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People had this prevailing narrative about gender, that if one is born with
a vagina then it is therefore a woman, and if one was born with a penis then
that makes it a man. If mix-ups was possible in social and or emotional terms, a
biological mix-up was also happens. Thus, giving births to intersex babies.
Bear in mind that diversity doesn’t mean chaos. Giving birth with an
intersex was deemed problematic when it fact it is not. That parents would even
have a second thought of keeping the child or even wishing that it had cancer
instead, that was the problem. It is the social belief we stood upon that
complicates things that could’ve been understood in simpler terms.
Understanding gender was like learning to walk except for the fact that
you are a fish or don’t even have legs at all! It was never a one way street nor a
two way street but a multiple crossroads down the road. The concept of
gender is so common that most of us took it for granted. Yet on the other hand,
it is too familiar that not abiding with the patterns set by the different institutions
such as the family, the economy, religion, politics, even language and
education had built for us is definitely scandalous.
Being a man or a woman wasn’t an end game, nor should be treated as
two fixed polar states. Gendering is a process of becoming. You didn’t just
happen to be born with it or happens overnight, but instead it is a condition that
is actively subject to change and refinement over time. And the the “process of
becoming” or identify oneself’s gender isn’t and never will be easy. Along the
way, comes frustrations and confusions. Thus, gives us unstable results.
Gender may be imposed outside due to social pressure and norms, but
we should also take consideration on the personal level of it. That’s mainly the
reason why we couldn’t think that womanhood or manhood is a fixed state by
nature. As an individual grow up and age, so does he gains more knowledge
and have the autonomy to make decisions for one’s self.
Gender ambiguities is not rare that is why there are a lot ideologies that
were created in order to even have a hindsight understanding about gender.
There have been gender order where people respond to it or even conduct
themselves according to it. Also, there exists gender categories wherein people
learn to suit themselves to where they feel comfortable the most.
Another concept would be gender arrangements that sometimes are the
same “source of pleasure, recognition, and identity, and sources of injustice and
harm.” Given that there are inequalities and oppression, gender had been a
subject of reform since time immemorial.
If we are to narrow it down we can analyze gender in personal level at
first. Humans grow up gendered and no one escaped this “grand plan” ahead
of them. To start off, we get pink and blues, the next thing we knew we got dolls
and guns, and then one has to stay passive while the other aggressive. This is the
pattern that was set before us and over time, it became the root of our
problems.
As stated earlier, acquiring gender is a process and that as we get older
our interaction with other people widens. Thus, we learn behaviours that were
gender appropriate and we were reinforced by it, either positively or negatively.
Socialization is a process just like gender and it starts at the basic unit we come
to have a relationship with - our families.
In a family we can see gender roles imposed by the society very cleary.
We have terms that showcases how strong a man is, just like in our country we
give men titles such as “haligi ng tahanan”. The one that will protect the family
because he is strong. As for women, we have called them, “ilaw ng tahanan”
which directly pertains being responsible in the management of the house itself.
Growing up with parents so saturated by the gender norms that were set
before them, the child has the tendency to have a limited freedom of exploring
its own gender. Color coded clothes and things will be a part one’s day to day
life. Socialization in this level is also the onset or the building of the foundation
on how one should act. Parents often taught the “brothers” to protect their
sisters as if they were weak and because they were the tough ones. On the
other hand, the “sisters” should always stay meek and presentable.
And then they were off to college. Where they will be out there and they
will feel lost and they will feel that they don’t even belong in this world. That they
don’t fit in . Given that college is a different arena, it provides a bird’s eye view
of the whole scenario. Luckily, most colleges were not bounded by the only two
genders.
College socialization offers more and most of the young adults have the
fuller grasp of their gender identity because they were given a space to explore
and learn. Eventually, their parents will find about this and they will get
flabbergasted with the fact that their child neither a female or a male. They will
be against it and they will tell their child that it is wrong. But is it really?
The wrong thing here is the cyclical pattern people are stuck with for
ages. There have been a diversity in gender practice and this may involved
bodies but it is surely not biologically determined. A boy can crossdressed as a
female and a girl can actually join hardcore sports. What you practice shouldn’t
be limited by the “sex” you have, practice where you feel that there is
realization of your potential.
Through time, there is a concept called gender configuration, it is a
process of engaging with a situation and acting upon it, progressively. Just like
how masculinity and femininity are not fixed or static. Philosopher Jean-Paul
Sartre called them as projects. It states that masculinity and femininity are
patterns that may be projected at present or in new conditions which were not
there before.
This helps me understand people who for example is a boy, who grew up
as a typical gendered male and practiced homosexuality in his adolescence
but as he grow up to be an adult he then goes back to practice masculinity. In
other cases this maybe the other way around. But what I’ve learned about
gender is that our “point of origin” couldn’t determine our lifecourse.
We may have grew up or even actually living with sexual scripts, gender
division of labour, and a lot more of policies and rules that seems to be a great
barrier in the expressing our gender, one shouldn’t feel bad about going against
the flow because it wasn’t even wrong in the first place. There maybe a lot of
gendered models set right before them, but that shouldn’t be the basis of one’s
gender identity. It was a model, someone or something you can look up to but
that doesn’t equate to abiding with it.
I stand that despite all this inputs the society offers and all these outputs
your personal self is leading you, gender is a choice - doesn’t have to be a
constantly but consistently. Choose where you feel alive.