Being Non-Binary in a Binary World
When a couple is expecting a child most parents say something along the lines of, “I don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl, I just want them to be healthy” but as that baby grows older and starts to express themselves a lot of times parents change how they feel. “My Son Wears Dresses; Get Over it” by Matt Duron is a great example of a set of parents who didn’t change how they felt. They loved their child no matter what he wore. They had a baby boy who grew up and decided that girl things like painting nails and wearing dresses made him more comfortable. His parents labeled it “gender creative”. I connect with this story because I too could be labeled as “gender creative” and feel very passionate about letting
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kids or people in general express themselves how they want to. In his essay, Matt Duron talks about his son who is gender creative, and how so many children like his are bullied by their parents.
Duron is a “guy’s guy” who loves football, baseball, beer, and classic trucks. He’s super masculine and always has been. He had never met an openly gay person until he met his wife whose brother was gay. He began to not like when people said things like “faggot” in the locker room. He began to not like it even more when he had his second son who liked to wear dresses and wished to be treated like a girl. Duron and his wife discovered that there were many other children who were the same way. They discovered that not as many parents were as accepting as they were and it angered them. Duron has an older son who is just like him, a “guy’s guy” but he loves his son who wears dresses just as much and wished other dads in his position would do the …show more content…
same. When Duron said, “I’m a father.
I signed up for this job with no strings attached, no caveats, no conditions” (318). It made really happy. I wish all parents could feel the same way but unfortunately a lot of them don’t and I see it all the time. I used to work at an arcade which forced me to work with a lot of young children and their parents, at least twice a day I would hear a little boy say he wanted one of our items that was pink or sparkly and his parents would say no. I currently work at Fred Meyers and we have a couple of carts that are in the shape of cars for kids. We have a pink one and I’ve heard parents tell their boys who wanted to ride in the pink car no because it was for girls. It makes me so mad when I hear those parents telling their child they can’t do something they want or have a toy they like just because it’s pink. When I came out as Non-binary and started going by Landon some people in my family weren’t very accepting. I know what it feels like to have a parent or a family member not accept how you feel or not agree with how you express yourself so when I hear children being told they can’t like a certain thing it makes me sad for
them. A lot of people might not be familiar with the word Non-binary. It is an umbrella term for what Duron called, “gender creative”. When something is binary it means that there are two. In this case there are two commonly known genders which are Male and Female. When someone identifies as Non-binary it means they do not feel like they are either male or female. I think that no matter how someone expresses themselves it shouldn't affect how people treat them. Whether or not someone believes how someone else feels shouldn't matter. Everyone, including children, should dress and act however they want. My sophomore year of high school I was visiting my dad, lying in bed like I always did, I came across a picture on Instagram that had a little cartoon of a Non-binary person every day of the week. The cartoon person wore a dress one day and a suit another. The way you dress doesn't tell what gender you are but in this case the artist was using cloths to show how the person felt. . The picture was explaining that not everyone in the word feels like they are a boy or a girl. I had never heard of anything like this before. I knew what being transgender was but I had never heard of someone being Non-binary. I decided to do some more research about it and discovered that I felt a lot of the same feelings these Non-binary people felt. I didn’t feel like I was a girl or a boy. Finding words for the way I had been feeling was a really good feeling. I started experimenting with how I expressed myself. I bought some boy clothes and styled my pixie cut a little differently. I began to wear less and less makeup, starting to feel more and more like myself. A lot of kids aren’t as lucky as I am. My parents still talk to me and after some time have accepted the way I feel. They call me Landon and try their best to use They/Them pronouns when referring to me. So many parents need to be more like mine and Duron. When a child or teen wants to explore expressing themselves in ways that aren’t normal parents need to allow it. I would not be who I am today if it weren’t for my parents allowing me to go out and buy boys shirts and throw out all of my makeup. Duron is a very rare but important kind of father and I hope that more parents over time start acting like him.
Perfect: adj. ˈpər-fikt 1. Entirely without any flaws, defects, or shortcomings, is the first definition you find on dictionary.com for the word (perfect). Is this actually possible to attain? Has anyone actually ever been perfect? Or is it all in the eye of the beholder? These questions are asked by almost every girl, as we dream to one day reach the unattainable. This is especially true at the tender age of fifteen, where nothing seems to be going right with our bodies and everything is changing in us. This poem stresses the fact that as everyone realizes how unrealistic this dream is, the knowledge makes no difference to the wish. Marisa de los Santos comments on this in her poem “Perfect Dress”. The use of verbose imagery, metaphors, and the simplistic approach are very effective in portraying the awkward adolescent stage of a young woman and the unrealistic dream of being perfect.
Gender role conflicts constantly place a role in our everyday life. For many years we have been living in a society where depending on our sexuality, we are judged and expected to behave and act certain way to fulfill the society’s gender stereotypes. The day we are born we are labeled as either a girl or boy and society identifies kids by what color they wear, pink is for girls and blue is for boys. Frequently, we heard the nurses in the Maternity facility saying things like, “Oh is a strong boy or is beautiful fragile princess.” Yet, not only in hospitals we heard this types of comments but we also see it on the media…
I was assigned to the female sex category at birth and raised as a girl; the very fact that I can state that simple statement and people can get a fairly clear idea how I was raised shows just how intertwined we are with the social construction of gender. Women can relate because they were probably raised in a similar fashion, and men know that they were raised differently than I was. This is one of the many ways our society supports Lorber’s claim that gender translates to a difference among the binary American society operates on (Lorber, pp. 47-48). My parents kept my hair long until I decided to donate it when I was 12 years old, my ears were pierced when I was 8 years old, and
The cultural aspect of homophobia and heterosexism is sugarcoated in its generational effects on a people. These cultural beliefs are predominantly established through community, religious and family relationships, along with social norms. It is also based on cultural norms and dominant cultural values, which is subjective and dictates what is acceptable, beautiful, and appreciated (Perez. 2005; Ungar, 2004). When queer people of color are rejected by their own communities, they experience a double exclusion. They feel they are not a part of the queer community, which is predominantly white, nor do they fit into heterosexual groups of color. These dynamics are a psychological, emotional and social mountain that queer people of color must learn how to continuously climb (Perez, 2005). One notable example of parents not accepting their child’s sexuality in the character Veronica Harrington on The Haves and The Haves Nots. Veronica expressed extreme hatred for her son Jeffery’s homosexuality. When Jeffrey came out of the closet to his parents his father was open and heartfelt with him, his mother showed the opposite reaction. Her actions toward him include forcing him to get a girlfriend (who knows that he is gay), ruining his friendship with his best friend Wyatt, telling
For His Daughter A father’s love for his child knows no bounds, not even when faced with imminent death. When cherished people are separated, all that is left of them are memories and possessions. When people pass on, their loved ones left behind must find ways to cope with the loss. In the poem “For My Daughter” by David Ignatow, he shares words of comfort for his child to help her prepare for his inevitable expiry. Assigning an object of permanence such as the “star,” creates a familiarity that the narrator is hoping will bring solace to his mourning daughter when he slips away.
It is widely accepted that masculine is synonymous with male and feminine with female. While it is typical for males to enjoy typically masculine activities, it is seen negatively when males enjoy a typically feminine activity. Not only is it seen as a bad thing, but young boys are often bullied or even punished for liking something that is seen as feminine. Girls are also often shunned for liking anything associated with masculine hobbies, usually having to prove that they “are not like like other girls”, insinuating that even girls who happen to like feminine activities are not to be sought after in this particular social system. Doctor Vanessa Cullins from Planned Parenthood talks about how children learn from a young age how they are supposed to fit into our social system and how damaging that can be during adolescence while the children try to create their own identity. I chose this topic because I think that we, as a society, do not think into this issue too deeply and yet it persists in our everyday lives.
Gender tends to be one of the major ways that human beings organize their lives” (Lorber 2). Throughout the article Judith Lorber talked about how gender construction starts right at birth and we decide how the infant should dress based on their genitalia. The authors ideas relates to my life because my friend is about to have a baby girl in a couple of weeks from now and when she is born we are buying her all girly stuff so that everyone else knows she is a girl. My family has already bought her bows for her hair, dresses, and everything was pink and girly. Since society tells us that infants should wear pink and boys should wear blue we went with it. I never thought about this until reading this article and I noticed that gender construction does in fact start right at birth.
In today’s society, it can be argued that the choice of being male or female is up to others more than you. A child’s appearance, beliefs and emotions are controlled until they have completely understood what they were “born to be.” In the article Learning to Be Gendered, Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell- Ginet speaks out on how we are influenced to differentiate ourselves through gender. It starts with our parents, creating our appearances, names and behaviors and distinguishing them into a male or female thing. Eventually, we grow to continue this action on our own by watching our peers. From personal experience, a child cannot freely choose the gender that suits them best unless our society approves.
Norms in society do not just come about randomly in one’s life, they start once a child is born. To emphasize, directly from infancy, children are being guided to norms due to their parents’ preferences and choices they create for them, whether it is playing with legos, or a doll house; gender classification begins in the womb. A prime example comes from a female author, Ev’Yan, of the book “Sex, love,Liberation,” who strongly expresses her feelings for feminism and the constant pressure to conform to gender. She stated that “From a very young age, I was taught consistently & subliminally about what it means to be a girl, to the point where it became second nature. The Disney films, fairy tales, & depictions of women in the media gave me a good definition of what femininity was. It also showed me what femininity wasn’t (Ev’Yan).She felt that society puts so much pressure on ourselves to be as close to our gender identities as possible, with no confusion; to prevent confusion, her mother always forced her to wear dresses. In her book, she expressed her opinion that her parents already knew her gender before she was born, allowing them t...
From the time their children are babies, parents treat sons and daughters differently, dressing infants in gender-specific colors, giving gender-differentiated toys, and expecting differe...
Secondly, it is clear that the viewpoint of society has been a factor in the decision making. Let’s imagine what happened to the Danny family if everybody knew Dan was a homosexual and the judge did not allow them to adopt Kevin and they could live together happily. At the time, most people do not have an agreeable point to the gay lovers, the adoption of a child of a gay person is not easy. How they could overcome an obstacle easily without the misery. Their son, Kevin, whose personality and psychology can be greatly affected.
Therefore, the constrictive American ideals of male and female gender identities inhibits growth and acceptance of gender expression. Each gender is separated by rules and guidelines that they must abide by. This, in turn, creates inner tensions that inhibit personal growth. For males, this may be, or is, an extraordinarily arduous task. More often than not, it is other male figures, such as the father, that administer and enforce these certain rules.
As a child grows and conforms to the world around them, they go through various stages, one of the most important and detrimental stages in childhood development is gender identity. The development of the meaning of a child’s gender and gender can form the whole future of that child’s identity as a person. This decision, whether accidental or genetic, can affect that child’s lifestyle views and social interactions for the rest of their lives. Ranging from making friends in school all the way to intimate relationships later on in life, gender identity can become an important aspect to ones future endeavors. It is always said that boys and girls are complete opposites as they grow.
Gender-neutral parenting is a method for raising children, used by parents who have a passion to teach non-sexism and social justice to their children (Dumas 2014). It is rooted in a desire to maintain a child’s individuality and offer more outlets for self-exploration. For example, parents do not restrict their child, regardless of a boy or girl, to wear pink or blue, play with Barbie dolls or fire engines. Parents allow their child to freely explore what they are passionate about without attaching any labels. The concept of raising children with gender-neutral identities is considered feminist and extremely radical. Butler (1990) argues that gender is performative, arguing that the naturalness of gender is something that we do rather than something we are. Parents have the most influence on the gendering of children during infancy, foremost in handling expectations for behavior. They are also responsible for their own behavior as it related to the treatment of
According to Kate Bornstein and their work Gender Outlaw, “the first question we usually ask new parents is: Is it a boy or a girl?” (46). This question creates a sense of a rigid dichotomy, by which individuals must outwardly conform to either being male or female. Individuals who do not prescribe to this binary concept of gender identity find themselves ostracized from much of society – ignored, ridiculed, and laughed at as an insignificant minority. For this group of people, “either/or is used as a control mechanism,” creating a normative group by which power can be derived from (102). According to Bornstein, the concept of the gender binary being the “natural state of affairs” is one of the most dangerous thoughts proliferated about gender within modern society (105). For individuals who do not conform to this socially created structure, they are seen as opposing the natural order of things, and subsequently, their power is stripped by society, and they are deemed as unnatural and inhuman. These oppressive labels create intense feelings of gender dissonance, and the pressure to conform can often overwhelm the individual, directly resulting in often horrific