Breaking Down Gender

To understand gender identity and why its so hard to get people to respect it we first have to look at what gender is. What is the gender binary and why does it exist? Why is it that when we are born someone looks at your genitals and decides at that moment that you are either male or female (or sooner with ultrasounds.) Who was it that decided the world was only allowed two genders and that those genders must adhere to rigid stereo types? How many centuries do we have to look back to find that answer, well some would say bible times. But what facts do we know about the bible? It was written by man just like the idea of gender was thought up by man as well. Its a belief, a principal that all the foundations of the society that we live in today was built on. That belief is the patriarchy. Men were put on the earth to rule the world and women were put on the earth to serve them. This is the same system that women have been fighting for years and are still fighting all over the world just to be seen and heard. Just to have the right to an education. To have an identity other then the wife.

Our society still hates women so much that if we see a boy or man that is seen to be expressing themselves in a feminine manner they're immediately judged and looked at with contempt. But what if a girl does the same thing? Why is it that when a girl decides to cut her hair short and stop wearing dresses shes only considered a tomboy? Its more acceptable in societies eyes because women don’t matter. The dresses and make up and all those feminine characteristics were originally used primarily to please men. But when a man uses make up or expresses in a feminine manner he isn’t being masculine and well that’s a sacred sin. In every culture the Man is the one who is set up to succeed. It was only a hundred years ago that women got the right to vote, up until 92 women were still being sex tested for Olympic sports. Right down to their chromosomes and if they didn’t match up then they would be disqualified, we know now that chromosomes don’t determine gender but that just shows how women were really viewed.

What happens when you are assigned male at birth? You get told you can be anything you want, you can be an astronaut, you can run for president. But you have to be tough, you can’t show emotion and you better adhere to the strict rules of being a man or else. Flip the table now and ask what happens when you're assigned female at birth? You are told that this is a mans world and you better look pretty and get a good husband and stay home and raise his children, except now because of the economy both parents have to work and still do most if not all the child care and cleaning.

So now that we have laid out what gender is, where gender roles came from and why they came about. It should be pretty clear, who is the only one who benefits? I think we are on the same page now. Society is gradually progressing and people are being more open about there gender identities but it hasn’t been for long. In the fifties if you told a doctor how you felt they told you that you had Gender Identity Disorder because we felt different we must be mentally ill so they would subject you to electric shock or claim you were a delusional paranoid schizophrenic and lock you up. This was only 65 years ago! Jump ahead to the 80’s there was only one or two gender centers in the world that dealt with trans kids and they forced them to conform instead of letting them express there gender, trans men weren’t even heard of. We were still considered to have a mental disorder and there was next to no education and the only exposure a person would have with trans people was as sex workers, many trans people back then performed as drag queens because that was the only accepting employment available if you were visibly trans.

If you transitioned you were forced to conform and change your body and appearance to look as much like a cis female as possible to go undetected. There was no non discrimination policies in place for trans people so that cis normative representation was a must, and its still a must for a lot of trans people in order to stay alive today. Trans men weren’t even talked about back then but they existed they just transitioned and identified as butch, that was the end of the acceptable line at the time and it kinda makes sense that very few came out as trans, compared to how many trans females came out.

When we are finally living in a world where men and women are viewed equally then these stereotypes, and the rigid gender roles won’t be a thing. Non Binary trans people are already showing the world what gender really looks like, which is however we want it to, that there is no rules. They show the world that you don’t have to conform, you can be whoever you want and that your expression is just that, its an expression and a choice.

We are living our lives and ruling society with beliefs that were put in place centuries ago, and if you really think about it what good are they really doing us? There is more hate in the world then ever before. The economy is falling apart, We are the highest in debt, and have the highest rates of depression and obesity in history. I think the obvious deduction from those statistics is that the way we have been doing it isn’t working anymore.

Trans people show the world that you can be happy being yourself, that embracing your vulnerabilities and exposing yourself to world at the risk of humiliation and discrimination still come out on top. What does every human want? everyone of us wants to be to be treated with respect and dignity and in the world we live in today its still men that get most of that respect and validation that is why feminism is so important that’s why standing up and using your voice is so important. The only way to really abolish discrimination is education and exposure.