Those who are considered different are faced with the unfortunate reality that they will never fully be accepted for who they are, and that they must hide their true selves from the public to avoid judgment. The text, \u201cHistory, According to Boy\u201d by Saeed Jones places an emphasis on the ideas of entrapment and conformity with a coming-of-age narrative. The main character, the boy, struggles to fit in with others his age and isn’t entirely masculine leaning. His homosexuality leads to him being othered, and his inability to fit into the image of a \u201cproper boy\u201d causes him harm. An interesting section of the text involves the boy\u2019s dad beating him after he snuck out to go to a gay dance club. The text states that, \u201cboy\u2019s father\u2019s fist comes down like a war no one bothers to call a war\u201d (Jones 95). The physical abuse the father inflicts on the boy comes across as a method to try to \u201cbeat the gay\u201d out of him (with the mentality that he\u2019ll stop displaying or acting towards his attraction to men if he continues to get hurt over it). In a way, it seems like a twisted form of mental conditioning that uses harmful behavior to try and promote \u201cnormal\u201d behavior. An intriguing part about this section of the text is how physical abuse is framed. The focus on the term \u201cwar\u201d justifiably frames the abuse in a negative light, yet it seems there is debate over how the term \u201cwar\u201d should be defined. Even though harming a child over their identity isn\u2019t right, trying to enforce socially acceptable behavior is considered reasonable to most. If the harm done to the boy now will lead to his protection in the future, is it truly harming him at all?<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Those who are considered different are faced with the unfortunate reality that they will never fully be accepted for who they are, and that they must hide their true selves from the public to avoid judgment. The text, \u201cHistory, According to Boy\u201d by Saeed Jones places an emphasis on the ideas of entrapment and conformity … Continue reading The Caged Bird: Will My Cries Be Heard?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5727,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344663],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5727"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1370"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1379,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions\/1379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}