How do you describe yourself? What is gender to you? Are you comfortable with yourself? In “The Freedom to Choose Your Pronoun” by Jennifer Conlin, she talks about high school and college students who question the gender roles being assigned to individuals due to being born female or male. Supporters of preferred gender pronouns (also known as P.G.P’s), are glad to be able to choose their own pronoun as in to how they feel about their selves and not in how society sees them. In agreement to Conlin, anyone deserves the right to choose their own pronoun at whatever age desired, if someone feels confused of what they feel within themselves, they shouldn’t hide it, they should speak up and receive support to decide what they really want their …show more content…
For those who feel unsure of their inner feeling of their sex they prefer to be described as other, they, or them. For example, in “The freedom to Choose Your Pronoun” by Conlin, she talks about the 16 year old Katy, who mentions ‘For those of us in the nonconforming gender community, it is great to see Google make the option more mainstream’”. Teenagers are by nature prone to rebellion and sometimes only act a certain way to make parents or others mad or just to give the contrary. With something like choosing your own pronoun, as in deciding if they want to be a female today and a male tomorrow shouldn’t be taken as serious, but if they insist on being a gender as oppose to the one they were born with, take them seriously and help them. Many clubs and organizations exist out there for those who need the help in deciding how they feel within themselves. Giving individuals the right to choose their pronoun will make them feel accepted in society. Now, not always will this happen. Naturally, everyone knows that if an individual looks like a girl and have all characteristics of a girl then she will be pointed as a her, she and vice versa for boys. Not everyone is going to have the same mentality, some people will not agree in letting a girl choose to be a boy and boys to choose to be a girl but the importance is how the individual …show more content…
If the school does not allow neutral gender language then student should follow along. Some may be too small to even understand neutral gender language. For example, the preschool in Sweden, is too young to even understand pronouns. At such young age, she does or acts this way due to her surrounding influences. It’s only natural for kids to say or do as they believe is right to do, but to mainly focus on a child trying to eliminate all gender bias is pretty ironic because at such age they are only beginning to
The definition of gender has become way more revolutionary and expressive compared to the twentieth century. Gender used to be similar to sex where someone would be identified as a male or female based on their biological genitals however, this day in age it is way more complex. Someone can be born a male but mentally they feel like a male. In “Sisterhood is complicated” Ruth Padawer explains the journey of different transgender males and the obstacles they face while attending Wellesley college. Wellesley is a women’s college that has been around for a very long time and is in the process of the battling the conflict of whether they should admit transgender students. Ariel Levy author of “Female Chauvinist Pigs” tackles the stereotypes and
The way I view gender is a way to express yourself. ...Gender is just a doorway, and so is sexuality, race and age.
In today’s society, it can be argued that the choice of being male or female is up to others more than you. A child’s appearance, beliefs and emotions are controlled until they have completely understood what they were “born to be.” In the article Learning to Be Gendered, Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell- Ginet speaks out on how we are influenced to differentiate ourselves through gender. It starts with our parents, creating our appearances, names and behaviors and distinguishing them into a male or female thing. Eventually, we grow to continue this action on our own by watching our peers. From personal experience, a child cannot freely choose the gender that suits them best unless our society approves.
Around the world gender is genuinely seen as strictly male or female. If you step out of this “social norm,” you could be considered an outcast. This disassociation includes, biological males/females, interssexed, and transgendered individuals. These people are severely suppressed by society because their gender identification, behaviors, and even their activities deviate from the norm. Most Americans are exceedingly devoted to the concept that there are only two sexes. Therefore, the constrictive American ideals of male and female gender identities inhibits growth and acceptance of gender expression.
Imagining if I transformed into the opposite sex for a week, my experiences of truth and reality would be quite different, yet strikingly similar to my life as a woman. Although my peers would accept me the same and know nothing altered, my mindset would have done a complete 180 degree flip. Although it is the expectation that humans identify with a single gender, multitudes of modern Americans refuse to succumb to this idea and prefer to identify with a sense gender fluidity. “The term "gender identity” . . . refers to a person's innate, deeply felt psychological identification as a man, woman or some other gender, which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned to them at birth” (par. 2). Some refuse to accept that gender is as one may say black or white, male or female. However, if I transfigured into a man, I would need to adjust my sense of reality in regards to the new expectations that come with the given gender.
The information acquired over the semester, whether through text or visual media, vividly brought the importance of knowing how one’s gender is identified and developed.
In this article, Shaw and Lee describe how the action of labels on being “feminine” or “masculine” affect society. Shaw and Lee describe how gender is, “the social organization of sexual difference” (124). In biology gender is what sex a person is and in culture gender is how a person should act and portray themselves. They mention how gender is what we were taught to do in our daily lives from a young age so that it can become natural(Shaw, Lee 126). They speak on the process of gender socialization that teaches us how to act and think in accordance to what sex a person is. Shaw and Lee state that many people identify themselves as being transgendered, which involves a person, “resisting the social construction of gender into two distinct, categories, masculinity and femininity and working to break down these constraining and polarized categories” ( 129). They write about how in mainstream America masculinity and femininity are described with the masculine trait being the more dominant of the two. They define how this contributes to putting a higher value of one gender over the other gender called gender ranking (Shaw, Lee 137). They also speak about how in order for femininity to be viewed that other systems of inequality also need to be looked at first(Shaw,Lee 139).
Sending a child to a gender based school, is a very big decision to make. The decision is so big, that looking at what research has to say about the topic could alter one’s decision to send their child to a gender based school. “Educators must apply different approaches in teaching make, and female students” (Gurian). This is said by Gurian, because he also believes that boys and girls learn differently. “Social pressures can be gentler and your child can learn at his own pace” (Kennedy).
It feels like that’s all there is and there isn’t anymore. You’re either a boy or a girl and that’s how your parents raised you. The gender role as a male or female is just the “natural” way of doing things. If anyone diverges from their assigned role, it is considered unnatural and even immoral by many. I agree with Devor’s opinion that gender roles are taught at such an early age before the child can even realize that they don’t have to follow these societal norms. I am not saying that a person should be able to choose if they are male or female, one should just accept who you are and what gender you were born with. My point is that you should be able to choose your behavior as a male or female. Individuals should be able to decide for themselves if they want to be more masculine or feminine regardless of their genders. In addition, their parents should be supportive of their choices despite of what seems “natural” according to
In today’s society we as humans are aware and accepting of more identities than we ever have been before. Civil rights movements all over the world are advocating for everything from marriage equality, to laws protecting gender-queer people. However, it isn’t perfect. Just as there will always be racists and homophobes, there will always be people who say gender identity is a choice. Well, a study done earlier this year proves those people wrong.
However, they want to be referred to only as a man or woman. But what if our gender identity, our sense of being a boy or being a girl, does not match our physical body? From a very early age, we will start to feel increasingly uncomfortable. For some this is a mild discomfort, for others it is so traumatic they would rather die than continue to live in the wrong body. Unfortunately, as transsexual people are a small minority of the population, the condition has been labeled by Psychiatrists as "Gender Identity Disorder".
Gender refers to psychological and emotional characteristics that cause people to assume, masculine, feminine or androgynous (having a combination of both feminine and masculine traits) roles. Your gender is learned and socially reinforced by others, as well as by your life experiences and g...
Gender identity has been a delicate issue when it comes to determining if a person's gender is set at birth or develops and changes as a person ages. A person’s gender is not as simple as being classified as either male or female. There’s a considerable amount of external factors that can influence someone’s identity. Although society has a major role in gender identity, sex assignment at birth is not final; furthermore, a person's gender can be influenced by psychological, physiological differences and undergoing changes to the human body. A common misconception many people believe is that gender and gender are the same or go hand in hand with one another.
As a child grows and conforms to the world around them they go through various stages, one of the most important and detrimental stages in childhood development is gender identity. The development of the meaning of a child’s sex and gender can form the whole future of that child’s identity as a person. This decision whether accidental or genetic can effect that child’s life style views and social interactions for the rest of their lives. Ranging from making friends in school all the way to intimate relationships later on in life, gender identity can become an important aspect to ones future endeavors.
I define my gender identity as a female because I was born a female, look like a female, and act like a female. While a female usually has a curvy body, long hair, a soft face, a male is tall, muscular, and with short hair. A female shows off traits of being affectionate, nurturing, beautiful, delicate, and dependent, while male traits display strength and independence. Those who define themselves with a female identity must portray those traits and characteristics listed, just like male identities must show the inverse of whats listed above. My gender map was always consistent on the feminine side. As I look back at it now I notice that my gender map is even marked by a bolded pink font, which I believe was a subconscious connection to my