Landa Mabenge dedicates his memoir Becoming Him: A Trans Memoir of Triumph (2018):
To those who have been denied their truths by a world that dictates who and what they ought to be. To the beautiful beings that exist beyond the social definitions of gender and identity. May you all journey into becoming the butterflies you are meant to be.
Later in the memoir, Mabenge recalls how:
As I get older, Ma and I argue a lot over the types of clothes deemed acceptable for a young girl. I simply refuse to wear dresses, insisting rather on long pants and shorts for all occasions. I begin schooling at the age of six […]. But school has rules. I plead with Ma, often with tears streaming down my face, to allow me to wear the summer blue shorts and winter grey pants like all the other boys, but I am always called to order and reminded that I am not a boy, but a girl. I don’t believe her. When Ma insists on buying me Barbie dolls, I dismember them, leaving legs, arms and torsos strewn around the yard, while I long for toy guns and cars. (3)
Using the quotes above as a point of departure, write an essay in which you discuss how Landa Mabenge’s memoir of “becoming” highlight how prescribed gender roles, gender identities and sexualities are policed and restricted by a patriarchal and heteronormative South African milieu.
