Trans Teen Survival Guide. Fox Fisher
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Название: Trans Teen Survival Guide
Автор: Fox Fisher
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Учебная литература
isbn: 9781784506629
isbn:
There isn’t really a universal answer that we can give you that will tell you the ultimate truth of whether you’re trans or not. It’s not as easy as taking a quiz online that will decide your entire future (you can probably google some quizzes, but we’re not guaranteeing their accuracy). You’re the only one who can really know and you’re the only one who has a say about it. No one can really tell you how you feel inside. It’s something you’ve got to figure out and come to terms with. Just know that you’re certainly not the only one and that there are so many of us out there willing to support you. If you’re questioning your gender or think you might be trans, we recommend you reach out to a support group in your area and try to talk to people close to you if you feel safe to do so. There are also many trans people online on different social media platforms (such as Instagram, Tumblr and YouTube) who are telling their stories. Try checking some of them out and see if their experience resonates with you.
Our entire being is often limited by ideas of sex and gender. Trying to break away from the sex and gender that was assigned to us at birth can often be very difficult. If we’re already losing you here, don’t worry. We will start with a few basics in Chapter 2.
In this chapter we will look into the ideas, values and norms that are behind gender roles and gender in society today. While it is widely accepted (especially within Social Studies) that gender is a social construct, it doesn’t mean that it has no effect in society and doesn’t have very real consequences. In fact, gender is perhaps one of the most persistent and well-rooted social constructs in our society and affects almost every single part of it. Our entire social reality is based around gender and how people are treated in society. So in order to understand gender a little better, it’s good to talk about the ideas that it stems from.
WHAT IS GENDER, REALLY?
If it were possible to explain gender in such a way that everyone could understand and agree, that’d be pretty awesome. But actually it’s impossible. Gender is really a tangled web of so many different things. Gender isn’t the same for everyone, and ideas about gender and gender roles change with time, between countries and between cultures. There are so many different ideas about what gender is that it’s impossible to find just one definition of what it actually is and the effects it has. So instead of offering a comprehensive guide to what gender is, let’s talk about what gender can be.
Fox Fisher
In order to understand the concept of gender, it’s important to understand the concept of sex (or sex characteristics) and the difference between the two concepts. Sex refers to our body, our parts and all the things that have to do with our sex characteristics. This means genitals, hormone production, chromosomes, reproductive organs and so on. Usually people are categorised as male, female or intersex. Male usually refers to those born with a penis, testicles and XY chromosomes. Female refers to those born with a vagina, ovaries, uterus and XX chromosomes. Intersex people are those who fall into neither of these categories – their sex characteristics somehow challenge these categories, whether that has to do with genitalia, chromosomes, reproductive organs or hormone production. There are over 40 different variations, so despite people claiming that sex is very simple and clear cut, it’s actually super diverse! What is important to note is that even though our sex characteristics are a physical fact, the categorisation of them is not. These categories are of course created by us humans and are used to simplify or categorise people based on certain physical attributes. While this can be useful in many respects, problems arise when we not only assign people a sex but a gender based on that sex. This is where the game gets complicated!
When we’re born, we’re assigned a sex based on our sex characteristics, and following on from that we are assigned a gender. This is where our troubles begin. People who are categorised as male get assigned as a ‘boy’ at birth and those categorised as female get assigned as a ‘girl’. Girls are assigned a certain set of expectations, personality traits, hobbies, colours and status in society. However, a set of different expectations and attributes are assigned to boys. We all know this and experience it. Girls wear pink, boys wear blue. Girls get dolls, boys get cars. Women cook dinner, men work outside the home. Boys/men and girls/women are generally moulded into the opposite of one another. Men or boys generally have more access to power or a higher status in society. This doesn’t mean women can’t have power in society or that women are always oppressed by men – it just means that men have more opportunities for achieving success. There are of course so many other factors that come into play, such as your social class, ethnic background, sexuality, physical attributes and so on.
In short, gender is a complicated social construct based on society’s expectations and assignations as well as our own personal ideas and experiences of who we are within this gendered world. The more spiritual individuals among us would say that the soul or our inner sense of self isn’t gendered. But in this world it is hard to navigate life without describing and expressing some sort of a gender, or lack of it.
Gender and ideas about gender identity vary so much between different cultures and throughout time that it’s hard to imagine anyone actually believing it to be as simple as just men and women, with those categories entirely controlled by our sex characteristics. Assigning someone a social role based merely on their genitals seems like a gross over-simplification if there ever was one. We don’t need to look very far for proof of just how fragile this idea is. There are cultures all around the world that have had very diverse ideas about gender and gender identity since the beginning of human civilisation, and in many cultures today we have societies with gender and gender identities spanning from two up to five or more.
Fox Fisher
When it comes to trans people, it’s quite obvious that gender assignation in our society is flawed. While it does indeed work for the majority of people, it doesn’t work for all of us. And that’s why it’s dangerous to try to force it upon everyone. When we try to pin a gender on someone else and tell them what they are or what they are not, we are enforcing the same ideology that divides men and women and creates inequality and discrimination based on gender. We are reducing people to the sum of their bodies and reproductive capacity, and using the same oppression that has primarily been used against women to enact laws, limitations and systematic discrimination on their freedom and their bodies.
Gender identity is how we experience our own gender and our own inner sense of self. It is the gender that we know ourselves to be, something that no one else can feel. We all have a gender identity, but when it matches up with the assignation process it’s often hard to locate that sense of gender identity. For trans people this is often much easier as it’s quite clear that our gender identity goes against the whole assignation process. When you somehow differ from a well-established norm or value in society, you usually notice that quite quickly. And other people notice it too: trans people and those who do СКАЧАТЬ