I, Jenni Viviano am a heterosexual, middle-class, white, androgynous, and cisgender female. I have lived in the same small town my entire life and spent most of my life around the same people. I have a two-year degree, and I’m currently working on my four-year degree. I attended two SUNY schools rather than private schools. Does all of this affect my ideologies? My upbringing and how I identify with the world, both have been taught to me, and also have been forced upon me by different factors. Each of these elements of my identity has a binary opposite related to them. If were not a female I would be a male. If I were not heterosexual I would be queer, or if I were not cisgendered I would be transgendered. If I were not white, I would be
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One of the biggest determining factors is where I spent over 18 years of my life living. The town I’ve spent my entire life in is not the typical small town people tend to stereotype. It is predominately republican, but also progressive when it comes to LBGTQ related issues. The superintendent of Afton Central School is a lesbian woman. This meant there was a no tolerance policy when it came to bullying over someone’s sexual identity. The word ‘faggot’ led to a detention if one was caught using it. I was taught that your sexuality did not make you less of a human. This reality was shattered for me, however in middle school. Middle school is where we started to read the news and began to learn that same-sex marriage was not legal in throughout America. This perplexed me, how could two people not be able to marry, if we’ve been taught that they are the same as everyone else? My understanding of sexuality was socially constructed from the teachings that were ingrained in myself as a child, and my own personal belief. I want to think that if I did not grow up in Afton, New York that I would still agree with these ideas of sexuality, but now I’m not entirely
One of the biggest determining factors is where I spent over 18 years of my life living. The town I’ve spent my entire life in is not the typical small town people tend to stereotype. It is predominately republican, but also progressive when it comes to LBGTQ related issues. The superintendent of Afton Central School is a lesbian woman. This meant there was a no tolerance policy when it came to bullying over someone’s sexual identity. The word ‘faggot’ led to a detention if one was caught using it. I was taught that your sexuality did not make you less of a human. This reality was shattered for me, however in middle school. Middle school is where we started to read the news and began to learn that same-sex marriage was not legal in throughout America. This perplexed me, how could two people not be able to marry, if we’ve been taught that they are the same as everyone else? My understanding of sexuality was socially constructed from the teachings that were ingrained in myself as a child, and my own personal belief. I want to think that if I did not grow up in Afton, New York that I would still agree with these ideas of sexuality, but now I’m not entirely