Context
Gender is generally understood to be how we identify our gender, as a part of (or resistance to) our sex, sexuality, behaviour, language and morphology (how our body looks). We generally rely on physical appearance and genders assigned at birth to identify but there are many who feel they either don’t fit the gender they were assigned at birth, or fit neither gender in the traditional gender binary (boy + girl).
Resources
Great Blog on Gender and Gender Issues
Gender Fork- blog celebrating gender variance
Gender Fork’s Tumblr
Genderqueer Tumbr- celebrating those who play with and challenge gender
Short doc on gender Body in the Media
Study Questions
1. In what ways is gender “performed?”
2. In what ways is gender inherent?
3. What makes a man a “man” or a woman a “woman?”
4. What are some examples of third or even fourth genders in other cultures?
one addition/clarification I would like to add is that gender and sex are two different things that people often confuse. Sex is a biological term that refers to the primary and secondary characteristics of an individuals body (hormones, chromosomes, genitals), whereas gender is a sociological term that refers to socially constructed roles, behaviours and expression of individuals.
also to note, there’s a belief that sex exists in a binary – female and male – but in actuality there are a myriad of sexes, all of which don’t fall explicitly into female or male are commonly known (in this time/place/western cultural context) as intersex conditions.
as gender is the socially constructed way in which individuals live in and experience the world, it should be obvious to say that gender can be limitless, and that many individuals live in and outside of normative gender experiences.
this link is also pretty helpful for providing some tips on being an ally to trans folks: http://trans-terrific.tumblr.com/post/20764765607/the-dos-and-donts-of-being-a-social-justice
Absolutely. I hope this video serves as a “page 1″ to a much bigger picture. Sex, outside of the binary is familiar to the scientific world, but has seen little link to our own species due to all kinds of reasons. My hope is to track down a biologist type person who can complicate how the scientific view of sex binary is skewed and political, and that intersex conditions exist across species, including our own. I’d like to tackle sex in a separate video but of course, all of these things viewed in isolation only tell part of the story. Thanks for the comment and link
