This page is referenced by:

• 1 2022-08-02T12:22:35-07:00 THE GENDER PAGE!!!! 5 plain 2022-08-15T13:55:13-07:00 Gender is the system of rules and characteristics that dictate how people present themselves to each other. For much of history the only two genders people were really allowed to present as were male and female, and they were policed vigorously. Not only to the degree that people weren't allowed to exist outside of the binary, but also that people weren't allowed to change or present themselves in anyway other than how they were designated at birth. Even today for people who would like to exist outside of the binary, society is structured implicitly to disallow that variation. In the clothes available and the bathrooms and government documentation, for most of the world people have to choose one or the other to describe their entire experience with gender.
  
  Even for people who do feel as if their gender exists within the binary are often forced to align themselves with stereotypes and expectations of their gender that they might not necessarily connect with. A person could be perfectly happy identifying as a girl, the same gender they were assigned at birth and still by virtue of how they choose to live womanhood, be it too masculinely, not femininely enough, or even too femininely! She could be seen as failing at gender representation. Society has created a space that often, even cis people can be seen as too gender nonconforming.
  Ideally gender exists as a tool to communicate to others how we as people would want to be perceived. It doesn't have to always be constant or permanent or purposeful. Far too often gender is seen as a set parameter to define personhood rather than a tool that personhood can define. Whether that be men wearing dresses, or women wearing baseball hats, the role that gender plays in today's society doesn't help anyone, trans or cis.
  The current system in which gender exists however particularly hurts trans people as they will never be allowed to exist within the rules of the game. A trans woman will never be feminine enough to avoid the harassment of people dead set on seeing her as a man. The game of gender breaks down at the edges of society. When African women were brought over to America on slave ships, they could not be women as women existed in society at the time. They also needed to work as slave labor and as such were expected to work alongside men in the fields. Gender doesn't exist for any purpose besides boxing in people to fit what a society thinks they should be, and its about time society let gender work to present who people want to be rather than the other way around.
  
  Go Back?