Mother knows best! I think…
X & Y. These two letters aren’t like ying and yang, where they balance each other. They barely have any significance in terms of the alphabet but when it comes to gender, X & Y are the only two letters that matter.
A female is represented by the letters XX and a male is represented by the letters XY. But who’s to say that an XX individual can’t have the mindset of an XY individual and vice versa? Take, for example, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s daughter, Shiloh. Both Jolie and Pitt have talked about how Shiloh wants to be a boy and called John. These celebrity parents whose lives are always in the public eye have done nothing but been supportive of their daughter’s decisions and allowed her to live her life the way she wants. Unfortunately, not all parents have the mindsets of Jolie and Pitt. According to Freya Brown, sex assignment is determined before birth.
“Parents hold the assumption that their child will be ‘one or the other…”
Expecting parents yearn to find out the sex of their unborn child and once it’s determined, the gender specifics mindsets begin to develop. If it’s a girl, parents start looking into ballet academies and if it’s a boy, parents start looking into pee-wee baseball leagues. Parents start weaving gender specific dreams that they hope to achieve through their unborn daughter or son. Parents start creating expectations for a child who will think they’ve actually disappeared when playing peek-a-boo.
But what happens if the child turns out to be gay, lesbian, or trans? What do parents do then?
Unfortunately, the “normal” reaction for parents to do is overreact. They think that their child won’t be accepted by society. Although it seems like the parents are trying to “protect” their child from the harsh realities of society, but they are really just trying to protect the dreams they’ve weaved. All the dreams, they weaved, suddenly start crashing and burning. Their narrow mindedness caused them to not be prepared for these circumstances.
But it’s not completely the parents’ fault. Society has a HEAVY influence on the parents. Parents teach their children what society has taught them. Society has, is, and will always be an influence, in terms of not only gender but anything “abnormal” or different that doesn’t meet the molds of society’s norms. It’s not the parents that are raising their children, it’s society. You know what they say, it’s takes a village to raise a child. But now, it’s a takes a society to raise a child.
That’s what angers me about society, the fact that peoples’ opinions are not valued if they’re different. In this day and age, being different is valued…it’s ENCOURAGED! It took so long for the concept of gay, lesbian, and even trans to change society, took even longer for it to be accepted! I also feel like that’s what it all comes down to, acceptance. Society has a hard time accepting change which leads to parents having a hard time accepting their child which ultimately, leads to the child having a hard time accepting him/herself. It’s just a circle of life, or in this case, a circle of acceptance.
Coming from a culture, where narrow mindedness is pretty prevalent and growing up in a country where narrow mindedness is greatly looked down upon, I did not know which way to think. But, thankfully, I’ve been in situations and meet people who have influenced a lot of my mindset today. I am hoping that the future holds more value in the idea of acceptance.
