Gender is one of the most strange facets of human culture. As soon as a child is born, doctors and parents look at the newborn’s genitals, and based on whether or not they see a penis, they decide the entire future of the child right then and there. If they deem the baby to be a male, they automatically assume that the child is a boy and dress it in blue, expect it to want to play with trucks, feel attraction to girls, be financially successful, and be a great leader and active member of society. If the baby is deemed to be female, they call them a girl and dress them in pink, expecting the child to want to play with dolls, to be coy and shy and pure, and to aspire to a life of motherhood and homemaking. However, the definition of gender
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In my daily life, I try to speak as inclusively as I know how to in regards to gender. Bosmajian pointed out several good examples of sexism and misogyny that people use in daily life that I had never noticed before. Using women as the “second sex” by referring to women as “ladies” and men as just “men” in the same situations is a means of infantilizing women that I hadn’t realized is a type of sexism (Bosmajian, 325), and I had unfortunately used it on multiple occasions. I consider myself to be knowledgeable about what misogyny is and isn’t, but I made this mistake. This shows just how intertwined sexism is in society, where it is so much that not many people can even realize when they are saying sexist …show more content…
I am transgender, and when I was born my parents and the doctors decided that I was female, and so they called, and unfortunately still call me, a girl. They refuse to acknowledge the difference between my biological sex and my gender, which is male. Being born and socialized as a “girl,” I have experienced a lot of my life in society as a girl. Now, before I am able to medically transition by taking testosterone hormone therapy and after I identified my place in life as a male, society sees me as an “in-betweener,” someone with simultaneously neither and both gender roles that apply to cisgender-passing men and women. When I do pass for male, I notice how differently I am treated than if people thought I was a girl or an in-betweener. When people think I am a biological male, they are more aloof around me. Men pay less attention to me, and they assume that I am a more physically-oriented person like they are. Women act either more positively or more negatively towards me depending if they liked me or not, whereas women who think I am a girl act relatively neutrally either way. One example of this is the bathrooms. I have used both men’s and women’s public bathrooms, and they are very different in overall feeling. Using a women’s bathroom, disregarding my discomfort at using the wrong bathroom, I noticed that the women in there are talkative, and there are often groups of them waiting for their friend in the
In my daily life, I try to speak as inclusively as I know how to in regards to gender. Bosmajian pointed out several good examples of sexism and misogyny that people use in daily life that I had never noticed before. Using women as the “second sex” by referring to women as “ladies” and men as just “men” in the same situations is a means of infantilizing women that I hadn’t realized is a type of sexism (Bosmajian, 325), and I had unfortunately used it on multiple occasions. I consider myself to be knowledgeable about what misogyny is and isn’t, but I made this mistake. This shows just how intertwined sexism is in society, where it is so much that not many people can even realize when they are saying sexist …show more content…
I am transgender, and when I was born my parents and the doctors decided that I was female, and so they called, and unfortunately still call me, a girl. They refuse to acknowledge the difference between my biological sex and my gender, which is male. Being born and socialized as a “girl,” I have experienced a lot of my life in society as a girl. Now, before I am able to medically transition by taking testosterone hormone therapy and after I identified my place in life as a male, society sees me as an “in-betweener,” someone with simultaneously neither and both gender roles that apply to cisgender-passing men and women. When I do pass for male, I notice how differently I am treated than if people thought I was a girl or an in-betweener. When people think I am a biological male, they are more aloof around me. Men pay less attention to me, and they assume that I am a more physically-oriented person like they are. Women act either more positively or more negatively towards me depending if they liked me or not, whereas women who think I am a girl act relatively neutrally either way. One example of this is the bathrooms. I have used both men’s and women’s public bathrooms, and they are very different in overall feeling. Using a women’s bathroom, disregarding my discomfort at using the wrong bathroom, I noticed that the women in there are talkative, and there are often groups of them waiting for their friend in the