I’ve been wanting to take a closer look at gender and identity issues ever since I discovered I might bend the other way. But being in a traditional Chinese AND conservative Christian household has prevented me from doing a lot of things the Bible finds “wrong”. All I really want to do is BE myself and brave the freedom of expression! After spending recent years in “discovery”, my eyes have opened… in a more liberal sense. I have become alarming aware of how gendered my mother is -and frankly, most of the adults in her generation are. The most frustrating part? They don’t realize it at all. The social construct and accepted understanding of what is a female and what is a male have been cemented in their lives that they don’t even question it. They’ve mistaken the gender norm as facts rather than societal expectations and trend. I think gender is fluid; and sex is purely biological. You are determined male or female most prominently by your physical features, and anything else materialistic that we put on top is what we acquire from the society later on.
I remember a while back, there was a news story about a Toronto couple raising their newborn “genderless”. Their two older kids can choose what they want to wear, what toys to play with, and the colours of their belongings. The couple’s choice to raise their kids this way has stirred up a small controversy, and they assure the public that it does not have an ill effect on the children. In fact, “their choice not to openly reveal the children’s sexes made those around them more aware and gave the children more liberties to decide what they wanted for themselves.” And more recently (like last week) Australia introduced a third gender option on passports! This is a big step towards breaking gender stereotypes in society. The binary opposition is so prevalent in society and innate in us (because we are symmetrical beings) that it’s hard to fight against it. We are raised a certain gender, after all, and certain expectations are in place for being an either-or in the binary… so what is the point I’m trying to make if this notion of gender is, indeed, so deeply-rooted in our world? I think a good start would be to educate yourself and those around you about gender. Heck, even I’m not informed enough to lecture…. just thought a change of expectations would be nice.