I believe everyone is allowed to choose their identity. I know at birth, you’re assigned to specific social roles already like “oh my god, it’s a boy” or “oh my god, it’s a girl.” Just like before a baby is born and they’ll be associated with the color blue if it’s a boy and the color pink if it’s a girl. It’s an innocent but yet harmful traditional society role brought onto a baby. Yes, a baby cannot thoroughly think independently, but people will typically dress their baby girl in dresses or girly wardrobe because society values believe women should always dress up. Also, a simple color means a lot more than people think. I’ve seen, heard, and experience straight men saying they don’t wear the color pink because they believe they look “gay,” or others will think that. This is entirely false because how you dress and the colors you like does not determine your sexuality or how comfortable you feel. As a person, I don’t go by society’s roles. I love wearing all clothing types, especially baggy clothing that I bought in the men’s section. Also, it’s so hard to say it’s just one person that created these rules. When in reality, it’s all of us. Whether it’s picking clothes for the gender of the baby, specific toys for a baby, a color, or simple hygiene like men cleaning their nails at a nail salon, and much more. And I think it’s a long hard battle to change because some people are trying to change these norms, but there are still many people in third world countries that think social norms are the best or correct way only.
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Gender, Identity, and Intersectionality: Who are you?
Initially, it’s difficult to think that we choose our identities. This is so because of the restraints society places on gender, sex, and your ability to experience these things unhinged/ impartial and to express/ act upon these experiences. As time goes by, we grow and learn more shaping the way we see things. This is when the core sense of who we are begins to blossom into gender identity.
Identity isn’t easily seen because it can’t be assumed on appearance, anatomy, social norms nor stereotypes but can be felt by yourself. For example: think back to your first day of school, so many new faces and kids you’ve never met and you introduce yourself. This is done so subtly but it aims to paint a bigger picture, as you made your introduction you shared pieces of yourself that felt important and how you see or feel when it related to gender whether it was recognized or not.
I believe that gender identity cannot be chosen for you because of the core nature of the definition; it is only dependent on how you internally experience gender for yourself. Though it cannot be chosen I do believe that it can be influenced by our parents/guardians/friends/families through trends for example: when they make remarks like, “boys don’t wear pink or play with dolls” or ” sweetie, you’re a girl and you shouldn’t play so rough with the boys. Act more lady-like.” It conditions your mind to associate your identity with these remarks and so many of us remain as we are or others who feel a stronger sense to something else identify as another.
Society is the director of our lives, whether we allow it to influence us or refuse to be amused. I believe all identities are managed, specifically masculinity and as a result feminity. Masculinity is safeguarded by society to ensure that they are strong, invulnerable, breadwinners, etc. This, in turn, influences identity and social practices deeming males the superior gender and oppression of women’s feminity.
POST 3: IDENTITY
You can choose your identity by changing the way you look and act. Such as if you were physically born with brown hair, you could dye it blonde or get a wig. Also if you were known as a very shy person before, you could make steps to come out of shell. I guess it is down to how you portray yourself to the world. Your actions, the environment you surround yourself with and the values you hold are all apart of your identity. Although people might still view you a certain way, as long as you are happy with your identity, then nothing else matters.
It is easier to choose your identity when you are older than as a child because certain forces have control over you when you are young. Essentially, your identity is chosen for you such as cultural practices that you are forced to participate in and the way you dress could be determined. Elders such as parents, guardians, teachers, etc. have a massive say in how we choose to express ourselves. They could be the ones who encourage our identity growth or stunt it, negatively or positively. Our physical identity such as hairstyles/fashion is more manageable than our personality identities especially if we under constant labelling by others.
Who am I? Who do you think I am?
Identity can be looked at in two ways. How your see yourself, and how you others receive what you portray to them.
The reason I believe this is because, we will never see ourselves the way others see us. Simply because, we will always be our toughest critics. We choose our identities because we know who we want to be. These are the words we would use to describe ourselves. However, these may not always be accurate because of that self-criticism.
Yet, other people may not perceive me in the same way I perceive myself because 1) they do not know those inside thoughts, 2) they don’t know who I WANT to be, and 3) they are not as harshly criticizing me. Actions always speak louder than words. Others often identify parts of our aspects because they place labels based off of what they see, and how that fits into the norms of society. In addition, they place labels for us that make it easier for them to understand who we are.
In my opinion, I feel as though men tend to have a lot to say about the identities of women. Some men tend to comprehend things when there is a clear label. As a result, I think men and the stereotypes that exist in the world often influence the identities placed on us. This is also the trend in who gets to decide what aspects about us others get to label.
The person I think myself to be, may not be the same person my closest friends see me as. They view me in a different light than I see myself. Often, in a much softer light than we look at ourselves. In addition, we often try to label parts of our own identities to make it easier for others to understand us.
Jessica Singh: Post 3
Question: In what ways do you get choose your identity? In what ways is it chosen for you? Do you notice a trend in who gets to decide which aspects? Do any identities or attributes/behaviors seem more managed or directed than others? By whom?
I personally feel like you’re born with whom you would like to identify yourself with. As you grow older and pass the many stages of development, you grow up to choose what fits you. At times you may feel an imbalance or something different about yourself that you cannot identify what it may be. You notice that you have different characteristics as the same sex as you. As you tend to get older, you get educated enough to understand yourself. Society will take a toll on an individuals mental health because of the way the public eye view’s such things. They see things and they are quickly ready to judge. This on the other hand, leads to family and the many similarities that they share with society. Some family is quick to judge, so it pressures the individuals to constantly cover up who they are.
Post #3
We do not get to choose our identity, but it is the world that shapes us. While we were growing up, our caretakers choose to teach us the things that match our identity, if you are a girl, you should have all the girly stuff, and if you are a boy, you should have all boy stuff, they put their social value on us, and this affects who we are, and what we should do. When we go to school, we get to contact with more new things, and I noticed that there is a trend, society gets to decides which aspect you are, the public’s thought plays a major role, and some people would fake it to fit in the society, because society does not accept them. I think this trend should be gone, we should choose our own identity.
What is gender?
Gender is the way we see ourselves, to put it briefly. But there is a lot that goes into gender that has been overlooked for years. Now we are able to have a conversation on respecting the different perspectives we all have. We don’t see gender that much in things like paperwork that prefer to ask for sex instead which is another conversation, but it is implied that they are the same when they are not. Nonetheless, we discuss gender every day by meeting new people and learning more about them, we see it online as well. Society manages to tell us that it is a decision between masculinity and femininity, but it is not something that should be confined between two categories. Instead, it should be what we see ourselves as, we can be both feminine and masculine, who is to say what we can or can’t be? The most common gender role that I see to this day based on readings of an earlier time, is the role of mothers being the loving feminine role for children and fathers being the stern stone-cold authority figure. As a more modern family of today defies this need to follow this outline, we can see that no parent should be any other role than a loving responsible parent.
Gender relates to privilege and power because some people today are still under the impression that since women are more feminine they must not work hard and therefore deserve less pay. This may have passed by with no problem in the 50s, but we are more than educated enough to know that women work equally as hard as the “strong” men. I believe all genders have equal struggles in many different ways, but some problems are hard to take action on like equal pay. While men have fewer issues than women that society is to blame for upholding old practices like preferring to hire men over women. At this point, there is no justification or explanation as to why it is this way it is, but it is something we still are fighting for. I think that there should not be anyone who decides which gender is legitimate besides yourself about your own, what you decide to be is up to you and no one else, and it should be respected by others and you do the same for them. There might be many genders but at the end of the day, we should not tell others how they should feel or live so it is not up to me to determine how many genders there are and instead it is for me to respect.
What Is Gender?
Gender is a form of identity and what you feel you would prefer to identify as. oftentimes some may consider gender and sex as the same thing but they are completely different. gender is fluid and individualistic, meaning only you can decide what you want to identify as, and sex is biological, based off of physical traits and genitals. Gender and identity is seen within society and at times society can reinforce or socially construct gender roles. Gender roles and the standards that we’re expected to uphold within society can degrade and restrict someone from identifying as what they feel they are. For example there are common stereotypes surrounding masculinity and femininity. Men are usually seen as these tough, strong, emotionless, breadwinners while women are commonly described as more sensitive, emotional, and obedient housewives. this separation can show gender in relation to power and privilege because women are constructed and conditioned to feel inferior to men which creates a sense of hierarchy within society with men sitting on top, benefitting the most. ignorantly, society as always thought there were two genders, male and female based off biological sex. However, with modernity and diversity gender is limitless and the list continues as more people are open with identifying as they wish to identify.
What is gender?
According to the Oxford dictionary, gender is “the fact of being male or female, especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences, not differences in biology.” It is very sad that most dictionaries and encyclopedias define this word as something related to either female or male experience. In my view, gender is too subtle and fluid to be labeled. Unfortunately, our society is all about labels, and the reason why is pretty obvious to me. Life is easier when you know what’s what. By the same way of labeling, the human race has classified everything on planet Earth and beyond. Thus, men were assigned to be strong and cold-hearted bread-winners, and women became soft and gentle housekeepers. From the moment they are born, boys get covered in blue blankets, and girls in pink. And it goes on and on into their adult life. Boys are almost required to play with cars and plastic soldiers, and girls should have enough dolls and tea sets to remind them of their feminine nature. It is prohibited to cry for the boys, while girls are forbidden from being loud and bold. Notice how I unintentionally talked about men first because in a stereotypical world women live in the shadow of a man.
When men are viewed as strong leaders and women as humble housewives, and when the privileges are granted unequally, it constitutes a power relationship model. Women, as less intelligent, unable to make decisions outside their house, and overall inferior to men in every aspect of life, struggle to be recognized in society as something other than a pretty piece of furniture. Meanwhile, men suffer from toxic masculinity that developed from this gender roles assignment. In the society of inequalities and inequities, everyone is affected and no one benefits.
Gender identity is the personal sense of one’s own gender. So, today I might feel like possessing typical feminine characteristics, being all soft and gentle. Tomorrow I would be an aggressive leader, and no one would tell me that girls should not show anger. In the evening I’m a little dog covered under a blanket and in the morning a dinosaur roaring like hell. Human nature is so diverse and unique for every one of us that it’s just stupid to restrict the borders of gender. To conclude my thought, there is an infinite number of genders or no gender as a label at all.
Post 2: What is Gender ?
I think that gender is a very controversial topic in society today. Although it was not a popular idea back then, people seem to have normalized the idea. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), gender is a person’s deeply felt, internal, and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond to the person’s physiology or designated sex at birth. This definition I agree with on what gender is.
As I have previously mentioned, people were not always flexible on the idea of gender. Some people had advantages over others based on their gender. Men and women were both treated differently in society. They were always assigned different roles, and breaking these gender roles was seen as something disgraceful. Society had created a mold for gender roles; they also believed that there were only two genders.
Men had a sense of authority over women and were more dominant in a way. They were able to do things that women were not. Women protested to have equal rights and to be respected the same way men were. Unfortunately, women still have to fight for their rights today. I don’t know why men were granted more privileges than women. I think that idea was something that people lived by normally back then. Men were to be respected by their wives and children and had authority over them.
