writing

I think that gender is a deeply personal thing and is different for everyone’s experience. A lot of people never even think twice about gender, they were born with certain genitalia and called a certain gender and then expressed themselves and experienced the world that way and that’s fine with them. Other people have the exact opposite experience. I have always been grateful that I was born into a body that I am comfortable being in. Gender identity is what our “perception of femaleness, maleness, a blend of both or neither” (yarbor, 2019, page 115) is. I like to think of gender identity as our internal dialogue for how we experience ourselves.

            Gender expression is very fascinating to me because it is so closely tied to culture. How we identify and how we express ourselves can rigidly line up with cultural expectations or they can destroy them completely. We get to decide if we want to follow societies rules with how we express ourselves or do something completely against them, and either is fine as long as we are expressing ourselves in a way that is true. In reality there are no clothes, colors, activities etc. that belong to any specific gender. If we are comfortable with whatever parts of ourselves are masculine and whatever parts are feminine, we can do whatever we please. Gender expression is a piece of the large puzzle of who we are as multi-faceted beings projecting ourselves to the world.

            “Gender roles are the attitudes, behaviors, rights, and responsibilities that particular groups associate with our assumed or assigned sex” (yarbor, 2019, page 113). Gender roles also vary greatly by culture and are ways of how people think that the world should work. Older generations might’ve thought women needed to stay home and cook for their husbands while the husbands worked for the world to function properly. If that is the life some people want to live that’s fine, but it is important to realize that many people live their lives in many ways, and all are fine.

            One of the things that stuck out to me most on the cisgender privilege list was the first point “Can you be guaranteed to find a public bathroom that is safe and equipped for you to use?” (Taylor). There have been a few viral videos going around twitter recently of a girl asking people if they felt safe with transgender people using the bathroom in which they identify as (in the video she uses less accurate phrasing and is specifically talking about trans women using womens restrooms). This first point along with the documentary “The T word” made me realize just how dangerous that way of thinking can be for trans people. A trans person using the restroom they are comfortable in aren’t going to do anything but use the restroom, whereas people with this aggressive fear driven mindset might (and do) actually go out of their way to harass and harm people who are just trying to exist.