Lady Gaga's gender-bending performance proved to be one of a kind and very powerful as gender issues in mainstream media are seldom demonstrated. This is only one of many examples of Lady Gaga making her audience challenge hetero normative assumptions of sex and gender. From Transgender History by Susan Stryker when describing sex and gender, "Gender is generally considered to by cultural, and sex biological" (pg 11) and when describing history and transgender politics Stryker says "the sex of the body does not bear any necessary or deterministic relationship to the social category in which the body lives."
This determination of what makes someone a man or a woman in our society is based off of sex and secondary sex characteristics. Trans persons do not fall into these created dominant patterns or gender roles.
Although I am extremely happy to see transgender and genderqueer exploration on mainstream television, I also want to argue that Lady gaga's alter ego Jo falls into the gender comportment of how a man is socialized to dress and behave. Also, this is definitely not a true representation of the trans community, as trans folks don't just dress up as the stereotypical opposite gender and then that's it. What it comes down to is Lady Gaga is a straight wealthy privileged white woman in the music business, and playing dress up is not accurately identifying or representing oneself with an oppressed and very marginalized group of people.
is this performance or spectacle more about shock value or a genuine love and concern for the trans community? Is she really growing the activist role she has adopted or putting out a message that is counter productive?
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