices small details and begins to figure out that Brandon is trans, but she doesn’t say anything until he ends up in jail. When Lana’s friends find out, including John, her incredibly jealous “friend.”

Once every comes out and everyone realizes that Brandon is trans, John and Tom assault him, trying to prove his assigned sex. They then drive him away, rape him and threaten him to keep quiet.

Lana’s mother ends up taking him in to report the rape, and it seems at first that she is going to support him, until she goes to warn John and Tom that the crime has been reported. This leads to them to hunt Brandon down, killing both him and Candace, who was giving him a place to stay.

Sex

The movie is based on a true story of Brandon, a young Nebraskan who goes through the exact same thing. The movie does not hold back gruesome details, specifically showing the rape scene in great detail.

In fact, they choose to show more detail in this scene than any consensual other sex scene in the movie. I thought this was an interesting part that I wanted to mention, as it seems to mirror the fact that the rape would have been much more influential on Brandon’s life than any other positive sex.

Trauma always outweighs good memories, and I think that capturing the rape scene in more detail than anything else was meant to show this.

Gender Tests and Masculinity

Throughout the movie, there seemed to be a lot of tests for Brandon’s masculinity, even before anyone was aware that he was trans. From the size of his hands to his ability to in danger everyone by speeding– and let’s not forget John trying to convince Brandon to cut his own skin to prove his manliness.

This type of behavior is not only one of the main sources and almost guidelines that Brandon has on how to be a man (definitely perpetuating toxic masculine traits) but it also proves that so many men believe that is what masculinity is, while also showing that so many women don’t want that.

Each test made Brandon uncomfortable, rightfully so. I really feel that because he was raised as a girl, he understands how toxic these tests are. In Halbertsam’s “Female Masculinity” she talks about how masculinity can be hard to define, and yet “as a society we have little difficulty in recognizing it” (Halbertsam 1). This idea that we can always sense it but can’t quite define a thing is shown in this movie a lot. John especially, as he is making comments and testing Brandon, doesn’t seem to believe that he is truly a man, where Lana, who does not care about his assigned sex and rather only cares that he is a man by choice, doesn’t even question his masculinity.

Each test, whether or not it makes sense, brings forward the idea that society’s belief of masculinity is to be heroic and strong, where femininity is a very soft thing (I think this also goes to the mention of how small Brandon’s hands are; they are softer than John’s or Tom’s hands, and that is seen as un-masculine).

John always had a problem with Brandon, which stems from Lana’s affection being taken away and directed only to Brandon, but it increases as John starts to pay more attention, trying to find any reason to make everyone else hate him. His constant need to turn Brandon into an enemy is the only reason that Brandon’s trans identity was discovered, and the only reason that he was killed.

John and Tom were hateful individuals, and if nothing else was done well in the movie (and a lot was done well), their pure hate was shown with a passion.

Citations

Halbertstam, Judith. “Female Masculinity.” Duke University Press, 1998, read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/1960/Female-Masculinity.

Peirce, Kimberly, director. Boys Don’t Cry. Twentieth Century Fox, 2002.