{"id":1130,"date":"2016-04-29T00:32:26","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T04:32:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=1130"},"modified":"2016-04-29T00:32:26","modified_gmt":"2016-04-29T04:32:26","slug":"the-influences-on-bruce-and-bruces-influences-on-alison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2016\/04\/29\/the-influences-on-bruce-and-bruces-influences-on-alison\/","title":{"rendered":"The Influences on Bruce and Bruce’s Influences on Alison"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Alison Bechdel\u2019s Fun Home<\/em> it is apparent how profoundly her parents influenced the way that she understood and portrayed herself. A lot of Bechdel\u2019s understanding of herself derived from her father posthumously. One particular similarity that Bechdel and her father, Bruce, shared was their coming into their sexuality during college. Alison, at the age of 19, labeled herself as a lesbian and understood her own sexuality. The pictures that she found of her father wearing a women\u2019s bathing suit when he was in college did not strike her as being a fraternity prank. Instead she saw says \u201cHe\u2019s wearing a women\u2019s bathing suit. A fraternity prank? But the pose he strikes is not mincing or silly at all. He\u2019s lissome, elegant\u201d (Bechdel, 120). When she and her father are at a diner, they see a butch truck driver who Alison immediately identifies with, though she hides this fact from her father. He asks her if she wants to look like the truck driver, to which Alison immediately replies \u201cno\u201d, because she could not answer him honestly. Bruce passed down to Alison his own struggle with identity, forcing her to feel like she should reject part of herself so as to conform to heteronormative society. Kate Bornstein\u2019s piece Gender Outlaw<\/em> also discusses this rejection of identity as a way to avoid criticism, scrutiny, or worse. She says that to stay safe, one must bury themselves deep within the closet. Bruce does this more or not successfully, but in doing so he shows his daughter to do the same. Whatever the case, Bruce\u2019s influence on Alison had such a profound effect on her even into her adulthood. She chose to write a memoir and centralize the plot on her relationship with her parents, and more specifically on her relationship with her father.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Alison Bechdel\u2019s Fun Home it is apparent how profoundly her parents influenced the way that she understood and portrayed herself. A lot of Bechdel\u2019s understanding of herself derived from her father posthumously. One particular similarity that Bechdel and her father, Bruce, shared was their coming into their sexuality during college. Alison, at the age … Continue reading The Influences on Bruce and Bruce’s Influences on Alison<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2970,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2970"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}