Adjusting to the Idea Of Gender Variance

To tell you how my life correlates with any kind of gender issue would involve using the words “religion” and “church” a lot considering that I can safely say that at least a third of my life has been spent inside church. I was raised in a very strict Catholic home. Because of that I was told my entire life that there are two gender types: man and woman. It was always told to me that God intended man and woman to get married and populate the world with children. That was the natural order.

            I had never even seen someone push gender boundaries until the time I saw a guy wearing high heels my freshman year of high school. Because no one had ever thought to explain any of this to me, I thought he was being real weird and made fun of him while he wasn’t looking. I had to learn the hard way about gender-variance and it was just as difficult and traumatizing for me to adjust as it is for people who are gender variant to adjust to everyday life.

            By my senior year of high school, things had changed for me. I not only had one, but two close friends of mine whom I had known my entire life come out as homosexual. This changed my perspective entirely, because for the first time in my life, I actually personally knew people who were openly homosexual. It was weird because they still liked doing the same things as everyone else. They were still my friends. Nothing had changed.  They just were openly attracted to people of the same sex.

            While it was never told to me outright, it was always implied that I was to condemn people for being homosexual or for breaking down gender boundaries. Having to hear preachers and adults in the church community talk about why homosexuality was wrong certainly played a part. Perhaps the biggest reason why I felt compelled to condemn was because people would say that homosexuals were sinning and would inevitably end up in hell. It was always said that people who went to hell did so for doing bad things and that I should avoid bad people, so homosexuals would equate to evil people in my young mind. However, condemnation and discrimination is wrong no matter what kind of people we’re talking about.

            Just like any kind of discrimination, homophobia/transphobia starts at childhood. If a child isn’t taught enough about homosexuality or gender, then the child is going to grow up confused when confronted with said issues. Consider Melissa Bollow Tempel’s article “It's OK to Be Neither: Teaching That Supports Gender-Variant Children.” In it she explains that one of her students in her first grade class, a girl named Allie, always felt more comfortable wearing boys’ clothes than wearing girls’ clothes and because of that, Allie’s fellow students were unsure whether or not they were to call her a girl or a boy. Another person who was unsure was Tempel herself. She goes on to explain, “I didn't want to assume I knew how Allie wanted me to respond to the continual gender mistakes” (Tempel 1). She decides afterwards that she needed to teach her students about gender and whether or not it’s okay to break gender barriers.

            When I was younger, I do recall the news saying that some “radical” elementary school teachers were teaching their children about gender roles and homosexuality. My mom would always become infuriated when she saw those news stories and even once said in all seriousness that if my school began teachings that made homosexuality more acceptable to vulnerable kids like me, she would homeschool me. Talk about traumatizing. I wish that more schools today had more teachings like the ones described in Tempel’s article. Maybe if more parents became more tolerant of homosexuality and gender-variance then maybe this type of education would be more frequent, prevalent and effective.

            Toys also play a part in shaping how a child sees gender roles in society. If toys are gender-inclusive, then it becomes increasingly difficult to really explain to a child that if he or she is comfortable enough to do so, then they should break gender barriers. Toys were one of the things Tempel taught her kids about when she was teaching them about gender. Tempel states that during the lesson, she wrote down two lists: one for boys’ toys and the other for girls’ toys. She then asked the children, “‘Here it says that Legos are for boys. Can girls play with Legos?’ ‘Yes!’ most of them replied without hesitation. ‘I wonder if any of the girls in our class like to play with Hot Wheels?’” (Tempel 1). The students had never thought of it that way and began to wonder whether or not if boys could play with “girl” toys and vice versa. In the article, “Toys Start the Gender Equality Rift”, Katrin Bennhold explains, “Male and female stereotypes are established early: It is not hard to see a connection between girls playing with dolls and boys playing with cars, and the widespread segregation of labor markets into “female” and “male” professions” (Bennhold 1). The article continues on to express that stereotypes within toys not only hurt pay gaps with women but stall women from trying to get any type of leadership role. This discrimination hurts men and women from wanting what they really want in life, whatever that may be. Another example of discrimination is toy stores implicitly segregating their toy sections with boy and girl sections. The article states that “The second floor is now demarcated with bright pink. It doesn’t say ‘for girls.’ But the dollhouses and kiddie makeup leave no doubt who the target group is” (Bennhold 1). The sections make it so it’s “wrong” for a boy to want to go to the girl section and play with dolls even when he feels that it’s right.

            As a child, my little brother and I would always play with whatever action figures and toys I had and they were usually something masculine such as superhero or pro wrestling action figures. My little sister, on the other hand, would play with her dolls by herself. However in a sense we were able to all play together when we pulled out the blocks. Anyone could play with the blocks and you didn’t have to worry about gender or if playing with them was too “girly” or “tomboyish”. Perhaps more toys like these should make their way into toy stores more frequently than others?

Despite all of the discrimination, gender curriculum is starting to make its way into elementary schools as described by Tempel. Maybe this and an overhaul in how parents teach their kids about gender could change the overall discrimination that still exists among the youth today.