Are you male or female? It seems like an easy question right? For some yes, for others I’ve come to realize it’s the farthest thing from easy. Imagine walking into an emergency room with concussion like symptoms. The nurse examines you and fills out the form saying you are a female, and you leave it there. But later they somehow check your other medical records and it reads male. They are confused, they call you a liar, and they don’t know what to think. The problem is, your birth certificate says your born sex is male but, your gender presentation is female.The following video shows a male to female transformation in 30 months.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xjM-wJYMCg[/youtube]
Moving Outside of the Binaries
I personally have a few friends who don’t follow the gender norm. With her permission, let’s look at my friend, we call her Bug. She was born a girl. She still has feminine qualities, but her gender presentation is male. She also has a girlfriend but doesn’t consider herself Gay or a lesbian. We call it free love. For her friends, we don’t over think who Bug is, or how she identifies herself. She is just Bug. And I hope one day society can see her as just that. I hope one day we can walk through a store without people staring and wondering and just see her as a person. According to an article on CNN, one writer shares “Most transgender people I know have felt a gender incongruity for as long as they remember, and evolving science says we were probably born feeling like this. The only thing that changed along the way has been our awareness that there are others like us We didn’t “decide” to be transgender.” I hope one day society can realize this and come to accept everyone for who they are without judgment.
Bug when she was younger
Bug Today!
The Difference Between Sex and Gender
According to our text book, Gendered Lives, Communication, Gender and Culture and information we have learned in class, it is safe to say there are distinct differences between sex and gender. Sex is biological; it is how you were born. Whereas gender is your cultural identity. Sex is defined as male or female, your personal characteristics are determined by biology. An example for before where I stated her birth certificate shows she was a male explains her sex. She was born a male but her gender is female.
Gender is masculine or feminine. We as a culture create our genders. Gender varies across cultures and over time. We learn these gender norms through more than one place. What some don’t understand is that there are a range of genders and most people have a mixture of “masculine” and “feminine” gendered behaviors. The range of gender I wanted to mostly focus on what transgender. A transgender is a person who feels like her/his gendered identity is inconsistent with her/his biological sex. It is also important to understand that your gendered identity does not determine your sexuality.
Building Understanding
It’s probably not something you think about unless it’s a part of your life. The difference between sex and gender. That being transgendered doesn’t mean just dressing up like your opposite sex. Your sex is how you were born. I was born a female. By friend Bug was also born a female. When you look at her she clearly looks like a boy now, but when asked, if she has to pick her gender what would she identify with more? To my surprise she said female. Bug doesn’t consider herself transgendered either. She likes to say you can’t define me, I am just me. To me she is one of the most admirable persons I know. It is important to understand the difference between sex and gender because they are at many times mistaken for the same thing, when in fact they are two different things. Also someone who is transgendered usually feels as if they are trapped in the wrong body. I can’t imagine how this feels, to not be comfortable in your own skin, and when you try to match the inside to the outside, you’re judged. I hope with this information people will realize how important it is to understand the differences between sex and gender, and what transgender actually is. You need to first understand all of the facts before you judge someone, for just being who they are.
